Visual source: Newseum
Dana Milbank looks at Rick Perry's lackluster performance at last night's Republican debate:
The applause identified Rick Perry as the crowd favorite when he took the stage in Tampa for Monday night’s Tea Party debate, greeting his lesser rivals as “fellas.”
But two hours later, those fellas – and a gal from Minnesota – had made some serious progress toward exposing the broad-shouldered Texas governor as an empty suit.
Sometimes they challenged Perry from the left (on Social Security and Medicare) and sometimes from the right (on immigration, taxes and mandatory vaccines), but it all came back to the same thing: The frontrunner was befuddled – seemingly stunned that his rivals would question his right to the Republican presidential nomination.
Tom Curry asks if Americans will be "scared" by Rick Perry:
What’s emerging from the GOP presidential debates is a portrait of Perry — painted by his opponents — as one scary guy, a threat both to young and old.
If you believe the image being created by the frontrunner's rivals, Perry's a threat both to the frail elderly, by scaring them over the future of Social Security benefits, and to innocent young girls, at least in Texas, by allegedly “forcing” them to have vaccinations to prevent cervical cancer.
Andy Kroll looks at what's a truly scary Perry proposition made at last night's debate:
At Monday's CNN-Tea Party Express debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP presidential frontrunner, claimed that it was important to "free up" Wall Street in order to create jobs and grow the US economy. This is a common talking point for Perry, who last month said the government needs to "free" the "Wall Street investor from the over-regulation and the over-taxation."
Talk about a case of amnesia. Let's not forget, it was all those "freed," under-regulated banks, mortgage companies, and investment firms that imploded the economy. Years of deregulatory policy under Democratic and Republican presidents—including tearing down the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which walled off commercial banking from more risky investments and speculation, and passing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, which essentially transformed Wall Street into a casino—helped bring the financial markets to their knees in 2008.
Beth Reinhard and Alex Roarty ask if Perry's maiking Mitt Romney a better candidate:
Rick Perry has cost Mitt Romney his lead in the polls but made him a better candidate and potentially, a more formidable nominee.
The former Massachusetts governor, long disparaged as a fragile frontrunner for the nomination, is showing a spark that seemed elusive when he topped the national polls. He delivered his second confident debate performance against Perry on Monday, raising more questions about the Texas governor’s position on Social Security even as Perry tried to close out the discussion by vowing the benefits were “slam-dunk guaranteed’’ for current recipients. [...]
Going head-to-head with his swaggering, cowboy-boot wearing rival, Romney showed the political chops that have frequently been lacking during his many years on the presidential campaign trail. Voting won’t begin for months in the Republican contest so there’s plenty of time for the dynamic to shift again, but Romney showed Monday night that his rival’s sudden surge hasn’t left him on the ropes.
Ben Adler points out the lack of substance, despite the heated rhetoric:
At the Tea Party Express/CNN debate in Tampa, Florida, on Monday the Republican presidential aspirants mostly agreed on the best way to solve our fiscal and economic woes: magic. Whenever moderator Wolf Blitzer or a Tea Party activist in the crowd or via video asked how exactly they would achieve their twin goals of balancing the federal budget and spurring job growth, they had no actual answer. Instead, they seemed to think the tooth fairy would leave $1 trillion under their West Wing pillow.
Every Republican wants to cut taxes and yet somehow prices to reduce the deficit. So they were asked, as they should be, what exactly they would cut. You might think it would be bad if one of them offered, say, food stamps, for the chopping block, but at least that would contain a proposal for progressives to engage. Instead they were even more mendacious by refusing to give an honest answer. Newt Gingrich ludicrously stated that there is enough waste, fraud and abuse to balance the budget without actually cutting any of the funding that finds its way to legitimate beneficiaries. Rick Santorum and Rick Perry both refused to say they would undo the massive Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted under President Bush, which Santorum voted for. In other words, they are all lying. Either they will increase the deficit or they will propose devastating spending cuts they were afraid to campaign on, or both.
Jeffrey Rosen analyzes the U.S. Supreme Court's pending review of GPS tracking and surveys the landscape of digital surveillance:
To preserve our right to some degree of anonymity in public, we can’t rely on the courts alone. Fortunately, 15 states have enacted laws imposing criminal and civil penalties for the use of electronic tracking devices in various forms and restricting their use without a warrant. And in June, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, introduced the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, which would provide federal protection against public surveillance. [...]
It’s encouraging that Democrats and Republicans in Congress are coming together to preserve the expectations of anonymity in public that Americans have long taken for granted. Soon, liberal and conservative justices on the Supreme Court will have an opportunity to meet the same challenge.
If they fail to rise to the occasion, our public life may be transformed in ways we can only begin to imagine.