There will be a debate tonight in New Hampshire between frontrunner Mitt Romney and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) and Georgia businessman Herman Cain. That’s hardly a lineup of heavy-hitters. Considering that Newt Gingrich’s entire staff resigned en masse last week, it’s really a debate between Romney and Pawlenty, with a bunch of also-rans chewing up and wasting everyone’s time.
According to Gallup, Romney enters this debate with a significant, yet anemic, advantage in the polls. He has the support of just under one in four Republican likely voters. Yet, the person who is in second place (Sarah Palin), with the support of 16% of the GOP electorate, has not announced her intention to run and will not be in attendance at tonight’s debate. No one else can claim the support of even one in ten Republicans.
As the frontrunner, Romney can expect to receive the most scrutiny and the most criticism from his fellow candidates. As the only plausible alternative to Romney, Tim Pawlenty can expect to benefit the most from tonight’s debate. Yet, perhaps because he has not yet caught fire and captured the support of more than 6% of Republican voters, Pawlenty last week introduced a ludicrous tax plan.
Pawlenty proposes to reduce the top individual income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, cut the top corporate rate from 25 percent to 15 percent, and allow pass-through corporations to pay taxes at the corporate rate. He also wants to completely eliminate capital gains taxes, taxes on dividends and interest, and the estate tax.
The Tax Policy Center center says that these cuts would deny the government over $11 trillion in revenues over the first decade. Pawlenty says that is nonsense because the cuts would result in perpetual 5% annual economic growth, and thus pay for themselves.
Obviously, Pawlenty is setting a marker that all other candidates will feel pressured to match or, more likely, exceed. Who wants to be the candidate to throw cold water on this supply-side ideology?
I predict that we will look back to this afternoon as the high-water mark for Mitt Romney’s campaign. Tonight he will be cut with a thousand knives. It will start when Pawlenty attacks him for introducing ObamneyCare in Massachusetts and it will continue with countless snipes about his flip-flopping on every issue under the Sun.
Before long, Pawlenty will be the clear front-runner, and he’ll be running on the most radical and fiscally irresponsible platform in American history.
Buckle up.