Republican Debate in Iowa. What'd ya think?

A lot of good questions and answers at the debate earlier this week. Some very interesting first impressions of a lot of these candidates.

Newt Gingrich came off very strong, I thought, even though he didn't talk much. He pushed the fact that he's been in politics for 30 years, and used to run the house, and he didn't seem nervous at all- unlike most of the other candidates on stage. At one point he even 'stuck it to the panel' for asking "gotcha" questions. He recommended auditing the Fed, and stopping these closed door sessions of congress, and stopping a few of the other 'stupid' things the senate is doing. I really hadn't paid much attention to him up to this point, but from now on I think I'll start watching him pretty close. I'm not 100% throwing my vote his way yet, but he made a pretty good impression on me.

Ron Paul is awesome any time he gets up in front of a crowd. I love the strict constitutionalism that he brings to the table every single time. I don't know if half of his ideas would work though. Going back to the gold standard sounds great- but I dunno if we can even to that with our current economy and the way global economics works these days. Would the gold standard help us pay thirteen-trillion dollars in debt? Do we even HAVE thirteen trillion dollars in gold? I don't know. I don't even know if that's how it works. His policy on Isolationism sounds good. It'd be nice to mind our own business for a while and get things here on track, but since we're the last superpower I really don't know if we can do that. We're prettymuch plugged into global politics whether we want to be or not. His assertion that a nuclear Iran isnt a threat to us was sort of shocking, but he backed it up pretty well. I have a hard time picturing him as the President though. He rants and raves at the podium with vigor and flourish talking about our constitution- which is great, but it's hard to see this cantankerous fellow trying to negotiate treaties with Russia, or address the nation in a time of crisis.


Rick Santorum caught my attention. I havent seen much coverage of him on the news, but he really stood out during the debates. I like his passion about pro-life issues, and the fact that he considers Israel our best ally in the mideast (Something Barry has constantly forgotten) and he gave a very good debate to Paul about why Iran shouldn't get their hands on a nuke anytime in the near future. He's an underdog, but I plan to keep an eye on him in the upcoming race.

Mitt Romney looks good on the economic portion of things, but not much else. I don't think he'd be a very effective C&C for our military, and there is something fundamentally 'phony' about him that I just dont like.

Herman Cain- there just isn't anything special about this guy that I can see. Why should I believe that this is the guy that will be able to fix our economy, stop 2 wars (plus whatever the hell this Libya thing is), and get Congress back on track where they should be, plus deal with all the other unforseen issues that will come up in the future? He seems like a nice guy, but really I think he should be running for Mayor of some small town, not the office of the president.

Bachmann looked like a deer caught in headlights for most of the debate, and I felt sorry for her because of how shaky and nervous she seemed. When the reporters tossed the question about "will you be submissive to your husband" she just smiled for an eternity (possibly pausing for the crowd to boo the question) and then tossed some weak answer about submission and respect being the same, and gave her husband a shout out. She seems like a super nice lady, but not what I'm looking for in the Leader of the Free World.

Everyone else was very forgettable, and mostly just seemed to repeat the same line over and over again.

What'd ya'll think?

There's a reason santorum has a definition that isn't so flattering.

Tawnos said:

There's a reason santorum has a definition that isn't so flattering.

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whats that?

frommycolddeadhands said:

whats that?

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http://www.bing.com/search?q=santorum&form=OSDSRC
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=santorum

"The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."

Tawnos said:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=santorum&form=OSDSRC
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=santorum

"The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."

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*GAG*

Back to the *GAG* OT.

I can't help but laugh, but *sniggers*, Go Bachmann! Bachmann is a total fundamentalist right-fringe Christian who believes in small Government, well, unless it has something to do with her so-called 'Christian faith', then she is all about her personal Christian version of Sharia Law.

I really hope that the Republicans have not decended into complete madness, but you never know. What I was happy to see is Ron Paul taking second place, which is much better than last time around. I have stated that I am of the view that Paul would be the ideal candidate for the Republicans if they are looking to unseat President Obama. But, considering Republicans are likely not interested in the ideal candidate, Republicans will likely go for Romney.

I know a number of Democrats, Liberals, and left-leaning Independents that are very upset with President Obama. All the 'right' would have to do is put up someone like Paul, and President Obama would be in a sh*t-ton of trouble. Republicans are going to overplay their hand, as they had in this last debt ceiling fisaco, and it is going to politically bite them hard next election.

