Newt Gingrich supported an individual mandate to buy health insurance as late as 2005.

TalkingPointsMemo reports:

Newt Gingrich has attacked Mitt Romney on the issue of the individual health insurance mandate, while chalking up his own past support for the idea as an indiscretion in the 1990’s. But as it turns out, those 1990’s stretch all the way to 2005 — and beyond, to 2008 — when Gingrich gave as passionate an explanation of the mandate idea as any current supporter could ever muster. . . .

At a forum in 2005, alongside then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and former Sen. John Breaux (D-LA), Gingrich explained the tradeoffs that both the right and the left would have to make in health care: For the right, some transfer of wealth is involved in providing health care for the working poor, the disabled, and other groups. And for the left, individuals should still have control over their health care, rather than total government management.

“I mean, I am very opposed to a single-payer system — but I’m actually in favor of a 300 million-payer system. Because one of my conclusions in the last six years, and founding the Center for Health Transformation, and looking at the whole system is, unless you have a hundred percent coverage, you can’t have the right preventive care, and you can’t have a rational system, because the cost-shifts are so irrational, and create second-order problems.”

This led Gingrich to a few conclusions of how to implement such a system: Convert Medicaid into a health insurance voucher system as it applies to the working poor (on the rationale that the creation of food-stamps do not involve the government running its own grocery stores); Create very large risk pools for individuals to purchase insurance (i.e., exchanges); and minimize insurance companies from cherry-picking customers.

I'm interested not just in the fact that Gingrich took these positions, but in the way he argued for them. Even while supporting a supposedly liberal policy, he used self-consciously tough language:

But my point to conservatives is, it’s a model of responsibility. If I see somebody who’s earning over $50,000 a year, who has made the calculated decision not to buy health insurance, I’m looking at somebody who is absolutely as irresponsible as anybody who was ever on welfare. Because what they’ve said is, a) I’m gambling that I won’t get sick, and b) I’m gambling that if I do get sick, I can cheat all my neighbors.

Now when you talk to hospitals, a very significant part of their non-collectables are people who have money, but have calculated that it’s not worth the cost to collect it.

And so I’m actually in favor of finding a way to say, if you’re above whatever — whatever the appropriate income level is, you oughtta have either health insurance, or you oughtta post a bond. But we have no right, we have no right in this society, to have a free-rider approach if you’re well off economically, to say we’ll cheat our neighbors.

You can see him make those remarks starting around 3:45 in this video. He starts out by admitting it might sound "un-conservative," but arguing that it's analogous to welfare reform:



Gingrich's argument is a good example of what I see as the fundamental divide in how liberals and conservatives think of themselves, or at least how they hold themselves out to the public. Liberals present themselves as caring. Conservatives present themselves as tough. I don't know of any other unifying theory that explains why conservatives/Republicans disagree with liberals/Democrats on so many disparate issues — economic, social, foreign policy.

Since Gingrich is committed to his image as a conservative, even if he takes a seemingly liberal or moderate position on health care, he isn't going to frame it as being concerned for those who lack health insurance. It's about cracking down on people who abuse the system. That's how conservatives like to talk, so I'm sure at the time he thought he was making a brilliant point that was consistent with conservatism. But for conservative Republican primary voters who are driven by opposition to Obama's health-care reform, I'm not seeing any reason to choose Gingrich over Romney.

UPDATE: Politico has a similar article:

If Republicans are flocking to Newt Gingrich to get away from Mitt Romney’s health care problems, they could end up with a nominee with … awfully similar health care problems.

Or maybe worse: While Romney signed a state mandate into law, Gingrich once went a step further and advocated a federal one.

How to know if you're intellectually honest

Paul Graham writes:

Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told.

The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence.

Graham doesn't use the phrase "intellectual honesty," but that's what he's getting at. Oddly, there are some people (including Matthew Yglesias) who deny that there's any such thing as "intellectual honesty," unless it's used as a synonym for just plain "honesty." I think that's a big mistake.

Old and new ideas

"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones."

Ironically, this was said by John Maynard Keynes.

Live-blogging tonight's Republican presidential debate on foreign policy

[Here's the transcript.]

Keep reloading this page for updates!

8:11 - Wolf Blitzer gives an example of an introduction, saying: "I'm Wolf Blitzer, and yes, that is my real name." Mitt Romney says that "Mitt" is also his real first name. Not according to Wikipedia! [UPDATE: TalkingPointsMemo, which makes a lot of money by posting attack ads against Romney, is running this headline:]

Mitt Romney Flip Flops On His Own Name

8:15 - For the first time, Newt Gingrich goes first. He says he wouldn't "change" the Patriot Act, but would "look at strengthening it."

