REPUBLICANS HOLD A CNN, "NON-DEBATE, DEBATE"
Gary Ater
June 20, 2011
...GOP´s "7 Dwarf´s" presidential contenders
Last week, on CNN, there was a debate between the first group of Republican presidential contenders.
Actually, it wasn´t a real debate. It was really just an interview of the initial GOP candidates and it gave them a chance to "strut their stuff" for giving potential large corporate election donors a glimpse at the first Republican contenders. Unfortunately for the candidates, the ratings of the so called "debate" have shown that only 1% of the nation´s TV viewing audience actually watched the debate. The final rating´s numbers show that the old reruns of "Law and Order" and ´NCIS", showing in the same time slots, had much higher ratings than the actual debate.
And since the debate wasn´t on the FOX network, FAUX News, the GOP´s own, wholly-owned network, just totally ignored the debate as if it weren´t even happening.
In any case, here is a list of who appeared to seriously "bloviate" for two hours on CNN:
The seven Republican candidates were: Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum. As expected, they were immediately referred to by the main-stream media as , "The Seven Dwarfs".
The candidates were very nice to each other as they wanted to appeal to the GOP´s base and still look electable, which is kind of like trying to get a triple "XXX" rating and still appeal to the average Christian American family.
Also, as expected, most all of them offered at least one item of information that was either partially incorrect or grossly false.
Herman Cain´s comment saying that the US should adopt a privatized Social Security plan for America, such as the one that Chile adopted under the direction of the Military Dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. This was probably the most glaring idiotic statement.
Obviously, the "less-than-informed" Cain isn´t aware that the Chilean retirement program has been a total failure.
Rather than financing the pensions through a system to which workers, employers and the government all contributed, millions of Chileans were instead required to pay 10% of their salaries to private investment accounts that only the investor organizations controlled. Now that the first generation of workers to depend on the new system are beginning to retire, Chileans are finding that the program is falling far short of what was originally advertised by the highly authoritarian Chilean government.
As an example, there was a recent story published about a 66-year-old Chilean laboratory technician. This Chilean employee earns just under $950 a month. But due to recent heart problems, he had decided to retire. His pension fund has since told him that his nearly 24 years of contributions will only finance a 20-year annuity that only pays $315 a month.
And the Chilean government continues to raise taxes for supporting the failed system. They currently direct billions of tax-payer dollars to a safety net for those whose contributions were not large enough to ensure even a minimum pension of $140 a month. And because many Chilean workers earned much of their income in the country´s underground economy, they continue to remain outside of the system altogether. Today, only half of Chile´s workers are captured by the Chilean Social Security system.
And Herman Cain would like this system for all of America´s seniors?
Then there´s the bizarre statements from Ms. Bachmann.
Bachmann made a major misstatement saying that if she was elected, she would immediately repeal "Obamacare" because the non-partisan, "Office of Management and Budget had said that Obamacare was going to eliminate 800,000 American jobs."
This of course, is totally incorrect.
What the OMB actually said was that, "...with Obamacare", it is estimated that ~800,000 of those Americans still working after age 55, just for keeping their health care coverage, these individuals will now be able to retire with their new ´Obamacare´ coverage. This will create new job openings for 800,000 younger Americans."
And fortunately, during the debate, Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney didn´t go at each other, which was kind of a relief.
However, the day before the debate, on the FOX network, Pawlenty had coined the term "Obomneycare" for going after Mitt Romney´s health care plan in Massachusetts. But when he was asked about that attack on Romney, while Mitt was standing next to him during the debate, Pawlenty backed off. In fact, Pawlenty then acted more like he was asking to be Romney´s VP running mate, instead of his running for the presidency.
And all of the candidates made the false statement that the economy was worse today than when Obama became president.
While it is true that unemployment is worse today than Mr. Obama´s advisers initially predicted, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), unemployment would be even worse without the stimulus bill that all the Republican candidates previously had derided.