*puts hat on* I see the Republicans putting up Romney, or the Texas Governor (can't remember his name off the top of my head), failing to unseat President Obama - and the House being lost, tipping back to Democrat control, and the Senate Democrats retaining their seats. Any person on here interested in laying down their prediction, we can compare them, and lay down a cup of coffee over it?

Mind you I laid down a pizza back in 2004 in a bet with a work buddy that Bush was going to be packing his bags, and heading home - damn that pizza looked soo tasty LOL.

I think that the OP pegged Romney pretty accurately as a "phony". IMHO, all he's good at is talking. If he was to win next year the only change in the White House would be the name of the occupant. One clueless egotistical fool replacing another.

In Bachmann's case, she seems ok to me but dos'nt appear to handle stress well. If she was nervous just being quizzed by media jackels how will she hold up under Congressional grilling or in a national crisis?

Gingrich has always struck me as being slimy and underhanded. I would'nt trust him to be a effective pooper-scooper in a small town park.

Ron Paul. What's not to like? I sure hope that he gets the nomination.

My thoughts on the debate:

Yes, generically Obomney er....Romney didn't do anything to hurt his chances but then again he didn't do anything. He spent the time attacking Obama instead of debating the differences in his policys with the rest of the field...and what little difference he has with Obama. He can save that for IF (and man I hope not) he wins the primary.

Newt actually did pretty well for himself I think. I enjoyed him letting Wallace have it for the same (and only) reason I liked Rumsfelds press briefings back in the day. Of course his Libya views were a full flip-flop and rated as such by politifact. He also doesn't come off as presidential, he's more of an idea man and I think that's the roll he should play....in someone elses administration. BTW, I think that Six Sigma and Lean principles are a great idea for government.

Did anyone else catch Pawlenty actually advocating U.S. government assasinations of Iranians on national television!!?? Holy crap! I think Pawlenty and Bachmann going at one anothers throats brought them both down. One of the reasons I think they went at each other is that they are basically clones: See next paragraph.

Bachmann once again exposed herself as a Tea Party co-opter by advocation the 10a out of one side of her mouth on one issue and abrogating states power out of the other. She also exposed her lack of knowledge on economics, only trumpeting the TP line without backing it up with actual policy. She seems fake to me, and most likely is.

Cain, well, I thought he came off as really likeable. Unfortunately, his lack of knowledge about almost everything aside from business really showed. He even admitted that he was learning as he went. He was also pretty unsatisfactory on repudiating his previously made ill advised comments on other religions.

Santorum exposed himself as the biggest neocon, war(chicken?)hawk, bigoted, anti-freedom candidate in the room. I did hear that he got a politifact rating of "true" for his statement that "Iran isn't Iceland Ron" though. So at least he has that going for him. He was also consistently rude to the other candidates; often breaking into their time or trying to talk over them as they answered questions or gave rebuttals.

Paul started off slow with the divided government question and could have used the opportunity to talk about saving billions regardless of congress by bringing our troops home. He also missed a big one, IMO, when asked if states were allowed to mandate individuals to buy health insurance. I think the 9th amendment may have been able to enter into the conversation there. Ron recovered from his slow start to hand Santorum's ass to him on foreign policy. He also won by having others co-opt at least part of his view on the Fed. He was able to call all of the other candidates the status quo without so much as a rebuttal from them which points to one of his biggest wins of the night: Besides Santorum, no one tried to take it to Paul. As usual, his intellectually honest answers don't lend well to time limits but he'll shine when more candidates drop out of the race and the remaining pols get more time.

Did I miss anybody? Oh yeah, Huntsman! He seemed vanilla and a little nervous. He was forgettable and I didn't really find out much about him in the debate. I do think his experience with China is a plus. He was also able to highlight that it didn't matter to him if he worked for a D or R administration as it was the country that was important to him. This will come off well, I think, after the recent boondoggle with the debt ceiling. All in all though, he didn't stand out but he didn't disqualify himself either.

Newt would make a highly effective Herbert Hoover.

Ron Paul needs to take a Finance 101 class, as there's not enough gold in the world to go back to a gold standard. Like you, I'm beginning to doubt he has the fortitude to engage in meaningful foreign relations.

Rick S has already lost any chance of winning due to his pro-life stance. This is politics, not religion. A vote for him is a vote for the next best (and more likely winner) thrown out the window.

Mitt is making a good attempt, but it's too little and somewhat off-target.

Cain - who?