8:17 - Ron Paul mentions Timothy McVeigh as an example of a terrorist who was dealt with in the criminal justice system. Gingrich says, as if this were a knock-down argument against Ron Paul, "But Timothy McVeigh succeeded!" Is Gingrich suggesting that McVeigh shouldn't have been criminally prosecuted?

8:20 - Jon Huntsman says that Tom Ridge was a "great Secretary of Homeland Security." I don't remember many people saying this at the time.

8:22 - Rick Perry says he would criminalize TSA pat-downs and privatize the TSA.

8:23 - Rick Santorum agrees with Perry. "We should be trying to find bombers, not bombs."

(As always, I'm writing down these quotes on the fly, not using a transcript, so they might not be verbatim.)

8:24 - The moderator asks Santorum what kind of profiling he'd support. Santorum says you should look for "Muslims," as well as "younger males." Ron Paul says: "What about Timothy McVeigh?" That sounds like an example of the kinds of people Santorum wanted to focus on! He was a young man.

8:27 - Herman Cain calls Wolf Blitzer "Blitz." A little later he makes fun of himself for the slip, saying he meant "Wolf." Wolf Blitzer says: "Thank you, Cain!"

8:31 - Michele Bachmann hones her answer from the last foreign-policy debate about why she supports continuing to give aid to Pakistan. She points out that we need to maintain our relationship with Pakistan because they give us intelligence information about terrorism. Perry disagrees, without explaining what he thinks is wrong with Bachmann's reasoning. After Perry says he wouldn't give any financial aid to Pakistan, Bachmann's says that's "highly naive."

8:36 - Romney supports spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan for years to come. "We need to bring them into the 21st century — or the 20th century, for that matter." Huntsman "strongly disagree[s]." There's a very long back-and-forth between Romney and Huntsman, which might be a first in all the debates. Romney emphasizes listening to the generals, whereas Huntsman says you still need to make your own decision as commander-in-chief.

8:41 - Gingrich: "We were told that killing bin Laden in Pakistan brought our relations with Pakistan to a new low. Well, it should have!"

8:48 - There's a bizarrely long lull while they wait for someone in the audience to ask a question.

8:50 - Paul: "Why does Israel need our help? They need us to get out of the way."

8:51 - Paul reveals Israel's open secret, saying they have "200, 300 nuclear missiles."

8:53 - Perry says he would "sanction the Iranian central bank." Doesn't "sanction" as a verb have the opposite meaning from "sanction" as a noun?

8:56 - In response to a question by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Santorum strongly supports humanitarian assistance to Africa in fighting AIDS. He rebukes the candidates who oppose foreign aid (Perry, Gingrich, and Paul).

9:05 - Blitzer asks Gingrich if he would bomb Iran. He says only as a last resort, and only to change the regime.

9:06 - Huntsman is asked if he would support cuts to the defense budget. He says we can't have any "sacred cows" in reducing the debt. "Everything's gotta be on the table. The Defense Department has gotta be on the table." If we can't find any cuts there, "we're not looking hard enough."

9:21 - Adam Sorensen of Time Magazine points out that Cain is "still giving the 'I'll wing it' answer on every question."

9:27 - Paul: "The federal war on drugs has been a failure." Blitzer asks if this means we should legalize all drugs. Paul says he would at least legalize medical marijuana. He adds that prescription drugs are more dangerous than illegal drugs. "And believe me, the kids can still get the drugs."

9:31 - Is there some rule that every debate needs to bring up immigration, but only near the end? There seems to be some consensus that immigration is so important that it always needs to be debated, but it's unimportant enough to wait till the audience has stopped paying attention.

9:34 - Gingrich seems to be doing about half of the talking in this debate. Paul seems to be speaking more than Romney or Perry.

9:41 - Blitzer says we'll have "much more" after a commercial. The debate has been going on for over an hour and a half — I don't know if I can take "much more."

9:54 - Wolf Blitzer asks all the candidates to quickly answer a question about what national-security issue no one is talking about that they wish would be talked about. Santorum says South America. Paul says Afghanistan. Perry says China. Romney agrees with Santorum: South America. Cain: cyber-attacks. Gingrich agrees with Cain and adds: electromagnetic pulse attacks. Bachmann: Iraq. Huntsman: the United States economy.

Now that the debate is mercifully over after 2 whole hours, a couple non-live points:

Perry said that Hezbollah and Hamas have infiltrated Mexico to try to enter the United States:



Josh Marshall at TPM thinks the most important event of the night was Gingrich's comments on immigration. Marshall says:

Newt’s edging into the GOP danger zone here on immigration. He really did say he’d provide a path to legality, though not citizenship, to a substantial number of the current undocumented population. Bachmann called him on it. And he denied he said it. But Bachmann, I think, was right. He did say it.

Now, [that's] an immensely logical thing for Newt to say — that you’re not going to be uprooting and separating families who’ve been here for a quarter century.

