Meanwhile, back on the canal boat...
SEASON #1: FALL
Given the meteoric rise of a pizza man, Anderson Cooper delivered the first question of the evening, asking all the candidates their opinion of a national sales tax (that last of Cain's three 9s.)
Rep. Bachmann conjured her money muse, calling on "Reagan's Economic Miracle" as the foundation for her desire to eliminate the current tax code (oh-kay). She added that if everyone benefits (I'm looking at you Mr. or Ms. $7500.00 per year), then everyone should pay something, "even if it's a dollar". Of course if you mail in the thing that's another .44c at least, and if you file electronically you have to purchase the software and pay for the electricity to fire up the computer. That dollar is really worth something now! Oh, and that "miracle" to which she alludes? In that regard President Reagan was much luckier than President Nixon. Blowing up the national debt and cheating: Everyone does it, but Reagan escaped the notice of the "fiscal conservatives" and does for the most part to this day. They fault President Bush the Second Coming with all of our financial crisis. Nixon got caught, Reagan didn't.
Gov. Perry, in a nod to either New Hampshire, Jon Huntsman, or both informed his "Brother", Mr. Cain, that since the Granite State has no sales tax they'd probably not want to add one. Then Perry uttered his standby position: "I'll have a tax plan out by the end of the week." Does he think these debates are for assigning homework? Shouldn't he show up with his plans already formed?
Rep. Paul said he couldn't go along with the idea of a national sales tax because the federal income tax should be replaced with...NOTHING.
Mr. Santorum cited the Tax Policy Center's study of Cain's 9-9-9 plan which found that under said plan 84% of the population would pay more. Then he explained his bizarre version of the purpose of a tax code. "A tax code should encourage people to have children," the Former Senator said. And where does that leave romance? Then he warned of the consequences of Cain's proposal: "When they instituted the V.A.T. in Europe birth rates dropped." I suppose Mr. Santorum thinks that not "one" but seven billion is the loneliest number that you'll ever do.
Then it got interesting. Just as leaves turn their backs on the sun--and therefore chlorophyll--and don their colorful funereal frocks, so other things red, gold, and orange command our attention.
Gov. Romney harvested some details from Mr. Cain about his previous complaint that during this discussion the candidates were comparing apples and oranges. Romney correctly identified the fact that some states already assess taxes and that would seem to go against Mr. Cain's assertion that his "9-9-9" plan would replace all of the current "hidden taxes" in the code. "So if the states' taxes stay--and they're the apples--then I'm gonna get a bushel basket of both apples and oranges." Then he added, "So Gov. Perry was right about your plan, Herman."
When the question of the wisdom of Gov. Romney's plan was put to the contenders, Gov. Perry informed Mr. Cooper that the 9 we should be concerned about was the 9% unemployment number. Then he told the dirty little story about the 300 years of resources under our feet. "That's 1.2 million jobs!"
Mr. Santorum favored the unusual approach of rewarding the economic evil-doers by offering a 0% tax rate for the manufacturing base to return the $1.2 trillion they hold off-shore if they reinvest it here. So you take the jobs away, you save money. You bring the same jobs back, and we'll save you some more.
That'll teach 'em to fear the "mighty Unions" and the "overseeing Regulators"! Uh-huh.
The Fall season now turned to one of discontent when the topic devolved to health care. Now instead of falling leaves, we had "boos" raining down from the seated throng. Mr. Santorum accused Gov. Romney of not getting the costs down in his state of Massachusetts under his health care plan. As Gov. Romney attempted to give his response, Santorum constantly interrupted until time had elapsed, saying, "You're out of time". The audience was audibly upset with that tactic.
Gov. Romney then admitted as much--that he had been unsuccessful in lowering costs--but added, "I know how to get costs down". That must be one of those thingies that work better on the national level than at the state level, or the opposite of universal coverage, according to Mitt. Then he went on to rile up the resident reptile, Newt of the desert. "We got the idea for the individual mandate from you, Newt," Romney claimed.
Mr. Gingrich was very angered by this and if he'd been a lizard of a different color, his neck would've exploded in a vibrant, puffy show. The only way to calm him down was for Romney to add, "you and The Heritage Foundation", which seemed to satisfy the offended creature.
Back from a fresh batch of numbers shopping, Mr. Cain instructed everyone to refer to HR 3400 to see what he would do about health care.
And Rep. Paul clarified the whole "opt out" concept with, "Let the American people opt out of government management of medicine".
Gov. Perry lauded the Texas health care system as being one of the best in the world. It seems there's a hospital in Houston that employs a lot of people. That's nice. Hope they have a parking garage and a doctors' lounge. He explained that the state's large number of uninsured is directly related to that 1,200 mile border Texas shares with Mexico. Then, since that gave him entree into the world of immigration, he attempted to slam Romney for "hiring illegals and knowing about it for a year" before letting them go. Romney said he'd never hired an illegal in his life. Then they both attempted to speak simultaneously about who was the hypocrite and who was lying. At this point the "boo birds" chose to hang around rather than fly South just yet.
Gov. Romney offered a thorny olive branch to his fellow Governor saying, "This has been a tough couple of debates for Rick so he's gonna get testy". Then they lobbed the "tuition credits for illegals" versus "what the lawn company contractor knew" back and forth a bit until Romney felt the need to give Perry a free education of his own: "If you want to become President, you've got to let both people speak." Romney then left the conversation with a promise to institute an E-verify system to catch falsified documentation so that such occurrences would become a thing of the past and Perry was left looking for a way out of the weeds of that ill-fated lawn argument.
And time marches on. In Part 3 we will move into the Cold War Winter of immigration, Latinos, and nuclear waste. Gosh, there was something else in there that leaves people out in the cold, now what was it? Oh yeah. The Lucky Seven spent about a minute or two discussing foreclosures in the foreclosure capital of the nation. Because they care. Stay tuned. Next installment coming up shortly.
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