Debatable Qualities

Another Fox News Republican debate has come and gone, this time in Florida. I'm growing to like Brit Hume more and more. He provides a nice scowling counterweight to the pack of grinning wags squirming behind their podiums to get their punchlines out like Valanch-tutored hosts on Oscar night.

Now then.

It must be about time for Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo to drop out, for their carriages to turn back into pumpkins, as they just don't have anywhere close to the resources needed to go any further. The only reason for the bookends to hang around is to try to shape the debate by hammering home their pet issues—trade policy and illegal immigration, respectively. That said, I have to admit that Tancredo can be pretty darn eloquent from time to time, as he was on the question about health care. When he reminded the audience that the federal government has no place in it, it was vintage Ron Paul with an enviably clear and composed delivery. At any rate, it's time for these guys to go so we can start to move beyond the one-minute answers already.

Mike Huckabee is another one that is running on fumes but he seems buoyed by the Religious Right's favor. The media is also giving him a fair amount of mentions based on a couple of higher profile straw poll results (and perhaps because he’s a big government Republican which is not unlike the media’s more desirable liberal candidate), but at some point his inability to raise any significant money will put an unceremonious end to his campaign. Unless he runs on a third-party ticket for the Dobsonites, but then I'm pretty sure he doesn't care enough about what he's doing to suffer the malediction assured the guy who crowns Hillary.

Speaking of Hillary, I don't believe she's really the galvanizing force that she's been made out to be. These last eight years of big government and bigger spending seem to have left many traditional conservatives shaking their heads and questioning whether it's possible for things to be appreciably worse under Clinton. I'm one of them. Nobody loathes Hillary and all that she stands for more than me, but I know I'm not alone in feeling inclined to shrug my shoulders if it comes down to a contest between her and any of the seven interchangeable dwarves (save Ron Paul and possibly Fred Thompson). There simply isn't enough contrast at this point between them to get really excited about it. Under that dismal scenario all roads would lead to roughly the same thing that we've been getting from Bush and company these last two terms. Romney remarked at one point that, "we're not going to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House by acting like Hillary Clinton." But see, he has been. Most of them have. And that's why the party right now is on the mat gasping for air. The beginning of the debate saw Rudy, Mitt and Fred clamoring to brand themselves as the most conservative, and to Thompson’s credit he was able to take the other two to task. After all, by their very records neither one foots the bill. And Thompson’s citation of the fact was evident in Romney’s disheveled appearance and demeanor. Case in point was Romney's Freudian slip slipping past his attorneys early:

"Who will be able to build the house that Ronald Reagan built -- who will be able to strengthen that house, because that's the house that's going to build the house that Clinton, Hillary, wants to build."

The gist of the debate the other night was that Hillary Clinton isn't the only one with a million ideas. Whether the issue is health care, Social Security, Medicare, or what have you, the Not-Quite-Hillarys have got a plan for everything too. They're quick to put across that it's "market-based", but the truth is that it's always a government scheme with some market-esque features overlaid upon it. 100% mandatory health insurance with mandated coverages ceases to be insurance at all. Moving Social Security into government-managed 401(k)s only inflates bureaucracy and promises more government fingers in equity markets.

These are not ways to shrink government. Even their efforts at self-promotion give away the candidates' predilections for grandiosity. Romney and Giuliani pounce on every opportunity to tout their experience running things, but a true conservative is not someone who thinks of the federal government as a vast, complicated enterprise requiring esoteric technocratic expertise and superhuman leadership to make it go.

Only Ron Paul stays true to the real soul of conservatism (which explains his $5 million 3rd quarter earnings), suggesting that these plans and programs need to be altogether shelved. The best plan is no plan; that's what a free market IS. The federal government was only ever meant to be simple, transparent, and limited to a few enumerated functions. Unfortunately, he has struggled to deliver that message as clearly as he could have during Sunday’s debate. Instead it was Tancredo who scored that point:

"Really and truly, it's a fascinating thing to think about this, that we have moved all the way to the point of simply debating what kind of federal plan we might have rather than debating what's the constitutional right of the federal government to get involved in this particular issue."

Nevertheless, Ron Paul remains the only candidate with the chops to dismantle the rationale for more socialism with sound economic reasoning; the problem is, more than one minute is needed to get to the crux of how to do it.

The want for Giuliani to stay atop the pack and the willingness to promote him was clearly evident despite the "Fair and Balance" pundits of FOX News. And, that to me is gravely disconcerting. Because Giuliani, at least for me, is hard to take seriously on anything. In the midst of the Hillary mash, he scoffed that America can't afford her, then later he went on to prescribe for America a strategy of spending all rivals to death, "increasing the size of our military in all aspects." Apparently, spending close to a trillion dollars a year on our military empire isn't enough for Rudy, who evidently yearns for a new arms race with Russia and China to prove our kingdom's superiority. Unfortunately, we're a bit short of that necessary industrial prowess at present. Then I suppose, it is entirely possible that maybe those Chinese he intends to intimidate will just keep loaning us the money out of habit? And, should that fail, maybe he'll ask the Treasury Department to simply print up a bunch more dollars so that half the population can gaze proudly at the wall of munitions on their way to buy a loaf of bread for $30.