But this is toxic in GOP primary politics. It helped sink Rick Perry.

The New York Times seems to agree that that's the big story. The NYT is currently reporting on its homepage:

Newt Gingrich suggests some illegal aliens should be allowed to stay in the United States.

Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review says on Twitter:

Someone should tell Gingrich that some of those immigrants will build mosques.

My mom, Ann Althouse, gives the transcript of the interchange between Gingrich and Bachmann on immigration, and concludes:

That one-on-one really highlighted Gingrich's superior intelligence and sophistication. Clearly, Gingrich has the ability to reach out to many Americans who feel empathy toward the people who are in the county illegally and to take a middle position that balances a large set of interests. I like that, but obviously the red-meat fans have something to complain about. He put some vegetables on their dish.

Mickey Kaus debunks the New York Times article on the "near poor."

The New York Times ran a prominent article last week on "near poverty":

They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.

Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.

As a commenter on Kaus's blog points out, it's amazing that driving a non-new car is now considered a sign of poverty or anything close to it.

Here are my favorite points by Kaus (with all emphasis in the original):

– “Perhaps the most surprising finding is that 28 percent work full-time, year round.” The Times thinks this 28 percent figure is surprisingly high. (“These estimates defy the stereotypes of low-income families,” says the Census official). Does 28% seem high to you? To me it seems low.

– “Bruce Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago, warned that the numbers are likely to mask considerable diversity. Some households, especially the elderly, may have considerable savings.” The “near poor” category also includes unemployed 23 year old college graduates from wealthy families, stockbrokers who had a really bad year, moderately paid workers who live in Silicon Valley (where, thanks to the cost-of-living correction, you can make $51,000 and still be “near poor”). Indeed, the vast diversity of the “near poor” category makes it virtually useless. It is a granfalloon, Kurt Vonnegut’s term for a false class of people.

– . . . [A]s society grows richer, you’d think more people would be able to take a year off and live off their assets. Yet they show up as poor—because the poverty numbers measure income, not wealth. (I qualified for the low-income Earned Income Tax Credit once when I owned a house in Georgetown. There was no asset test.) I’m not saying these people are a significant portion of the statistically poor. But they’re probably a growing portion (maybe even the “fastest growing portion,” to use the standard journalistic con that makes the growth of a small population seem significant). . . .

– I’m also suspicious of the way the fancy new poverty measure takes into account regional variations in the cost of living and medical expenses. I live in an expensive part of an expensive region because it is worth it to me. I could live in North Dakota. Does that make me “poor” or have I chosen to consume in one way (nice town) rather than another?

IN THE COMMENTS: Remembering how American "poverty" looked in the Soviet Union.

Why do protesters chant, "This is what democracy looks like"?

Julian Sanchez has an evolution-based theory:

For most of human history, we’ve spent our whole lives in social clusters of a few hundred people—we’re basically hardwired for groups of that size. That makes it easy to look at a throng of a few thousand out at a rally and tell yourself . . . : “This is what democracy looks like.”

Except, of course, it isn’t really. Or at any rate, it’s only a tiny part of what democracy looks like.

A small group of people self-selected for their commitment to some set of shared goals and values may be able to pick a set of slogans to chant in unison, or resolve their limited disagreements by consensus process. But real democracy in a pluralist society involves deep and often ineradicable disagreement—and not just on the optimal uses of public parks and other commons. It’s true, of course, that concentrated and wealthy interests routinely capture the apparatus of government, and use it to serve ends inimical to the general good. But a frame that sets up an opposition between “the 99%” and “the 1%” —or, if you prefer, between “Washington/media elites” and “Real America”—suggests a vain hope that profound political differences are, at least in some spheres, an illusion manufactured by some small minority. . . .

To imagine protest not as prologue to politics, but as a substitute for it, suggests a denial of the reality of pluralism, and an unwillingness to find out what democracy actually looks like.

Matt Lewis Newt-ly calls out Bill Sher for failing to understand the appeal of Newt Gingrich.

Matt Lewis talks like Newt Gingrich while calling out Bill Sher for failing to understand Gingrich's appeal:




Here's the post Matt Lewis is referring to: "How to talk like Newt (in 7 easy steps)."

I noticed that in the last debate, Gingrich would qualify all his statements with "explicitly." By my count from searching the transcript, he used that word 4 times (and no one else used it at all). It's a way to sound intellectual without necessarily saying anything.

Airlines vs. customers

2 stories, both from today:

1. Airline makes passengers pay more money to finish flight.

2. Passengers make airline give them more money to leave plane.

The first story reminds me of an episode of The Office where Michael Scott has started his own paper company, and he realizes that he's only been able to make lots of sales because his prices are so low he won't be able to stay in business much longer. We see Michael calling a customer on the phone, saying:

Hi, Jerry. Michael Scott. Well, this is slightly embarrassing. Um, I'm going to have to ask you to pay me a little bit more money for that delivery we dropped off yesterday. [pause] Yeah, we did. We got the check. But we're just going to need a much, much bigger check.

