The Republican candidates are improving; they are answering questions (hostile questions!) crisply and smoothly. And, in the face of CNBC’s sometimes loaded questions, they support one another and attack the president’s actions more than they posture or attack one another. Interesting trend. For example, when Michele Bachmann was asked, “Why is Governor Romney wrong?” she retorted, “President Obama is wrong.”
The big winners in the debate tonight were probably Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Romney was poised and methodical on health care, Social Security, and the China trade. Always he focused on the failed economic ideas of President Obama, and Romney was thus was a rallying point for the audience and the other candidates.
Newt Gingrich was cerebral and wide-ranging. When CNBC tried to trip him up, he fired back with specifics that delighted the crowd. His breadth of learning was refreshing and dominating. When he was asked about the Social Security crisis, he traced its roots to LBJ and a budget switch in 1968; when supporting tax cuts, he cited Reagan’s success and his own Contract with America — which grew the economy and balanced the budget; when asked about the high costs of college, he rejected the Obama model and trotted out work-study and learning at College of the Ozarks. Think in new patterns, Newt urges.
Debate watchers heard a steady chorus of Let’s Shrink Government and a refrain of Deregulate, Cut Spending, and Increase Freedom.
— Burton Folsom is professor of history at Hillsdale College and, with Anita Folsom, co-author of FDR Goes to War (Simon & Schuster, 2011).