The real winner of Thursday night’s expectedly dismal 2012 Republican presidential debate wasn’t any of the hollow caricatures perched before Fox News Fathead Brett Baier. It was President Barack Obama, who, with every incompetent tide of the stubbornly shaping GOP field, will glide into an assured second term, spiraling economy and monstrous federal deficit be damned.
Conservative apologists have admitted the 2012 offerings thus far are vaguely underwhelming and void of the blockbuster charisma that deftly catapulted Obama to political prowess. Their partisan foils are even less generous in advancing mutual credibility to a candidate rumor chamber that resounds with the political follies of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump.
Entering Thursday’s debate, any casual observer would assume the motley but still capable crew of six 2012 hopefuls could at the very least strive to counteract this unflattering pretext. That casual observer would have been proven explicitly incorrect by the debate’s conclusion.
Not only did the Republican candidates affirm the internal facepalming that preceded them, but they simultaneously managed to carve fresh pockets of ludicrous, aspirational policy out of straightforward questioning.
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain said he would abolish the income tax and hike the sales tax to 23 percent as president. Ron Paul endorsed prostitution and heroin use as no-brainer expressions of liberty. And former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson absolutely mangled a question about what type of reality show he’d star in, eventually concluding the program would be set up like some sort of “Amazing Race” for mountain climbers. You know what? Never mind.
And then former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said Obama’s health care reform legislation is “taking control of people’s lives.”
To be explicitly clear: These are not necessarily awful expressions of proposed policy or even candidate character – what they are, though, is a complete confirmation of partisan speculation entering Thursday’s debate. The five politicians – arguably excluding Serious Man Tim Pawlenty – managed to cement the preceding reservations that they are indeed germs of political obscurity in a widening race.
Of course, the debate’s participants only offer a minute glimpse at the still inchoate GOP nomination field. But to downplay Thursday’s candidates as some sort of lower echelon of a tremendously more viable spread of 2012 ponderers is foolhardy.
A cursory inventory of who was not in attendance easily supports this notion. Trump and Palin, two potential candidates whose primary-season approaches would be swiftly evaporated in the more moderate general election campaign period, skipped South Carolina altogether. Mitt Romney, an established figure whose state-level health care reform will be inevitably painted as synonymous with the apocalyptic Obamacare, was also missing from the stage.
Also absent: Newt Gingrich, an apt purveyor of party mechanics but also an immoral hypocrite with personal baggage that would render him virtually immovable in any airport check-in line. And then there’s Mike Huckabee, a certainly promising contender who has revealed certainly unpromising hints that he will sit 2012 out. Yeah, he was not at the debate, either.
If I’m omitting any other milquetoast politicians flirting with pursuing the GOP nomination, I sincerely apologize. Yet part of the Republicans’ inherent conflict is their 2012’s field’s ongoing ambiguity. With ardent campaigning, name recognition can become adequately overcome; however, that ardent campaigning requires a clear commitment to run in the first place.
The wishy-washy political toe-tipping-especially among party darlings like Huckabee and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels-is wholly detrimental at a stage in the vetting process when deep-pocketed donors are itching to funnel multi-zeroed figures to their preferred candidates.
Thankfully, Thursday night’s back-and-forth featured anything but indecisive candidates. But therein lies the essential nonfulfillment.
In “The New Guy,” a horrendous teen comedy that I’ll afford readers the unrequited pleasure of searching on IMDB, Eddie Griffin’s character shares this sage parallel: “High school is a lot like prison: the sex you want, you ain’t gettin’; the sex you gettin’, you don’t want.” If politics is indeed the childish arena career cynics endear it as, then maybe Thursday’s debate is revealing.
Because I know a whole lot of candidates the Republican base wants, it ain’t gettin’. And a whole lot of candidates party insiders are gettin’, they don’t want.
Patrick Svitek is a Medill freshman and DAILY staffer. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed at twitter.com/medill_svitek.
Check out last week’s Saturday Night Live GOP debate skit, including all the candidates we didn’t see Thursday:
