CE Week #14: “GOP candidates on the attack”
David Sarasohn
Portland Oregonian
December 5, 2007
Every evening, CNN gives an hour to Lou Dobbs, who explains that international trade and illegal immigrants are endangering national security, destroying the middle class and bringing back leprosy.
Last Wednesday on CNN, Dobbs’ hour was followed by two hours of Republicans running for president.
And for a while, you couldn’t tell where Dobbs stopped and the debate started.
Things began with a rousing alley fight between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani over who was weaker on illegal immigrants. Romney took the first question on the subject and wheeled on Giuliani, charging him with running New York as a “sanctuary city.”
Giuliani responded by saying Romney had a “sanctuary mansion,” because the gardening company working at his house employed two illegal immigrants. (The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Romney had fired the company.) The New Yorker told Romney, “You have a special immigration problem that nobody else has, because you were employing illegal immigrants.”
Getting nasty with Giuliani, Romney gives away too much weight. Romney’s willing to do it – he is, it seems, willing to do just about anything – but he takes no particular joy in the attack; he’d rather beam and talk about the wonderfulness of family.
Giuliani, on the other hand, delights in the idea, with a New York politician’s fondness for calling opponents either dangerous or deranged. As a result, the GOP presidential debate began with an argument over what you should do if someone mowing your lawn seems to have an accent.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., running for president on a single-issue anti-immigrant platform – he wants to stop legal as well as illegal immigration – stood quivering with excitement, exulting, “All I’ve heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo.”
Romney then attacked former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, breathing down Romney’s neck in Iowa, for proposing to let illegal immigrants graduating from Arkansas high schools qualify for state college merit scholarships. Huckabee responded firmly, “In all due respect, we’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did.”
The former Massachusetts governor declared incredulously, “It reminds me of what it’s like talking to liberals in Massachusetts” – which also reminded people that five years ago, he was one.
As noted, Romney’s willing to get nasty; he’s just not very good at it. When he can’t figure out what the audience wants to hear, he gets fuddled. Confronted by an earlier quote from him looking forward to a time that gays could serve in the armed forces, all he could think to say was, “This isn’t that time.” Asked what he’d do to preserve Social Security, he went off on “tough new competition from Asia,” “overuse of oil” and “Hillary Clinton.”
Huckabee probably gained most from the debate, with calmness and a supply of prepared zingers. He was also better at avoiding unwanted questions; asked whether Jesus would support capital punishment, Huckabee explained that Jesus was too smart ever to run for public office.
He was also better positioned for a black questioner who asked why minorities didn’t vote Republican. The question started with Giuliani, who pronounced, “We probably haven’t done a good enough job as a party in pointing out that our solutions, our philosophy, is really the philosophy that would be the most attractive to the overwhelming majority of people in the African-American and Hispanic community.”
One thing that would help, of course, would be if Hispanics hadn’t seen the beginning of the debate.
Still, it was a ringing statement from someone who, at one point during his time as mayor of New York, enjoyed the approval of 8 percent of African-Americans in New York.
The single number is not a misprint.
Huckabee was able to note that running for re-election as governor of Arkansas, he’d won 48 percent of the African-American vote.
If just about any other Republican had said that, it would be a misprint.
Huckabee has his own problems. He goes off into Great Pumpkin-like calls for abolishing the income tax. Awkwardly for a president overseeing billions in federal medical and scientific research, he doesn’t believe in evolution.
Then again, if you’d participated in multiple Republican presidential debates, you might not, either.
This author kind of cracks me up. That last line was a good one. It’s a shame that presidential candidates feel the need to attack eachother during a debate: this goes for Democratic nominees as well. Judging by the author’s summary of the debate, the sound bites are going to be interesting, especially since the candidates of have 12-15 seconds to impress America. I was surprised I actually agreed with one of Huckabee’s statements (this is the first and most likely last); when it comes to children, I think they should have the opportunity for an education, no matter what. Speaking of immigration, who is this crazy man from Colorado, Tom Tancredo, who wants to stop immigration altogether? Doesn’t he realize that our most Americans have immigrant ancestors? I guess I just don’t understand why immigration is negative thing. Anyways, I guess it doesn’t matter what insanity is coming out of his mouth as long he looked good saying it on T.V. these days.
