Debate Take & UPDATES

UPDATE: Josh Trevino of the Pacific Research Institute and one of the founders of RedState on his personal blog analyzes the Florida vote--Romney's Florida Win.
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Well, if the Florida GOP debate was soporific, the California debate was intense, though Sen. John McCain seemed to be half-asleep throughout.

On the stage CNN put the two gray heads, Paul and McCain together, with the hapless Mike Huckabee tending to fall off to the Left and Gov. Mitt Romney took up a commanding position to McCain's right.

The backdrop was the Reagan library, the California hills rolling off into the sunset, the candidates facing the audience and AirForce One. Romney early on brought up McCain's endorsement by the NY Times as evidence McCain was no conservative, McCain responded papers in Massachusetts "who knew Romney best" endorsed McCain. This is not persuasive to any conservative, that the Blue State Boston press would not endorse Mitt--on the contrary it underscores Romney's point. Ditto for virtually all major newspapers across the country. I would further point out---the NY Times owns the Boston Globe. The Chicago Tribune owns the LA Times.

Note to McCain--MSM does not mean mainstream conservative in the Reagan tradition.

McCain later goes through a list of Republicans who support him, who by the way have not been players for a long time. Transcript:

"Jack Kemp and Tom Ridge, former head of the Department of Homeland Security, and Phil Graham and all of the long list of conservatives that support me, both governors -- conservative governors -- in fact, your former lieutenant governor, who spent a lot of time on the campaign trail with us.

[NY Times transcript spells Gramm wrong--maybe they're mixing him up with moderate McCain sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham]

Romney: Okay. (Chuckles.) I got a little work to do here. Let me -- let me help you with the facts here, Senator.

First of all, my lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, endorsed me and is supporting me and is working all over the state for me. My predecessor in office, Governor Swift, Governor Swift is supporting you. When you say that our state ranked number three in job creation, the study you're relying upon is a study that included her term in office, and during her term in office, 141,000 jobs were lost. During my term in office we added jobs, and from the lowest point we added 60,000 new jobs.

So that study unfortunately included the wrong data.

With regards to fees, we raised fees $240 million, not $730 million. Facts are stubborn things. We audited our fee increase, because, of course, we cared.

Now, why did we raise fees 230 million -- $240 million? We had a $3 billion budget shortfall. We decided we were not going to raise taxes. And we found that some fees hadn't been raised in as many as 20 years.

These were not broad-based fees for things getting your driver's license or your license plate for your car, but instead something like the cost of a sign on the interstate and how much it was going to cost to publish a McDonald's or Burger King sign on the -- on the interstate. We went from like $200 a sign to $2,000 a sign, to raise money for our state in a way that was consistent with what the market had done over the ensuing years.

And let's see. Oh, with regards to my health care plan, you know, a lot of people talk about health care. I'm the only one that got the job done. I got health insurance for all our citizens. We had 460,000 people without insurance. We got 300 of them -- 300,000 of them signed up for insurance now. I'm proud of what we accomplished.

The bill that I submitted to the legislature didn't cost one dollar more than what we were already spending. However, the legislature and now the new Democratic governor have added some bells and whistles, and they're willing to pay for them.

I wouldn't do that if I were governor. I'd veto the items they put in place there, but they're entitled to make changes if they want to. They're still running a balanced budget.

I wouldn't have added the money they did and by they way, no debt was left. I left a rainy day fund of over $2 billion. Facts are stubborn things. I'm proud of my record.

On the issue of spending, I thought Mitt scored big, pointing out that entitlements amount to 60% of federal spending, 20% is on our military, which of course we need to increase, so talking about cutting that 20% discretionary spending is fine, but it's not nearly enough and does not deal with the premier spending problem of our time:

There's not enough in the 20 percent to go after if we don't go after the entitlement problem.

And you listen to all the folks running for president. No one wants to talk about it, but we have to talk about it. We have to put together a plan that says we're going to rein in the excessive growth in those areas, promising to meet the obligations we made to seniors.

We're not going to change the deal on seniors but we're going to have to change the deal for 20-and-30-and-40-year-olds, or we're going to bankrupt our country.

(This is me)--porkbusting is good, but it's just nibbling around the edges--when has McCain led on entitlement reform? And Romney pointed out all the Democrat candidates say is "what, me worry?"

The McCain last-minute low blow on Iraq before the Florida primary came up. I'm sure this clip will be played a lot today:

MS. HOOK: Yeah, I'd like to start with Governor Romney.

Obviously Iraq is still a major issue in this campaign, and over the last few days there's been a real back and forth going on here. Senator McCain has said over and over again that you supported a timetable for phased withdrawal from Iraq.

Is that true?

MR. ROMNEY: Absolutely unequivocably (sic) -- (chuckles) -- if I can get that word out -- unequivocably (sic), absolutely no. I have never ever supported a specific timetable for exit from Iraq, and it's offensive to me that someone would suggest that I have. And I have noted that everyone from Time Magazine to Bill Bennett over there, to -- to actually, CNN's own analyst. He said it was a lie, and it's absolutely wrong.

I do not support that, never have.