The president´s advisers had said in 2009 that the stimulus bill would keep the unemployment rate below 8%. Last month unemployment was officially at 9.1%. But things would have been worse without the stimulus, according to a report issued last month by the CBO. The report found that the stimulus "increased" the number of people working by between 1.2 million and 3.3 million jobs during the first three months of the year. It added that the stimulus, which passed with almost no Republican support, "lowered" the unemployment rate by between 0.6 and 1.8 percentage points.
But it was health care that also drew misleading or incomplete comments, as the candidates sought to capitalize on the unpopularity of President Obama´s health care plan among the Republicans.
And Mr. Pawlenty continued to obscure his own changing positions on health care mandates.
In a 2006 speech on health care, Pawlenty had called mandates "potentially helpful" and "a worthy goal," though he stressed that by themselves they would not solve the problem of getting more people insured. Today, Pawlenty is totally against health care mandates.
But he was not the only candidate with an evolving position.
As recently as last month, Mr. Newt Gingrich had said on NBC´s "Meet the Press" that he had favored "a variation" on the mandate. The next day he issued a statement saying: "I oppose the Obamacare mandates...Period."
Then there was Michele Bachmann (R-MN) who told moderator, John King of CNN; "John, I do support a constitutional amendment on marriage between a man and a woman, but I would not be going into the states to overturn their state laws." Sorry Michele, but a US Constitutional Amendment would trump any state laws on marriage.
And Mr. Pawlenty stood by his most recent bizarre economic proposal, which calls for more tax cuts for the wealthy. He then just seems to want to rely on the American economy to somehow "automatically grow" at a rate of 5% per year...?
This is a rate of growth that the country has rarely achieved except for short, brief periods, and that many economists have said was highly unrealistic.
In fact, the economist Mr. Bruce Bartlett, who worked in the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush, was dismissive of Mr. Pawlenty´s plan. Bartlett recently wrote in his blog that "if he could actually do this, he deserves not only the presidency, but the Nobel Prize in economics."
But here´s the biggest problem with the possibility of a Pawlenty presidency.
When Pawlenty left the office of Minnesota governor, the state was left with a $6.2 billion deficit. Then, Minnesota's projected budget deficit quickly shrank by 1/5th to $5 billion. State economist, Mr. Tom Stinson has attributed the improvement in the state´s deficit to Obama´s federal action that helped the economy, including a payroll tax cut and a delay in a capital gains tax hike.
Per Minnesota´s Star Tribune newspaper, "No other governor in Minnesota's 152-year history has handed his successor anything close to a $6.2 billion deficit forecast." The new Minnesota Democratic Governor, Mark Dayton, says he inherited a, "Horrendous fiscal mess and poorly managed state agencies from Pawlenty."
In addition, during Tim Pawlenty's tenure as governor, taxes decreased for the wealthiest 10% and increased for 90% of middle and lower-income families. This shift in tax burden came as a result of local funding cuts enacted by Pawlenty that prompted local governments to raise property taxes.
I could go on and on about the CNN "non-debate, debate" and the bloviating from the various other candidates such as Rick Santorum and Herman Cain.
And as usual, Texas Rep. Ron Paul continued to push his Libertarian views stating that basically, all US government functions should just…disappear. He still says this, even though he has previously agreed that there has never been a nation that has ever tried having a government system that functioned, as he envisions.
But the reality is that as a whole or as individuals, for dealing with this nation´s real problems, not one of them demonstrated that they have one single new idea for helping this nation´s economy. As usual, all they know is tax cuts, spending cuts and no ideas for job creation or how to actually govern this great, but economically suffering nation.
In other words, they are classic right-wing Republicans, trying to offer up the same old failed programs, while continuing to sell everyone that there will be a different end-result.
If this is all they have to offer, I continue to ask, why do they bother and why should anyone listen to them any further?
Copyright G.Ater 2011
Follow me on Twitter: gater01
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