PJ: The current crop of Republican candidates try to out-do each other with their contempt for anything Obama as they rush to declare their contempt for government in general, including all those services that US citizens rely upon such as health care for the elderly. They even went so far as to throw Obama further under the proverbial bus for conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that one of their own initiated.
The Evening Standard
A new woman is on the block: bye bye Sarah Palin
By James Fenton
It was a Republican beauty parade, and the winner, of course, was the one with the best hair: Mitt Romney. There were seven would-be presidential candidates at Monday's television debate in New Hampshire, plus two most notable absentees.
Jon Huntsman Jr, President Obama's recent ambassador to China, has not yet got going, while Sarah Palin, the can't-be- bothered former Governor of Alaska, was the elephant who happened not to be in the room.
The received opinion about Palin is that she retains, brilliantly, the ability to attract attention and controversy. But to what end? Her latest stunt was to attempt to spoil Romney's declaration of his intent to run. This she did by dashing around the eastern seaboard in motorcycle togs talking gibberish and grabbing headlines with her spectacular ignorance of American history.
Yes, Romney's press conference was a dull affair. But was Sarah Palin's train wreck an edifying spectacle, or was it - she couldn't remember the point of Paul Revere's ride - simply too stupid for words?
The problem Palin now faces is that there's more than one of her: she has a political avatar called Michele Bachmann, working the hustings and raising money and doing all the things that presidential candidates are supposed to do. Wherever Palin goes she makes clear her contempt not only for Democrats, for liberals, for Obama and all the sections of society she is supposed to have contempt for; but also for the Republican Party, for its establishment but also for its foot-soldiers, its local organisations, its volunteers.
Palin seems to inhabit a fantasy where none of the conventional wisdom applies to her - she doesn't have to wear out the shoe-leather, she doesn't have to have a national organisation, she doesn't have to tickle tummies in Iowa and New Hampshire. All she has to do, if she wants to, is stretch out her hand and the fruit will fall into it. It would be a nasty surprise for her if she stretched out her hand and the fruit fell to Michele Bachmann.
Palin's contempt for the Republican rank and file was noted publicly by Newt Gingrich, another of Monday's candidates, hobbled though he was by the fact that his political team had just resigned en masse rather than put up with his nightmare wife, Callista, any longer.
You may remember that Callista and Newt together ran up a six-figure bill on a revolving (that is, unpaid) account at Tiffany's. It turns out that Newt's campaign cannot get going in the morning until Callista's hair is done - a major operation, it seems, to achieve a peroxide helmet effect.
It will be a shame to lose Gingrich from the contest, as I suppose we soon will. He was the most interesting, least predictable, and one of the least crazy, of the speakers on Monday, when he made two notable humane interventions. One was on scrapping Medicare (the state health insurance programme for the over-65s), in which he said the Republicans, if they had got too far ahead of public opinion, should slow down.
The other was about immigration and the problem of the large illegal work-force. Gingrich deplored an all-or-nothing approach to the problem, which would take a punitive attitude to a large section of the population. He wanted some nuance, some humanity. Perhaps for this reason, but more likely because they can see the wheels coming off his campaign, the public has turned against Gingrich, and his support has dropped in the polls.
One of the striking things for those who associate Republicans with a hawkish stance on foreign policy, was to see Monday night's line-up go quite cold on Afghanistan, and indeed attack President Obama for his numerous military involvements in the Muslim world. Romney, in a remarkable slip of the tongue, called for the Americans to leave Afghanistan. He said: "It's time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can, consistent with the word that comes to our generals that we can hand the country over to the Taliban military in a way that they're able to defend themselves."
Immediately realising the enormity of his mistake he went on: "Excuse me, the Afghan military to defend themselves from the Taliban. That's an important distinction." He could say that again - but he probably won't until he's seen how well this Carter-like "Come Home America" line goes down with the general public. It may do very well indeed, leaving Obama as the hawk.
Ron Paul, the aged libertarian, made much of the unwisdom of Americans prosecuting foreign wars they could not afford, from Afghanistan to Libya. This is how the empires of the past became overstretched and fell. The strain of political thought represented by Paul tends to strict isolationism. The Paul family - Ron and his son Rand - like to follow a thought through: no money to spare for Muslim adventures, but also - most unusually - no aid for Israel either.
On economic policy the Republicans are a record that got stuck long ago in a groove that said: taxes are too high. Nobody can do anything, it would seem, unless it can be represented as a tax cut, and it matters not at all that the Bush era tax cuts are what led to the present deficit. No taxes can be raised. And if you say: "Very well, let's not raise taxes but let's cut ethanol subsidies" (which are unpopular with several politicians) you are told that cutting this sort of subsidy is tantamount to a tax hike, so you can't do that either.
What you can do, and what Michele Bachmann proposed on Monday, is abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and anything that can be depicted as restraining the freedom of business. And universal health care? That's number one on the list for the chop.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23961665-a-new-woman-is-on-the-block-bye-bye-sarah-palin.do
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