We've had -- we've -- and Senator McCain pointed to an interview I had back in April with ABC, when I said that our president and their prime minister should have timetables and milestones. We have timetables and milestones for progress that we're making together.

But I never suggested a date specific to withdraw. And actually she asked me a question. The next question was, "If Congress were to give you a date specific for withdrawal, would you sign it or veto it?" I said I'd veto it. I'm opposed to setting a specific date for withdrawal.

By the way, we've had since that time 10, 12 debates. Senator McCain never raised that question in any of those debates. If you ever wondered what my position was, he could have -- could have raised it.

I instead have pointed out time and time again -- and let me make it absolutely clear again tonight -- I will not pull our troops out until we have brought success in Iraq. And that means for me that we do not have safe havens for al Qaeda or Hezbollah or anyone else; that our troops have secured the -- the population from that kind of threat; that they will not have safe havens from which they could launch attacks against us.

And if there's any misunderstanding, those words should make it perfectly clear, as have every single debate that I've attended -- 15 debates -- I do not propose nor have I ever proposed a public or secret date for withdrawal. It's -- is simply wrong.

And by the way, raising it a few days before the -- the Florida primary, when there was very little time for me to correct the record, when the question I was most frequently asked is, "Oh, you're for a specific date of withdrawal," sort of falls in the kind of dirty tricks that I think Ronald Reagan would have found to be reprehensible.

(Applause, cheers.)

Romney asked McCain--why didn't you use the whole quote?, and pointed out even the Washington Post, who endorsed McCain "gave you 3 Pinocchios for it", which drew laughter. After the debate, one CNN commentator (not Bill Bennett) said McCain in this exchange was "surly and un-presidential".

Next Ron Paul presumably inadvertently takes McCain to task and defends Romney, calling this a "silly argument" on a "technicality", when should should be talking about foreign policy. I think Romney was a tour de force in his description of 4 major strategies playing in the world:

Well, Putin is heading down the same road that we've seen authoritarian leaders in Russia and the former Soviet Union head down before, and it's very troubling. You see a leader who wants to re-establish Russia as one of the great powers of the world, potentially a superpower, potentially THE superpower.

And -- and he is -- his -- the evidence of that, of course, is his elimination of the free press, his terrorizing and -- and imprisoning of political prisoners, and -- and unexplained murders that are occurring. It's a -- it's a -- another repressive regime which he is -- which he is overseeing.

And the question is what you do in a circumstance like that and what it portends for the future of the world.

What we have today in the world is four major, if you will, strategies at play.

One, there are the nations with the energy, like Russia. They're trying to use energy as a way to take over the world.

Then there's China, which is saying, "We're going to use communism plus sort of a Wild West form of -- of free enterprise. We're going to give nuclear weapons to -- or nuclear technology to the Iranians. We're going to buy oil from the Sudanese." You've got China.

Then you've got al Qaeda, which says, "We want to bring everybody down."

And then finally, there's us, the only major power in the world that says, "We believe in free enterprise and freedom for the individual."

And this great battle is going -- going on right now, and it's essential for us to strengthen other friends like ourselves and to confront one by one these other strategies and help turn them towards modernity, so that the world our kids inherit does not have to know war.

Will there be war? Of course. There will always be terrible events in the world. But let's do everything in our power to keep war from occurring --

MR. COOPER: (Inaudible.)

MR. ROMNEY: -- (and to actually ?) move these voices of moderation and having such strength in our own military that people never question our ability to respond.

He went on later to say we a facing a new world, where the game is 3-D chess, not checkers.

A few other comments. McCain seem robotic to me, repeating the same lines over and over. If I were younger, I would have taken a drink every time he said "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution". He used the patriotism not for profit line again, which leaves free-market conservatives shaking their heads and made a crack at the private sector experience of Romney, echoed at points by the Huckster, who whined from time to time I want more time.

And CNN pushed their Dem identity politics mindset in the final questions, the assumption being that in order to be the commander in chief you need to have military experience. (We'll see if they ask Hillary and Barack that question tonight.)

But I'll leave you all with this thought---what military or foreign policy experience did Ronald Reagan have? And Ronald Reagan could always answer any question, any time. He never said vote for me because I am who I am. And before he ran for office he worked for years in the private sector. He knew what made this country great.

UPDATE: From a Mitt-backer in California:

Governor Schwarzenegger is proposing letting tens of thousands of inmates out of Caliornia Prisons in order to meet a budget gap (Yes, the same Governor who apologized for being a Republican). The same guy who is gushing over McCain. The King of RINO's.

McCain has absolutely zero credibility on this issue. He has no heart for it. He was checked by the American public the last time he tried to shove immigration reform down our throats. He wasn't converted though. Make no mistake. He is still terrible on this issue.

Within a few days, McCain has flip-flopped on this issue in order to pander to Super tuesday states, like California, where tonight, he was asked:

"At his point, if your original proposal came to a vote on the Senate floor, would you vote for it?"

MCCAIN: "It won't. It won't, that’s why we went thought the debate."

QUESTION: "But it did…"

MCCAIN: "No I would not because we know what the situation is today."