A template for the mental-health industry

Alex Knepper writes (on Facebook):

You can't be a self-actualized human being while afflicted with crippling boredom. It's affecting millions -- you are not alone. And we know that there are chemicals in the brain that relate to boredom, so, since it's chemically-caused, you can't be held responsible for it. If you want to reverse this disorder, you may benefit from our very expensive drug. Make sure to see an expensive Mental Health Advocate to see how you can pay to get this drug and correct your disease of boredom.

(Previously.)

"Newt Gingrich Speaks Well. But Is He Smart?"

An excellent question by John McWhorter.

Gingrich is good at taking fairly standard conservative views and dressing them up in academic-sounding verbosity. I don't find that very impressive.

In this video, Glenn Loury and my mom, Ann Althouse, start out talking about Rick Perry's infamous moment of forgetfulness, but then broaden the topic to how much intelligence matters in a president:



The fact that there are many smart people who shouldn't be president is true but beside the point. Intelligence isn't a sufficient condition for being a good president, but it's a necessary condition. In other words, a smart president might be mediocre, but a dumb president isn't going to be good. Another example of a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition: I wouldn't vote for a presidential candidate who can't speak English or who can't read. Still, most literate English-speakers aren't qualified to be president. Here's a theme I plan to return to in a future post: we're observing a job application process, and we (Americans) get to hire someone for the job. Most job requirements aren't guarantees of doing a good job, but they're still requirements.

New York Times: Obama's young volunteers/supporters from 2008 are unenthusiastic about reelection campaign.

The Times talks to young people in Nevada, which has an unemployment rate of 13.4%. Two of the people quoted:

Jason Tieg, 22, a student at Brigham Young University-Idaho, voted for Mr. Obama with great enthusiasm in 2008. But now, struggling to find a part-time job to help him through school, he is not even sure he would do that again. “I got a job in July as a custodian on campus, but I lost it again when they needed to cut down.”

“I don’t know if I’ll support him next year,” he said. . . .

Maureen Gregory, 23, a Las Vegas native who turned up at an interview at Madhouse Coffee loaded with buttons, T-shirts and posters from the campaign[,] . . . sneaked away from school every day to work at an Obama campaign headquarters [in 2008]. “Sometimes I didn’t get out until midnight,” She [sic] said. She, too, could not imagine devoting that much time to him again, as much as she admires Mr. Obama.

“I didn’t think it was going to be so bad,” she said. “I’m looking for something to do. Even part time. I was definitely hoping Obama could do more.”

Hermain Cain's worst gaffe yet?

Maybe. There are so many contenders.

Do government regulations "kill jobs"?

Yes, but they also create jobs:

"If you’re a coal miner in West Virginia, it’s not a great comfort that a bunch of guys in Texas are employed doing natural gas," said Roger Noll, an economics professor at Stanford and co-director of the university’s program on regulatory policy. "Some people identify with the beneficiaries, others identify with those who bear the cost, and no amount of argument is ever going to change their minds."

And to the extent we can trust self-reporting by employers, it seems that not many jobs are killed by regulations:

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that very few layoffs are caused principally by tougher rules.

Whenever a firm lays off workers, the bureau asks executives the biggest reason for the job cuts.

In 2010, 0.3 percent of the people who lost their jobs in layoffs were let go because of “government regulations/intervention.” By comparison, 25 percent were laid off because of a drop in business demand.

Live-blogging the Republican presidential debate on foreign policy

Keep reloading this post (or the homepage) for updates. You can also find live-blogging on TalkingPointsMemo.

CBS News starts out with a long clip show of some of the most intense lines from previous debates, including the spats between Mitt Romney and the Ricks (Perry/Santorum) about whether Romney would be allowed to finish speaking. So they're shamelessly admitting what everyone knows: that the networks thrive on getting the candidates to attack each other.

8:05 - The first question goes to Herman Cain: what would you do to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons? This debate is going to be all foreign policy, in contrast with all the previous debates, which have been mostly about domestic policy. Cain is probably under the most pressure in this debate, since there are so many questions about whether he has any foreign policy competence. Cain is sounding very polished and confident. [UPDATE: As you'll see in some of the commentary I've quoted near the end of this post, my remarks here were not prescient. Overall, Cain's performance in debating foreign policy tonight seems to have been rated very poorly.]

8:06 - Romney says that Iran is President Obama's "greatest failing" in foreign policy.

8:07 - A moderator calls time on Romney in the middle of his sentence, and Romney forcefully says that he still has time left because he sees the yellow light. The moderator says: "I stand corrected." [ADDED: Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo says:]

Mitt stands down [moderator] Scott Pelley as a meta-signal that he can stand down Iran.