Bachmann: I disagree. Sometimes the most appropriate response to a stupid or baited question is indeed a prolonged smile. Makes the questioner look like the idiot they are.

For me, the race is between Bachmann and Paul. I'll have to see them in action as they get nearer the primaries before I cast a vote.

Ooops! I'm an independent now. I'll have to wait for the national election!

since9 said:

Newt would make a highly effective Herbert Hoover.

Ron Paul needs to take a Finance 101 class, as there's not enough gold in the world to go back to a gold standard. Like you, I'm beginning to doubt he has the fortitude to engage in meaningful foreign relations

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I've never understood the claim that there isn't enough gold in the world. That all depends on how you value it.

This article was written when gold was $350 an ounce:
http://www.conciseguidetoeconomics.com/book/goldStandard/

Notice in the article what they would set the price of gold at...$2,000....well, we're at about $1,800 now.

Also, in sound bites Ron talks about the gold standard but when he has time to elaborate he talks about a commodity driven standard, gold being probably the best option. The point is to have sound money backed by something instead of paper money backed by nothing.

I think toom many eco-101 classes are taught by Keynesian kool-aid drinkers who don't offer up the real alternatives.

If one does not know Herman Cain is, he should take the time to find out.

It seems to me that the true Liberty position is to allow all commodities to freely fluctuate in relation to each other, not to lock any two by law.

The problem with the dollar is simply that some think that they can create value by printing them. As they represent a portion of the American economy, printing more simply devalues each. More simply, greater supply results in lower value.

One of the reasons that we give official governmental power is to ensure that the money supply facilitates commerce, without making the supply to large, resulting in inflation, or to small, strangling growth.

If we lock the dollar to gold, fluctuations (some wild) will still occur. They will just happen to gold v. bread, dragging the dollar with it.

Going back to the gold standard would be monumentally stupid, creating unnecessary economic rigidity and removing the lubrication from the economic engine that allowing commodities to float with respect to each other provides. The problems it purports to solve would still exist in the commodities that were still allowed to float.

sudden valley gunner said:

Without the lube maybe we'd all stop getting the shaft.

The reason they print money is because they have to keep their version of "lube" working. Keynesian is a failed policy. We need to go back to a gold or silver standard, money needs to have a true value or the market will never be a true representation of what "value" is and we will continue to have depressions and bubbles.

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+1

But I'd say that we will always have depressions and bubbles. Going back to sound money will just reduce the size and frequency of the bubbles and not allow for government created bubbles like the housing crisis.

A gold standard doesn't have to lock down the value of any commodity. The only thing it will do is lock the value of paper money to gold which itself is one of the least fluctuating commodities. What's "monumentally stupid" is letting the government print their own money which decreases the value of all of our money. A gold standard will keep government honest, forcing them to have to borrow real money if they want to live beyond their means. This in turn will force a reduction in the size of the welfare/warfare state.

ETA: When "setting the value of gold" is talked about it should really be translated to mean setting the value of current paper money in relation to gold. You're not really doing anything with the actual value of gold or whatever commodity you are basing your currency on. For instance, with our current paper money that is worth about .02 in 1913 dollars you may need to set the "price of gold" (really the price of the currency) at $3,500 an ounce or $5,000 or whatever.

And there are other precious metals out there that can also be used instead of gold alone ... setting the standard to an average of say, platinum, palladium, gold, silver, and copper would also help stabilize the mean average across the annual.

okboomer said:

And there are other precious metals out there that can also be used instead of gold alone ... setting the standard to an average of say, platinum, palladium, gold, silver, and copper would also help stabilize the mean average across the annual.

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Yes, that's the "basket of commodities" approach and may be a very good one. What we don't want to do again is have bi-metalism which is when we tried to set the ratio of silver to gold. It just doesn't work very well to tie commodities together. Silver, for instance, is much more volatile than gold demand-wise. It's used a lot in industry. Pegging the two together in direct bi-metalism (as opposed to a "basket of commodities" approach) makes about as much sense as pegging crude oil to diamonds.

No, the reason they print money is to support the spending with a hidden tax created by the resulting inflation.

The problem is the spending that produces nothing, not the use of a paper currency that is a commodity in its own right.

eye95 said:

If one does not know Herman Cain is, he should take the time to find out.

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He so fundamentally misunderstands the first amendment that he will never see my vote.

Our Republic was founded on a silver standard, not a gold standard. This went on until 1873 when they "demonetized silver" and put us on a de-facto gold standard.

