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Tuesday, March 1, 2016

The Ninth 2016 GOP Presidential Debate

[Note: this post was unfinished from 2 weeks back; I do realize much has transpired since Feb. 14, but I wanted to publish a complete set of debate reviews. The Houston debate review should also be published shortly.]

 Tweet of the Night
Well, in the interim since NH, Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina have left the race. Several weeks back, Carly had surged into double-digits after she first entered the prime-time debate, but her poll numbers had largely eroded to the point she had dropped back into the second-tier debate. She had been bitterly complaining being left out of the main debate the last 2-3 debates, but there was no path forward. She was highly articulate and an effective critic of Hillary Clinton.

Christie during the first couple of years of his NJ tenure was probably the most popular Republican in the country; sometimes you have an opportunity and you have to take it. Perhaps Christie, who argued that he wasn't ready yet, was reluctant to take on the risk of facing a reasonably popular incumbent President in 2012. I myself was astonished that we would see the 2016 cycle dominated by anti-establishment outsider candidates. We had seen Perry, Huckabee, Pataki, Walker, and Jindal drop out, and Christie and other governors (Bush, Kasich,Gilmore) have been competing for double-digit shares.

So by debate 9 and South Carolina, we were effectively down to 6 candidates. I am not going to review the debate blow by blow but highlight selected points of interest. (See the above tweets for additional points.)

The debate opened on a somber note on the passing of Justice Scalia. The candidates were in agreement that a lame-duck President Obama should not pick his replacement.

There was an extended discussion of Syria and ISIS. There is a general agreement that Obama mishandled it and his flip-flop over the use of chemical weapons by Assad. The rest of the field don't take favorably to Trump's idea of welcoming Russian involvement, since Russia is taking out "friendly" opposition to Assad. Trump is bashing George W. Bush with a leftist talking point, "Bush lied, and people died." Trump is losing his temper.

We then go into a set of questions about tax plans and entitlements. Kasich is defending his state's expansion of Medicaid using Reagan's precedent. Trump is talking about social security and pretends that it can be saved without benefit changes by cutting fraud and waste. He seriously doesn't understand the reality of an exploding number of longer-living seniors and unfunded liabilities. I have no doubt there is waste in almost any government program (although Trump doesn't begin to justify how whatever numbers he has on waste and abuse make up for a growing entitlement base; he doesn't want to alienate his senior citizen base by adjusting benefits).  Cruz talks about his flat tax proposal and what others have described as a VAT on business. (While libertarians applaud a shift away from taxing productivity to consumption, they feel the revenues collection, particularly if you retain an income tax as Cruz does, would lead to permanent oversized government spending.)

We then take up--again--immigration and Trump once again talks about building the wall. Rubio talks more comprehensively including immigration tracking (about 40% of unauthorized aliens are visa overstays). Cruz once again wants to fight with Rubio over immigration, the eventually dead Senate bill that Cruz disdainly calls the Schumer-Rubio bill.

Trump starts bashing American companies like Ford, Carrier and Nabisco, which he claims are exporting jobs to Mexico and vows to work with Congress in stopping them. I'm losing patience with his economic illiteracy; we have uncompetitive, high progressive tax rates. The problem is with bad policy, but Trump doesn't understand almost anything about policy; he lives in a simplistic black and white world. Trump is now in a flurry of attacks on candidates; he renews his assertion that Cruz "stole" Iowa by siphoning off Carson voters, and Trump and Jeb Bush go at each other over Trump's attempted abuse of eminent domain to condemn an old lady's house so he could expand parking for casino limos.

The rank order of debate performance, from high to low:
  • Bush
  • Rubio
  • Cruz
  • Kasich
  • Carson
  • Trump
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