8:09 - Newt Gingrich: "There are many ways to be smart on Iran, and relatively few ways to be dumb, and this administration skipped all the ways to be smart." Gingrich makes a point to praise Cain's and Romney's answers on Iran.

8:15 - Santorum, in his answer on Iran policy, pointedly contrasts his own record with President Bush, saying that Bush wasn't willing to spend the money to implement Santorum's policy. Most of the debates have rarely mentioned Bush, but clearly Santorum believes that criticizing Bush is a way to win over Republican voters.

8:18 - Jon Huntsman: "I don't want to be nation-building in Afghanistan, when this nation so desperately needs to be built." He deemphasizes foreign policy as a whole, saying the main issues are the economy and education.

8:24 - Perry says he'll start out by giving "zero" foreign aid to all countries. "Then we can have a conversation" about whether to give any foreign aid to anyone. He strongly opposes foreign aid to Pakistan.

8:25 - I'm pretty sure Romney, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich all got multiple questions before Michele Bachmann got one.

8:26 - Bachmann: "President Obama has been willing to stand with Occupy Wall Street, but he will not stand with Israel. Israel looks at President Obama and they do not see a friend."

8:27 - Gingrich passionately agrees with Perry's answer on foreign aid. He accuses Pakistan of hiding Osama bin Laden.

8:28 - Santorum disagrees with much of what the others have said about Pakistan: "Pakistan must be a friend. . . . We need to continue the aid relationship. The aid is all spent in the United States; it's not sent over there."

8:34 - A moderator asks Gingrich: "Would you care to address Gov. Romney's ability to think outside the box and challenge national-security perspectives?" Gingrich: "No." The moderator points out that he did just that in a recent radio interview. Gingrich: "That's because I was on a radio show. We're having a debate to see who should run against President Obama."

As always, I'm writing down these quotes on the fly and probably won't catch all of them verbatim.

8:39 - Moderator to Perry: "As you said in the last debate, you advocate the elimination of the Department of Energy—" Perry: "Glad you remembered it!" Moderator: "I've had some to think about it." Perry: "Me too!" This, of course, gets a huge laugh. The moderator asks him how we're going to deal with nuclear weapons if we abolish the Department of Energy. Perry doesn't answer the question.

8:41 - Cain: "I do not agree with torture. Period." But he'll defer to the military's definition of torture. The moderator follows up to ask what he thinks about waterboarding. Cain: "I think it is an enhanced interrogation technique." He would bring back waterboarding.

8:42 - Bachmann also supports waterboarding. She says Obama seems to want (?) to lose the war on terror. Bachmann has clearly decided she needs to be as vociferously anti-Obama as possible.

8:42 - Ron Paul: "Torture is illegal . . . by our laws and international laws. Waterboarding is torture. It's illegal under our law and international law. It's also immoral. And it's also very impractical. There's no evidence that you get reliable evidence." [ADDED: Here's the video:]



8:45 - Romney agrees with Obama's policy of killing American citizens who are fighting with anti-American terrorists. The audience boos. Moderator to audience: "We will not have booing."

8:47 - Gingrich makes a powerful statement that the correct action in war is "to kill people who are trying to kill you," not about giving those people due process rights. He emphasizes that this is consistent with "the rule of law," because war is separate from the criminal justice system. His answer draws some vague heckling from the audience. [ADDED: Here's the video:]



8:50 - TPM posts a somewhat comical freeze-frame of Romney at the debate, supposedly watching Perry.

8:52 - After Romney gives his answer to a question on China, Huntsman makes an extremely wonky correction to Romney: "I don't think you can take China to the WTO on currency-related issues." Subtext: Romney is a former governor with no foreign-policy expertise; Huntsman was also a governor, but he's seasoned in foreign policy.

8:56 - Perry is asked whether his policy of bringing all foreign aid down to zero applies to Israel. Perry says yes. "In fact, we oughta do that with some of those agencies that I was trying to think the name of." (Yes, he did say "think the name of.")

9:03 - Josh Marshall writes:

I think we have to face the reality that with Rick Perry remaining lucid and not forgetting where he is, the entertainment value of these debates really goes off a cliff.

9:05 - Paul is asked whether we should invade Syria and try to overthrow the Assad dictatorship. Unsurprisingly, he says no. Moderator: "But what about the 3,500 people dead [in Syria]?" Paul points out that the Soviet Union and China killed "hundreds of millions of people," and we didn't see fit to invade them.

9:08 - Senator Lindsey Graham, who's in the audience, asks a softball question about whether the candidates would maintain Obama's policies about "enhanced interrogation techniques" and trying some of the inmates at Guantanamo Bay in civilian court. Can the candidates say anything other than that they'd reverse Obama's policies? That's exactly what Cain says.

