Freedom Line Blog

In addition to agreeing with Jennifer Rubin, here, I have the following, ultra-summary, reactions to last night’s debate and the state of the GOP presidential nomination race:

Herman Cain: When he talks foreign policy, he seems completely lost. When he talks economics, he is wonderful. He’s also incredibly likable. If he doesn’t get the nomination, he should be Secretary of the Treasury. His combination of practical business experience and chairmanship of the Kansas City branch of the Federal Reserve gives him great qualifications for that position.

Michelle Bachmann: You gotta love her passion and principles. Not so much her knowledge. She is actually way out in right field to say that Romneycare is “unconstitutional.” It’s not — not at the state level. The problem isn’t that it violates the Constitution; the problem is that the individual mandate tramples on liberty and completely upends the American understanding of individual choice and personal responsibility — not to mention the practical drawbacks of Romneycare as a whole.

Newt Gingrich: He shines in most of the debates. But his personality, temperament, and philosophical benders are probably not suited to the presidency.

Jon Huntsman: Condescending, unctuous, and with a nasty streak. And unconservative to boot.

Rick Perry: As I wrote last night, the man had a very bad evening.  I saw multiple other analysts say the same. He needs to improve his game, and fast, or else he could enter Fred Thompson-ville. (I like Thompson, by the way; this is in terms of political trajectory, not personal candidate preference.)

Mitt Romney: Plastic.

Ron Paul: When he’s right, he’s really right. But when he’s wrong, he’s in outer space, in fact in another galaxy. He was hurt politically very badly last night by Rick Santorum’s apt criticism of Paul’s goofball statements relating to 9/11.

Rick Santorum: Okay, I’m a big Santorum fan. This is the third straight debate in which I am hardly alone among pundits in saying that he really was impressive. Isn’t it time people stop saying: “He did great; too bad he can’t win,” and instead start saying: “He did great; maybe he might have a chance to win”?

Conservatives have a serious problem today. They tend to circle the wagons around people for the wrong reasons, namely because candidates seem “one of us,” culturally speaking, even if the candidates aren’t very impressive or very accomplished. I could name a few Senate candidates from recent years, but won’t. But it really is absurd to think that just because the “establishment” attacks somebody, that the person is therefore worth going to the mat for. It is just not true that the adversary of my adversary is my friend. In truth, the adversary of my adversary can be friend, foe, or something on a wide spectrum in between. An attack by the known adversary on somebody who merely seems to share one’s cultural characteristics is not a good reason to make the attacked person into a hero. It’s illogical to do so.

Hence, I really like Jonah Goldberg’s column today — not because I have any idea yet whether Rick Perry is a great choice for president, but because the attacks against him do not define him, or at least should not. What matters is record, character, philosophy, and competence. Anyway, read Jonah’s piece by clicking this link. Good stuff.

So almost three years after Barack Obama was elected President, he promises to unveil a “specific jobs plan” next month.  Very gracious of you, Mr. President.  Apparently, one of his brilliant ideas is to create an entirely new bureaucracy within the federal government, a “Department of Jobs.” Never mind that we already have a Labor Department, a Commerce Department, and so on.

But here’s something for Obama to ponder.  As noted today in The Wall Street Journal, “Over the past five years, Texas has added more net new jobs than all other states combined.”  Naturally, Team Obama and the desperate political left are already attempting to discredit Texas’s economic success.  But the facts, unsurprisingly, refute their claims.  For instance, for all of the attempts to mislabel those new jobs as low-wage, the Bureau of Labor Statistics “pegs the median hourly wage in Texas at $15.14, 93% of the national average, and wages have increased at a good clip:  in fact, the 10th fastest state in 2010 at 3.4%.”  Keep in mind the lower cost of living in Texas, where those wages therefore go further.

So as Obama ponders a “Department of Jobs” during his extended Martha’s Vineyard vacation while the economy stumbles, perhaps he will experience an epiphany.  Namely, that he should do at the federal level what Texas has done at the state level – bring legal reform, reduce taxes and allow the private sector to flourish.

I wish to associate myself with just about every word of today’s Wall Street Journal editorial on Rick Perry’s comments on the Fed.  It tracks what I have been writing here for some time. As the WSJ wrote, “[N]ow, even as the recovery is supposedly underway, their meager salary increases are being washed away with another burst of commodity inflation caused by near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing. This is what happens when politicians and central bankers try to use monetary policy to compensate for the slow growth caused by bad fiscal and regulatory policies.”

About the only thing I would take issue with is that I think the WSJ went too far to excuse Perry’s outrageous language about Bernanke being “treacherous, or treasonous.” Not only was it way out of line in substance, but it actually detracted from his message by making his central point, which was so worthwhile, seem part and parcel of extremist political rhetoric and thus much more easily dismissable rather than taken seriously. Shame on Perry for such language. The WSJ should have done far more to condemn it.

That said, again, the WSJ is right to have gone beyond Perry’s unfortunate language to the real import of his remarks. By all accounts, Bernanke is a good man. But I think his policy judgments have been disastrous. Perry is right to say so, and I applaud his stance even as I denounce the way he chose to say it.