As I said last night, I don’t feel qualified to judge who won the CNN/Tea Party debate. I am not crazy. Dana Milbank, however, is convinced that Rick Perry was the loser. Maybe. But I thought he did just fine. I thought he made Romney look like a wimp. And the rest of the field appeared to be little different from a swarm of gnats. Even Bachmann’s attacks were less than devastating. Her premise was that Governor Perry forced girls to be immunized against HPV. But, as Perry made clear, there was a parental waiver so no one was forced to take the vaccine. She was outraged about something that isn’t even true. Yet, that’s kind of why I can’t judge these debates. The whole show is 95% outrage about stuff that isn’t true. If the audience is buying into what they’re saying about Social Security or taxes or balancing the budget or climate change or why health care is expensive, then it’s really not a competition to show you understand the issues and have credible plans to address them. It’s more about conveying some kind of emotional message and connecting with the voters on a visceral level.
That’s why it matters that Romney, like Pawlenty, exudes wimpishness. It matters that Huntsman lacks stature. And it matters that Perry projects confidence and raw strength. What they’re saying is probably irrelevant. Let’s take an extreme example. Here’s Ron Paul from last night answering a question about whether to increase or decrease defense spending.
PAUL: As long as this country follows that idea, we’re going to be under a lot of danger. This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this, and they’re attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true.
Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit — they have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians fair treatment, and you have been bombing —
(BOOING)
PAUL: I didn’t say that. I’m trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing, at the same time we had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years.
Would you be annoyed? If you’re not annoyed, then there’s some problem.
I don’t know how you can get more taboo than saying essentially that the 9/11 hijackers would have something wrong with them if they hadn’t been annoyed. In a slightly altered form, I’ve made the same point that Ron Paul was trying to make, but I never said that we killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the 1990’s by bombing them. Some have argued that the embargo of Iraq caused much higher infant mortality, undermined water quality, and denied Iraqi doctors vital medical supplies. As a result, many estimates blame the sanctions for more than 100,000 excess deaths in Iraq. It should be remembered, however, that Saddam Hussein set records for misallocating funds. He was building palaces when he should have been helping young mothers keep their children alive. Also, no one forced Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. Hussein created excess deaths for a living. But I digress. My point is that Ron Paul said in a Republican debate that 9/11 happened because we spent the 1990’s bombing Iraq until more than 100,000 Iraqis were dead. He did get booed for saying it, but will it actually hurt him in the polls?
I doubt it.
Because it wasn’t even the craziest thing that he said last night and no one seems to be listening to the details anyway. Paul also said that we should leave the uninsured to die. Newt Gingrich said we can balance the budget without touching entitlements by just “modernizing” the government. Bachmann thought it was an outrage to prevent cervical cancer and didn’t seem to realize that the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution. Santorum tried to appeal to Latino voters by calling them the ‘Illegal Vote.” Romney tried to appeal to the Latino vote by saying they all came here looking for a hand-out. Herman Cain said he would create a commission of people who had been abused by the Environmental Protection Agency in order to assure the destruction of the Environmental Protection Agency. And I’m just scratching the surface here.
This isn’t about reason or logic. That might play in a Democratic debate or in a general election debate, but it’s meaningless in a debate among Republicans. In my book, Perry was the winner because he didn’t cry. Romney is too wimpy, geeky, and bland. All the other candidates are midgets.
But, as I’ve said, I’m not a good judge.