9:13 - Bachmann makes a highly incendiary charge against Ron Paul: that he was against authorizing the military to kill bin Laden. Paul says he supported "going after bin Laden," and was only "upset that it took 10 years."

9:14 - Josh Marshall points out something about CBS News that I had also noticed: the online streaming debate after the one-hour mark has been "almost unwatchable." [ADDED: Here's someone on Twitter who also calls it "unwatchable." Nate Silver of the New York Times gave up on watching after the first hour.] It keeps stopping and starting — and you don't get to hear the part that was going on while it stopped, so you miss out on big chunks of the debate and only get to hear partial sentences. Marshall says that National Journal's feed is better, but I'm not able to play that feed at all. I'm using a MacBook Pro with almost no other applications running, and I'm sure Marshall, one of the most successful bloggers in the world, has a decent internet setup.

9:15 - Romney says we should return Medicaid to the states, which would save $100 billion a year. (I thought this was the foreign-policy debate.)

9:20 - Bachmann says we need to eliminate every program President Lyndon B. Johnson gave us as "the Great Society." "If you look at China, they don't have food stamps. They save for their own retirement." Of course, Social Security is us saving for our retirement. It's just a way to pool everyone's money for some of those savings.

9:26 - Huntsman: "I've negotiated with Pakistanis, both in government and in business." This might be Huntsman's strongest debate. I'm not hearing him give his usual delicate circumlocutions.

The debate is over. As the camera pans away, I notice that Gingrich was positioned closer to the center than Perry, indicating that Gingrich is rising and Perry is slipping. (I'm pretty sure the lesser candidates like Huntsman and Santorum have always been at or near the end, and Romney is always in the middle.)

Josh Marshall, a committed Democrat, praises Santorum's performance. Half an hour into the debate, he wrote:

I don't agree with much that Rick Santorum believes in foreign policy, though his answer on Pakistan was pretty reasonable. Yet it's clear that he's one of the few guys up there who thought about any of these issues before he realized that he'd have to answer questions about them in a foreign policy debate.

At the end, Marshall added:

Santorum is far and away the most lucid and knowledgable person on foreign policy.

The prominent conservative blogger Erick Erickson pans Cain on Twitter:

It is safe to say Herman Cain is the biggest loser tonight. What a damn shame. Just wow.

Similarly, Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic says:

Herman Cain seems much less confident, charismatic tonight. Equally uninformed as before.

Cain did often seem like a deer in the headlights (though it was hard to tell because of CBS News's spluttering feed). Someone on Twitter named Sean Agnew seems to agree:

I don't want Cain answering the 3am call. #sorry

Stephen Hayes, who works for The Weekly Standard and Fox News, responds to an answer by Cain that I either wasn't paying attention to or couldn't hear in full because CBS News doesn't know how to do a live online feed:

Really? President Cain would have supported both Hosni Mubarak in Egypt? And Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen? Sheesh.

Ben Smith at Politico says on Twitter:

Perry guy who sent a despairing 'sad' email after last debate now writes: "happy days here again! breaking out the bourbon!"

On Twitter, "Jason (the Commenter)" (who also regularly comments here) puts 4 of the candidates on a spectrum:

Hates torture to loves torture: Paul, Huntsman, Cain, Bachmann.

In the comments, Jason makes a very important point, which I had missed:

The biggest fail of the evening was Cain, who said that nine countries have nuclear weapons. You can only get that number if you include Israel, and they are adamant about neither confirming or denying that rumor. He threw them under the bus.

Another thing I didn't notice: many people on Twitter are saying Perry coined a new word tonight: "forewithal." Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker says:

Perry comeback? On the one hand, he made a great joke. On the other he called into question alliance with Israel and said forewithal.

Which American city overpays the most in federal taxes, relative to the federal benefits it receives?

San Francisco. Another one of the most overpaying cities is New York City.

Carbon monoxide

It's good for you! (via)

David Brooks dissects America's norms on "inequality"

They're complicated. A sample:

Academic inequality is socially acceptable. It is perfectly fine to demonstrate that you are in the academic top 1 percent by wearing a Princeton, Harvard or Stanford sweatshirt.

Ancestor inequality is not socially acceptable. It is not permissible to go around bragging that your family came over on the Mayflower and that you are descended from generations of Throgmorton-Winthrops who bequeathed a legacy of good breeding and fine manners.

Fitness inequality is acceptable. It is perfectly fine to wear tight workout sweats to show the world that pilates have given you buns of steel. These sorts of displays are welcomed as evidence of your commendable self-discipline and reproductive merit.

Moral fitness inequality is unacceptable. It is out of bounds to boast of your superior chastity, integrity, honor or honesty. Instead, one must respect the fact that we are all morally equal, though our behavior and ethical tastes may differ.

Martial arts don't prepare you to defend against real-world violence.

So says Sam Harris, explaining how to deal with violence.

Excerpt:

Herein lies a crucial distinction between traditional martial arts and realistic self-defense: Most martial artists train for a “fight.” Opponents assume ready stances, just out of each other’s range, and then practice various techniques or spar (engage in controlled fighting). This does not simulate real violence. It doesn’t prepare you to respond effectively to a sudden attack, in which you have been hit before you even knew you were threatened, and it doesn’t teach you to strike preemptively, without telegraphing your moves, once you have determined that an attack is imminent.

Live-blogging tonight's Republican presidential debate

[Here's the transcript.]

8:20 - I finally found the live video online. I missed the first 20 minutes of the debate because CNBC is foolishly not streaming it.

8:21 - Herman Cain is asked about "character issues." The audience boos. "The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations." Of course, he pivots to saying what people care about is the "issues."

8:23 - Mitt Romney is asked: "Would you keep [Cain] on if you had bought his company?" Romney wisely refuses to answer. When the moderator says, "I'm going to switch back to the economy," the audience cheers.

8:24 - Jon Huntsman on Occupy Wall Street: "I want to be president of the 99%. I also want to be president of the 1%." He doesn't like OWS's anti-capitalism, but he does agree with them that we need to stop "bailing out corporations." Huntsman is right.

8:26 - Romney says Democrats incoherently think "they like jobs, but they don't like businesses."

8:28 - Newt Gingrich blames the news media for not "reporting accurately how the economy works." The moderator presses him to specify what the media reports inaccurately about the economy. Gingrich says, for example, the media never asks the OWS protesters: "Who's going to pay for the park you're occupying if there are no businesses?"

8:33 - Cain is asked about the fact that the rates could be increased on his 9/9/9 tax plan after it gets passed. Cain's answer: "Tax codes don't raise taxes, politicians do." He claims, absurdly, that "the people" will prevent the rates from ever increasing.

8:36 - Michele Bachmann says "we all need to sacrifice," so she would make sure everyone pays a federal income tax. So I guess she doesn't think people deserve to keep all their money, as she said in an earlier debate. This is also a blatant flip-flop from her pledge not to raise taxes, since she's talking about raising many people's federal income taxes from zero.

8:44 - Question to Romney: "Not one of the points in your 59-point economic plan mentions housing. Can you tell us why?" Romney: "Yeah, because it's not a housing plan."

8:57 - A moderator asks each candidate to explain how, after repealing Obamacare, they'd fix the health-care system. Each candidate gets 30 seconds! Gingrich says he'd need to take two whole "Lincoln-Douglas style debates" in order to answer this question. Moderator: "Do you want to answer the question tonight?"

9:04 - Romney gives us a bizarre non sequitur: 18% of our GDP is spent on health care; the most any other country spends is 12%. Therefore, Romney says, we need to switch to a "market" system. But we're the country with market-based health care; those other countries spend less by having universal health care!

9:06 - As one moderator is saying they're about to go to commercials, another moderator cuts in to make fun of the health-care question: "Before we go, I want to give every candidate 15 seconds to solve the deficit problem."

9:15 - Romney criticizes President Obama for being driven by a desire to get re-elected.

9:17 - My brother Chris IMs (and gives me permission to quote):

Perry just had the worst moment of any candidate in a debate I think I've ever seen!

Perry started out by saying he was going to list 3 agencies that should be abolished. He said "Education, Commerce" — but then spent a very long time trying to think of the third one. Another candidate suggested: "EPA." Perry jokingly said, "Yeah, the EPA." The moderator asked Perry if he seriously meant the EPA, and he said no. Finally, he admitted he just couldn't think of the rest of his message. Perry ended his segment by actually saying out loud: "Oops!"



HuffPo already has a series of Twitter posts skewering Perry's embarrassment:

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your .... uh, oh God, give me a moment." #PerryStatements

"Mr. Gorbachev: Tear down this .... what's the word for it? Ummmmmmm...Wait, I know this one." #perrystatements

"Read my lips: No new .... uh....I honestly can't remember" #PerryStatements

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto....uh, um, you know, the person that is "me" but, you know, not "me"?? #perrystatements

Rick Perry: There are three agencies I want to eliminate: Commerce, Education ....and the Department of My Campaign Is Over

Shortly after Perry's blunder, Rich Lowry of National Review says (in 2 Twitter posts):

this may be the debate when it became a contest btwn cain and gingrich to be the alternative to romney

to think rick perry getting into the race may have played into paul ryan's decision to stay out

9:31 - After several other candidates have spoken, Perry gets his next question, and he finally explains that he was trying to think of the Department of Energy. Meanwhile, he came out in favor of cutting defense spending.