Congress has no Constitutional authority to print a fiat currency. Congress has no Constitutional authority to re-define the word "dollar".

During the Constitutional convention they debated giving congress the power to "emit bills of credit". They decided not to include this power in the Constitution. (congress did have this power under the articles of confederation)

The best thing to do in my opinion is to define the Dollar the way it was defined at the time of our founding. The word "dollar" is a constitutional term. At the time of our founding the term "dollar" referred to the "Spanish milled dollar" it was found to contain 371.25 grains of pure silver. This is the dollar the framers had in mind when they drafted the Constitution.

The dollar is defined as 371.25 grains of silver in the form of a coin containing 90% silver and 10% alloy. The dollar was not "pegged" to silver. The dollar WAS SILVER. So "Dollar", is a unit of measure, just like foot, or pound, or gallon.

The coinage act of 1792 defined the dollar as above. It also fixed a ratio between Dollars (silver) and gold. This fixed ratio was the flaw. This, as Brass Magnet said created a lot of problems. personally I think the mint should have coined gold coins, but marked them with a weight and fineness only, not a dollar amount.

The word dollar is mentioned twice in the constitution. It is mentioned in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1 (the "slave tax") and once in the 7th amendment. So congress clearly does not have the power to redefine the word "dollar" any more than they could redefine the word "religion", or "speech", or any other constitutional term. To do so would be to amend the constitution in complete violation of Article 5.

Every piece of paper currency ever produced or authorized by the Federal government was "redeemable" in Silver until 1965.

1. The Constitution does not define the term "dollar."

2. The two mentions of the dollar (only ONE in the basic document) set dollar maximums on two very specific events. They don't lock in any definition of the dollar.

3. The Constitution does give the Congress the authority to "coin" money. As it doesn't fix the material the "coin" must be made from, but does give Congress the authority to set its value and to set standards of measure; Congress is free to "coin" money out of any material (including paper) and set its value or allow it to float as a commodity.

4. The dollar is NOT defined as stated above. That definition has changed over the centuries, depending on whose "dollars" were being defined. The transitory "definition" in an above post actually comes from federal law (Congress using the above quoted authority) and can be changed by Congress at will (again, using the authority quoted above). That definition postdates the Constitution and does not necessarily represent what the Framers had in mind when they penned the Fifth Enumerated Power.

The Fifth Enumerated Power of Congress said:

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

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The question is not whether the Congress has the authority to print money. It absolutely does. The question is the wisdom of doing so and the method of doing so.

Printing money is wise! It is actually the only way (when done properly) to keep inflation and deflation to a minimum by matching money supply to money demand. If money is locked to a commodity, that commodity will fluctuate wildly with other commodities, resulting in market-driven inflation and deflation. The problem today is that money is being printed by the government to cover its non-productive and uncontrolled spending. The money supply is going up. Real productivity (and consequently monetary demand) is going down. Therefore, the value of the dollar, in relation to other commodities, goes down (inflation).

The problem is spending. Check the spending, and the need to print money to cover it goes away.

eye95 said:

[snip]
Printing money is wise! It is actually the only way (when done properly) to keep inflation and deflation to a minimum by matching money supply to money demand. If money is locked to a commodity, that commodity will fluctuate wildly with other commodities, resulting in market-driven inflation and deflation. The problem today is that money is being printed by the government to cover its non-productive and uncontrolled spending. The money supply is going up. Real productivity (and consequently monetary demand) is going down. Therefore, the value of the dollar, in relation to other commodities, goes down (inflation).

The problem is spending. Check the spending, and the need to print money to cover it goes away.

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Printing money is wise? I suppose if you have a completely benevolent printer who is an economic genius and also a psychic. Saying that when money is locked to any commodity it will "fluctuate wildly" is complete hyperbole. Sure, if you linked it to something stupid it would. Market-driven inflation and deflation is much more preferable than Fed-driven booms, busts, and artificially propped up bubbles that burst. Since the Fed's aren't completely benevolant econ-genius-psychics they really can only make educated guesses at what the market is going to do. Have you ever watched the various chairmen on C-Span admitting they don't know what to do?

I agree that one of the biggest problems is unproductive spending; like the stimulus package, bailouts, handouts and 5 WARS. All made possible by your friendly Federal Reserve.

We are better off taking away the power of the government to print money so we can force them to limit non-productive and uncontrolled spending. This way we don't have to just trust that they'll do the right thing. I know some people around here are prepared to trust the government with just about anything but I'm not.