Cain is out, Newt leads, the debates go on.

View 703 Saturday, December 03, 2011

Well, the self-made black business leader and non-politician is out of the race. One supposed he will endorse Romney, but I have no real evidence of that. Cain terrified the White House. With Cain in the race, Obama had to run on issues, and there wasn’t much Al Sharpton could say except to call Cain an Uncle Tom, which doesn’t really carry much weight now. So Axelrod was loosed on Cain, and the Party that not long ago assured us that personal life and social values aren’t important – look at how good Clinton was! – has found a way to knock Cain out of the race.

It’s still not clear just what Cain is supposed to have done that disqualifies him from being President. A math major with a Purdue Master’s in Computer Science, he would have been about the best technically educated President we have had for a long time (or indeed ever). He was also clearly unprepared for what happens when you run for President.

Cain and Newt are friends, and it may be that Cain will endorse Newt. Cain is also a powerful fund raiser, and that gives him influence. There’s a good quick take on Cain’s influence in the Christian Science Monitor coverage of his drop out. Meanwhile the campaign continues, and we can be sure that it will get rougher. You have to have a lot of fire in your belly to run for President.

The United States makes it a career to learn how to get the office of President; we don’t require that you have learned how to do it. A math degree in a successful businessman argues a very good approach to assessing probabilities, but we don’t want that in a President. Precisely what we do want isn’t clear. In any event, Cain won’t be there, but with any good fortune he will be part of a new government. Secretary of Labor, perhaps.

We need someone who KNOWS what the regulations and bureaucracy have done to American commerce and labor. That’s assuming we would like to remain the land of the free.

I note that the ten year projected deficit is about $40 Trillion. That is largely from ten years of increased growth of government, ten years of exponential increase in spending – all of which is assumed to be “normal.” Note that the Supercommittee was charged with reducing that $40 Trillion by $1.4 Trillion, and they couldn’t do it.

I can remember when the nation was shocked: Lyndon Johnson was going to spend more that $100 Billion in one year. This would give us a great society, and take care of just about all poverty. We had a War on Poverty, and this $100 Billion a year would win it, and –

And now we cannot find a way to cut the increase in spending by $1.4 Trillion in ten years.

We may deserve what is happening to us. But feel good: there will be big pensions for government workers, raises for the civil service, continuing good times for those who live on taxes. We’ll have to raise taxes on those who actually produce something, and we’ll have to confiscate most of that loose capital that corporations have accumulated (how dare they flee overseas!!) and we can have sales taxes as well as more progressive taxes, but we’ll be able to pay the government workers and their pensions.

Then there’s the health care we can provide, and open borders, and all we need is for those people who work to go on working. But it is wrong to talk about teaching work habits. We teach entitlement habits. Let the rich teach their children work habits. Someone has to work. Who should it be, me?

We can’t reduce the increase in deficit from $40 Trillion to $38 Trillion over the next ten years. Just not possible. We can’t cut spending, so we just have to raise taxes. If anyone objects, occupy the public squares. We’ll teach them.

Sorry about that. It’s just a tirade. Never mind.

The best display of the remaining candidates I have seen yet was on the Fox channel with Governor Huckabee and three state attorneys general questioning each of the Republican candidates in turn. It wasn’t exactly a debate since the candidates didn’t interact, but it did give each a chance to present clear answers to relevant questions on such matters as constitutionalism and states’ rights. No one won, but none of them lost, either. They all tried to contrast their views with those of Obama, and they all came off well, very much including Mitt Romney.

Newt was impressive. Peggy Noonan in her current Wall Street Journal column “The Comeback Kid of 2012” (link) says

Even Mr. Gingrich’s biggest supporters begin conversations about him with, "Believe me, I know the downside, I understand the criticism." They stress his strong points: experience, accomplishment, intelligence. But they are to a man surprised by his new appeal—they didn’t really know he had any—and they’re surprised by his resurrection. They are impressed by his brains, and always have been, and impressed by his will. They also fear he will blow it, that he’ll prove unsteady, impulsive.

I will refrain from comment on most of that, but the notion that Newt’s friends didn’t know he had any charm and appeal is an odd one. During the 1980’s Newt and his team made speech after speech to an empty House chamber, carrying the conservative and constitutional message, and over time that built to the position of Minority Whip, then the coalition that led to the Republican takeover of the House for the first time in some forty years. I don’t know where Miss Noonan was – well, actually I do, but apparently she was so involved with what she was doing that she didn’t notice Newt’s steady progress toward becoming Speaker. Newt’s got plenty of appeal.

However, he also spent years as a public intellectual never expecting again to hold public office, and he managed to do some foolish things that will come back to haunt him now. It should be interesting to see what the attack machine will develop now that he’s the front runner.