9:36 - The top headline on TalkingPointsMemo right now, with a photograph of Perry at the debate:

Um, Um, Um ...

9:43 - WaPo's The Fix says (in multiple Twitter posts):

The Perry thing will be replayed relentlessly over the next 24-48 hours. Not going to be good. But Herman Cain is happy.

Perry people will start jumping ship -- or at least giving negative background quotes -- in 4,3,2...

The remainder of the debate after Perry's brain freeze will be ignored in post-game analysis unless some major news is made.

Biggest problem for Perry will be donors. Hard to recruit big $ people to the cause after such a big swing and miss.

My mom, Ann Althouse, has posted the video of Perry followed by a reader poll. She asks the appropriate question: "How horrible is it?"

The debate is now over. I wasn't able to pay attention to anything else after the Perry disaster.

Rich Lowry points out something very significant, which I hadn't noticed:

no one bothers attacking rick perry any more

Jonah Goldberg says:

On the plus side, Perry's campaign can at least have an open casket.

Turtles that look like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Here they are.

Is Jon Huntsman the "conservative" candidate?

Michael B. Dougherty argues that Huntsman is the strongest conservative candidate for president, but he just isn't expressing it well:



Dougherty points out that Huntsman's speaking style might be turning off Republicans voters because he "speak[s] like a diplomat" and uses "circumlocu[tions]." I've noticed that Huntsman will often phrase his statements in terms of the overall discussion. This creates a distance between himself and his words. I wrote in one of my debate live-blogs:

Huntsman [says]: "This country needs more workers. Can we say that? This country needs more workers." When he asks if "we" can say that, he intends to present himself as someone who has the courage to speak the truth, but he ends up sounding like he's weak, tentative, in need of others' approval.

Huntsman needs to learn to get to the point — without asking for permission to do so.

Why are journalists wildly inconsistent in whether they're willing to report on sex/harassment scandals?

Mickey Kaus has a unifying theory: Journalists are moderately liberal patriots.

The problems with poverty statistics

The U.S. Census Bureau's September report saying that poverty is soaring may have been "off the mark."

The New York Times explains:

Concocted on the fly a half-century ago, the official poverty measure ignores ever more of what is happening to the poor person’s wallet — good and bad. . . .

[S]afety-net programs have played a large and mostly overlooked role in restraining hardship: as much as half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006 disappears.

The Times also says the Census Bureau's report ignored the fact that "rents are higher in places like Manhattan than they are in Mississippi."

There are "fewer people in abject destitution, but a great many more crowding the hard-luck ranks of the near poor, who do not qualify for many benefit programs."

The Census Bureau will release a new report on Monday, hopefully correcting some of these errors.

This other New York Times piece looks at other measures of poverty from the past few years. Some of the findings:

Poverty is declining among women ages 25-39.

Five million children in America have risen out of poverty in the past 10 years.

Poverty is declining among Hispanics, and declining dramatically among blacks. Poverty is increasing among Asians.

Poverty is decreasing in rural areas and increasing in urban areas.

Poverty appears to be increasing among the elderly, but this "could be a statistical anomaly. Many elderly people use retirement savings but do not report that money as income."

Do birds follow grammar rules?

Maybe.

Could Republicans win in the long run by losing the presidency in 2012?

Alex Knepper makes the Republican case for "supporting" President Obama's reelection. Excerpt:

Instead of flailing through a doomed McCain presidency, the Republican Party went through a few years of soul-searching. It has miraculously shaken off the Bush brand and is newly focused on economic liberty and the debt crisis — and that’s just in a few years’ time. If, say, Herman Cain is nominated and loses to Obama, it could possibly serve as the wake-up call that the party base needs to discipline itself, setting up a candidate like Chris Christie to easily walk to victory in 2016. (Worse, if Herman Cain wins, we will fail in our goals of addressing the debt crisis and rolling back left-wing policies. He is awful at public relations management and has not proven himself as a political leader.)

Moreover, it’s not as if — despite his oft-stated wishes — Obama can single-handedly enact harmful policies. The worst of the Obama era — four years or eight — is over. The Republican House already acts as a buffer on his left-wing dreams, and if we focus on re-taking the Senate, he will be rendered virtually impotent. He is no Bill Clinton: he’s not going to co-opt conservative ideas and spin them into left-wing victories. He’s not smart, savvy, or pragmatic enough to do it — he’d have already done so if he were. He’d simply have a failed second term, setting up a Republican to cruise to victory in 2016 — and the field next time is bound to be better, with people like Christie, Jindal, and possibly Ryan raring to run.

Sometimes, when you lose, you win. We have a competent slate of candidates waiting for us in 2016, should we lose to Obama. Since none of the Republican candidates this year are acceptable, I feel that I have no choice but to support Obama’s re-election and wait for 2016.

"Frog fail"