Ya this was an interesting debate. Maybe it was because I was watching it from about 10-12 at night and after a piece about Vladimir Putin but maybe not. I think that these debates just really show the personal sides of all the candidates running. The mudslinging started right off the bat and made two of the top dogs just look like fools. Romney and Guiliani were just bashing each other and weren’t even making themselves look better because they both did the exact same thing. Romney has been especially terrible and mudslinging because he has too much working against him right now. He has been trashing liberals and gay marriage when only a few short years ago he was won of the people he now bashes. He slings a handful of mud at Guiliani but gets a facefull back when it has been pointed out that he had illegals working at his own mansion. After the mudslinging both just looked like fools which we talked about in class. Like in 2004 when the liberals were slinging mud and the top two ended up dropping out we now have Romney and Guiliani fighting it out while Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul are picking up their supporters.
I agree with Nate on this topic. I also watched this later at night and I too thought that this was an interesting debate and as Nate pointed out, these debates do let you in too see a more personal side of the different candidates. Anyways, this was a good debate for Mike Huckabee because while the other two top GOP candidates, Romney and Giuliani, were arguing, Huckabee was formulating calm and clever answers to unwanted questions. Like Nate said, this little mudslinging battle did not help either of them, and a nonscientific poll even showed that the approval rating went down during their little banter. This is a prime example of when we talked about how mudslinging could be bad. None of this helped either Romney or Giuliani. On the other hand though, it did give Huckabee some room to move farther into the top three. In my opinion, this wasn’t the best place to start a little mudslinging fight especially when it is raised to the level it was. – Matt Powles
This was an interesting article and I thought that it was interesting, like Meagan, that I actually agreed with something that Huckabee said. Why should we punish children for something that their parents did? I’m sure that for most of the illegal students who would be graduating, they wouldn’t of known what they were doing or where they were going when they were two or three years old. Now they have gown up in the United States and don’t know any different. I would consider them like any other graduating student. They went through twelve years of school and have grown up in America; the only thing that is different is that their parents brought them over the boarder when they had no say in the fact. So I definitely agree with what Huckabee said in that all children should be able to graduate, no matter what. This seemed like a pretty fired up debate, from accusing Romney to employing illegal, to crazy Tom Tancredo who wants to put a stop to all immigration, legal and illegal. Every candidate just has to attack the other candidate so harshly by breathing down their throats and trying to come out on top. I don’t understand why the debate can’t simply be each candidate stating their views and thoughts, instead of accusing others for wrong doing or trying to get them to say something that would cause an uproar.
I have to agree with Meagan when she says that the article cracks her up. It makes me laugh too. However, I don’t really agree with her when she says that the Democrats are quite attacking each other to this point as well. I think what is going to happen here is Giuliani and Romney are going to attack each other until the New Hampshire and Iowa votes pass, then they will realize that Huckabee has gained a huge advantage from there attacks on each other and they will both turn their attention toward Huckabee. This will be too late in the nomination process for them to do anything to his lead and he will most likely get the Republican nomination, but the effects of what the other Republicans dig up on him will be brought over to the general election by any Democrats who are smart enough to pay attention to the Republican nomination process. I think Meagan has hit a key piece of information when she said it doesn’t matter what someone says on T.V. as long as he looks good saying it. The sad thing about our society is that most people really don’t care enough to think about how they were once immigrants, they just think about the future and how they will be seen. If someone who looks good says that immigration is a bad thing, then most Americans will side with that person because otherwise they might be “ugly.” Oh well most those people won’t vote anyway so I’m not too worried.
I agree with John in that Mike Huckabee could benefit greatly from Guiliani and Romney attacking each other. If he can squeak out wins in New Hampshire and Iowa, he could very well go on to win the Republican nomination. I think this would be a dream come true for Democrats, largely because Huckabee would have a hard time matching up against any of their candidates. Hillary and Barack have received tons of publicity and more Americans are probably familiar with them then they are with Huckabee. And while Huckabee received 48% of the African American vote in Arkansas, he would receive a lot less than that on a national scale, especially running against Hillary or Barack. He also might be too far to the right to win the nomination. As the article said, he wants to completely abolish the income tax and doesn’t believe in evolution. Abolishing the income tax would not be beneficial to a nation that is trillions of dollars in debt; however, I do have to give Huckabee some credit. He stood firm when Romney challenged him on the issue of illegal immigrants. While all of the other candidates effectively alienated much of America’s Hispanic population, Huckabee didn’t back down and could very well reap the benefits during the primaries.