There was a glaring hole in last night's debate,
picked up by Ed Kilgore: should the Republicans routinely use government shutdown as a governing tool. It is the key strategic question of the moment, since the decision is just weeks away. Given that, and the fact that dissatisfaction with government is the
leading non-economic issue voters give as most important in all of Gallup's polling for this year, that might have been something important for the Fox News moderators to explore. But there was a lot that the moderators either didn't think was important enough to talk about or had to approach with the Fox spin.
Take, for example, the primary issue of voter concern: the economy. Among the top concerns are jobs and income inequality. In last night's debates, there was one standout jobs-related question. It was in the JV debate, and look out, it was posed.
The issue that is really number one on the minds of many voters, that's the economy and jobs. […] 82 million Americans over the age of 20 are out of the workforce. Forty-five million people in this country are on food stamps. Nine million are on disability.
All of these numbers have been rising sharply in recent years.
There is an increasing willingness in this country to accept assistance. How do you get Americans who are able to take the job instead of a handout?
That's it for the jobs questions in the JV debate. Not "what is your plan for creating jobs," but how do you get lazy bums off their asses and stocking shelves at Walmart. Only one candidate in either debate talked about creating good manufacturing jobs, and that was Rick Santorum. The one person on either stage that could, at least theoretically, talk about job creation was Carly Fiorina. Perhaps it's a sign of how easy Fox wanted to be on her that they avoided asking her anything at all about jobs or the economy. She does have a better track record on
killing jobs. Over on the
big-boy stage, the job creating question was used to do a little bashing, surprisingly. Chris Wallace used it as an opportunity to remind Jeb! that his father and brother were economic disasters and asked how he would be different and got word salad—and repeal Obamacare—in return. He then asked Gov. Scott Walker how come he didn't create the 25,000 jobs he promised in his first gubernatorial campaign and why should we believe him now. Walker skipped over that and gave the standard Republican response, lower taxes, stop regulations, and repeal Obamacare.
Income inequality got similar short shrift, couched in some Hillary bashing. "You know how she will come after whoever the Republican nominee is. She will say that you, whoever it is, support the rich while she supports the middle class. That you want to suppress the rights of women and minorities," Wallace said. He then let John Kasich and Ben Carson pile on Hillary, which they did with vague references to "pro-growth," "balancing budgets," and "a miracle country" from Kasich and word salad about the secular progressive left and Saul Alinksy from Carson. There were no questions about the minimum wage. So much for the economy, jobs, and income inequality!
There were no questions about what the candidates would do to replace Obamacare, not even a how-committed-are-you to repeal question—at this point that's just assumed, and about every candidate volunteered it. There were no questions about how to address the crippling student loan debt young people are struggling under. The second most important non-economic concern of Gallup's voters is race relations and racism. Black Lives Matter/police brutality got about 30 seconds from Kelly in a question to Walker. On the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, there were no questions on voting rights. Money in campaigns? Citizens United? The Kochs? Not a peep.
We got more than our fill on national security and terrorism, of course. All fear all the time! Despite the fact that those topics are pretty low on the list of priorities for most voters. The one area that got the attention it deserved in terms of voter priorities was immigration, but that certainly had more heat than light given that no candidate had more than 30 seconds to utter Fox's magic words, "amnesty," "wall," "illegals." Heat versus light was the unofficial theme of the debates, but given the sheer number of candidates and their varying degrees of extremism that's about all you could expect.