Just a few days ago, McCain sang a different tune on NBC's Meet the Press:

NBC'S TIM RUSSERT: "If the Senate passed your bill, S.1433, the McCain/Kennedy immigration bill, would you as President sign it?"

MCCAIN: "Yeah. But look, the lesson is, it isn't – one, it isn't going to come. It isn't going to come.

UPDATE: Luntz group, others consensus, Romney wins debate! Clips at RCP Vlogs.

Morning with Joe: Scarborough rips McCain. Via HotAir, Newsbusters. Video.

UPDATE: HotAir is engaged in the fight--they are all over McCain, citing that AZ Star article from a year ago when he mentioned timetables himself in January 2007. Bob Novak backs up John Fund's quote of McCain on dissing Supreme Court Justice Alito, (which McCain denied). Ah yes, I noticed this Hillary-like Leftie nastiness last night too, thanks to HotAir for reminding me. Romney makes major Super Tuesday ad buy. Romney focusing on California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri (supported by Gov. Matt Blunt), and maybe Tennessee and Georgia. As Mitt has stated--a vote for Mike Huckabee is a vote for John McCain.

UPDATE: Ad up from Citizens United political victory fund:Jackie Mason rant---McCain is a phony!!!UPDATE: Huckabee trash-talker again. AllahPundit at HotAir makes an excellent point. More from Bryan:

His “I led for patriotism, not for profit” line is a slap in the face to business. A slap in the face to business, and from the presumptive nominee of the pro-business party? Who does he think he is? And where does he think his own money came from? It came from his wife’s father, who presumably led for profit, not for patriotism.

His dishonest attack on Romney’s war stance, captured above, just signals that he’s the same old McCain.

I’m now in the position of having come around to like Romney. He’s decent, smart and fair and I think he would make a fine president. And I dislike McCain all over again. He’s a smarmy beltway insider who just lied to everyone who was watching while he smeared a good man, flipped on his own awful legislation and belittled free enterprise. This man wants to lead the party of Reagan?

UPDATE: WSJ. McCain's Apostasies (emphasis mine):

On taxes, too, the Arizonan still has reassuring work to do. We've long thought the Senator's opposition to the Bush tax cuts was as much personal as ideological -- a rebuke to the antitax conservatives who opposed him in 2000. He's come a long way since then, and Mr. McCain now says the Bush tax cuts should be made permanent. He's also endorsed a cut in the corporate tax rate to 25% from 35%, among other tax reforms. This progress is welcome, but he'll need to make a more vigorous, articulate case for why the tax cuts are essential to growth than he has so far. Especially going into the fall campaign, taxes and the economy are going to be major, maybe even decisive, issues.

Rush is on--Romney making major ad buys--the word from Romney's campaign is that he is fed up with McCain's personal attacks. Rush describes McCain as St. John....McCain hates Romney because he runs ads that tell the truth about McCain. Rush says NY glitterati made a point last night to tell him they love McCain because he hates Bush like they do.

UPDATE:

From a reader with connections in Arizona, this story making the rounds: My uncle lives in Arizona. At a hotel a few years ago he personally saw McCain verbally abuse a staffer who forgot to bring McCain's "step-stool" to make him look taller behind the podium (Looks like McCain's a small man in more ways than one ). My uncle described the verbal lashing out as "way out of bounds" and "vociferous." After that he's joked that he "wouldn't vote for McCain for dog-catcher."

Chicago Tribune headlines, front page: "Fields narrow as parties gear up for Super Tuesday". Of course they lead off with the Democrats, as Obama is a local hero. The GOP headline is that they "duel in fierce debate" in the print edition (at least my North Shore final edition)--the online one has that they "snipe at each other". On the editorial page, who has endorsed McCain and Obama--it's Imagine McCain vs. Obama. One graf:

Mercifully, some raw issues might come off the table. For instance, Obama voted for the Immigration Reform Act of 2006, which was sponsored by McCain.

Broder also talking McCain-Obama.Rush referring to Broder as an unelected, liberal pundit--we're supposed to take advice from them? Embodiment of a squishy, drive by liberal who described Reagan's victory as one of greed. Caller says McCain full of envy and disses the private sector--Rush says Romney earned his wealth (I say McCain married into it.)

UPDATE: Rush: McCain getting the Kennedy-Shriver-Schwarzenegger endorsement--won't help him with conservatives. Talk about global warming at the endorsement.

UPDATE: Rush has more from Joe Scarborough, I missed this last night. Scarborough said the Republican establishment is backing McCain, they backed Bob Dole, they backed Gerald Ford. They lost--unless Republicans have the support of the conservative base, they lose in the general election.

UPDATE: Dan at Reverse Spin underscores the same point Rush is making now--if McCain does manage to get elected there will be no unity from the Democrats and the MSM.

UPDATE: Emailed comment:

... about McCain and the MSM bragging about his "Bipartisanship" and likening it to Reagan's gift of "Bipartisanship"

Reagan brought the Dems over to see his side of things to promote conservative principles

McCain's gone over to the Dems to promote their liberal principles.

Precisely.

UPDATE: Jason at MyManMitt with more on McCain, Kyle on his flip-flops and lots more.