None of the Above!

Have you ever walked into vote in an election and wanted a block that said None of the Above?  That is how I am feeling this morning after watching the debate last night.  These four are the best the Republican Party has to offer?  We agree with this statement:

TinaKorbe Seriously, it's time to focus on the House and Senate: http://t.co/DEdXKcvy

Those words are so true.  At first I thought it was just me saying it because Governor Perry dropped out of the race, but then I started seeing comments like those from Brett Bozzell:

cnsnews_com CNSNews.comAnyone else? --> RT @brentbozell: I miss Rick Perry! @rickperryfacts @GovernorPerry #cnndebate

What was missing from last night's debate was class that Governor Perry brought to the debates.  Without the Governor, this turned into a free for all.  Following the debate last night the only person on stage I could see myself holding my nose to vote was Rick Santorum and I don't think he has a chance against Obama, but who knows in this crazy election season.

I am tired of conservative pundits telling me that I have to get on board with the candidate that can beat Obama or I am not a Republican or whatever they call us today.  I think Obama makes a horrible President and even more so after he turned down the Keystone Pipeline, but I am not willing to sell out my values to a Republican candidate I don't like and have no respect who could end up being Obama lite.  I didn't like Dole in 1996 but I respected his service to the Country.

Tried to be as objective as possible knowing that Governor Perry endorsed Newt but I have to question that endorsement from what I saw last night.  Governor Perry is not arrogant about himself and could easily be your next door neighbor.  Newt came across last night as extremely arrogant and the only one on stage who knew a thing.  Voters don't relate to that and his votes are more of an anti-Romney vote just like a lot of the ones McCain received.  Newt talks on and on and after he is done, you are left with thinking -- policy wonk who doesn't relate to regular people and  pure arrogance.  You can tell when he speaks he thinks he is the smartest person in the room and why members of the House who served with him as Speaker refuse to back him for President.  We discovered this morning that Newt has greatly exaggerated his work with President Reagan as pointed out on Fact Check:

“Mr. Speaker, you talk about all the things you did with Ronald Reagan and the Reagan revolution and the jobs created during the Reagan years and so forth. I looked at the Reagan diary. You’re mentioned once in Ronald Reagan’s diary. And in the diary, he says you had an idea in a meeting of young congressmen, and it wasn’t a very good idea and he dismissed it. That’s the entire mention.” (Romney)

Good fact checking by Romney. He’s right. Interestingly, the reference refers to Gingrich proposing to freeze the 1983 budget, which Reagan said was “tempting” but “it would cripple our defense program.” Reagan even referred to a meeting with “young Repub. congressmen” — a subtle dig by Romney at Gingrich’s frequent claim that he “worked” with Reagan even though he only just arrived in Congress.

After reading Fact Check this morning, we decided to highlight a few other instances not only for Newt but for Romney and Santorum:

“The Corps of Engineers today takes eight years to study — not to complete — to study doing the port. We won the entire second World War in three years and eight months.” (Gingrich)

We are not sure whether the U.S. involvement in World War II has any relevance to a study about whether to deepen the Charleston Port from 45 to 50 feet. Kudos to Gingrich for knowing local issues, but according to local news reports the Corps said that such a study would normally take five to eight years but “Corps officials say they are streamlining the review and approval process as much as possible to save time.” 

Now let's take a look at Romney at the same Fact Check website:

“Georgetown Steel would be a case here, and a company in Gaffney, South Carolina — specific cases where Bain Capital’s model, which was to take over a company and dramatically leverage it, leave it with a great deal of debt, made it less likely to survive.” (Gingrich)

The McClatchy News this week had a comprehensive look at these two cases, one of many investments made by Bain Capital under Romney’s leadership. Romney has argued that Chinese dumping of steel hurt the steel company, not Bain’s business practices. He might also dispute that Bain’s business model was to always to leave a company “with a great deal of debt.”

“Four [Bain investments] in particular created 120,000 jobs as of today. We started them years ago. They’ve grown well beyond the time I was there, to 120,000 people that have been employed by those enterprises. There are others we’ve been with, some of which have lost jobs. People have evaluated that since — well, since I ran four years ago, when I ran for governor. And those that have been documented to have lost jobs lost about 10,000 jobs.” (Romney)

Romney’s math gets a little funny here. In defending his tenure at Bain, he focuses on four companies that now employ 120,000, even though Bain’s investment ended years ago. His number of 10,000 jobs appears to mostly count losses when Bain owned the companies, or shortly after it sold them. But it is really an apples and oranges accounting. 

In any case, Romney’s role at Bain was not to create jobs but to provide for good returns for his investors. For more on this subject, look at our examination of Romney’s untenable figure. 

Next up is Santorum on Fact Check:  

“I was talking to a state official the other day in Iowa that told me that the state of Iowa is being fined because they’re not signing up enough people on to the Medicaid program.” (Santorum)

Santorum has made this puzzling comment before. ABC News investigated and found there was little to it. 

“Iowa, like other states, receives federal reimbursement for the money it disburses in Medicaid fees,” Huma Khan reported. “There is no quota system or target that the state has to meet in order to be eligible for federal money. The amount of money that each state receives is dependent on its economy.” She quoted a state official as saying that any reduction in payments “is not a punishment. This is a recognition that Iowa’s economy is improving relative to other states.

“We are 20 percent more costly than our top nine trading partners, and that’s excluding labor costs.” (Santorum)

This comes straight out of a report by the Manufacturing Institute, which claims the cost differential is largely because of policies on “corporate tax burden, employee benefits, tort costs, pollution abatement compliance, and energy costs.” The Institute is an affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers, which often argues against corporate regulations, so one might consider the source of this statistic before repeating it. 

There are more instances at Fact Check but figured giving two a piece was good.  The one missing from Fact Check is Ron Paul who seems to do a better job of avoiding gaffes in debates then the others -- he just has some strange and quirky ideas plus he seems to be defending Romney more than anything.  Have they cut a deal?

This morning the list of endorsements for Romney has increased by a lot starting with Governor McDonnell of the RGA who to his credit did not endorse Romney until his fellow Governor, Rick Perry left the race.  A lot of members of Congress came on board last night for Romney after the debate.  Why?  They think he has the best chance to defeat Obama just like we were told about McCain?  We noted that people who served with Newt as Speaker are not endorsing him in big numbers which speaks volumes about his time as Speaker.  His baggage brings into question why Newt ran.  Anyone old enough to vote has mostly likely heard what happened to make him resign as Speaker.  How did the Republican Party end up here again just like in 1996?  Ask the establishment led by Bush 41 and the RNC along with consultants doing the dirty work for Romney.

In the end unless there is a viable Independent candidate I can support, I think Tina Kolbe has it right -- let's move on to the House and Senate races.  Not wasting much more time on the Republican Primary as it looks like once again the Republican establishment is going to get their way and nominate someone who doesn't have a good chance of beating Obama because a lot of Republicans will no longer hold their nose to vote for a moderate to liberal candidate.  That's a fact.  With that in mind time to concentrate on Taking the Senate and Keeping the House in 2012.