Roll the Tape
by Steve
Last night’s GOP debate from Nevada on CNN showed how hard it will be for the Republicans to mount an effective national campaign against a weakened Barack Obama. Yes, the media is spending way too much time talking about the aggressive tone of the debate, crediting Rick Perry with rising from the dead, and questioning whether it was wise for Mitt Romney to touch Perry on the shoulder. But the following take-aways from last night expose the problems that the GOP faces in going after Obama.
Herman Cain had his fifteen minutes already: On a day when his signature campaign issue was revealed to be another GOP effort to transfer the tax burden even further from the wealthy to the lower income brackets, Cain couldn’t even explain the plan clearly to his GOP rivals, let alone a general election audience. And then he blamed the unemployed for their predicament.
Rick Perry can only succeed by being aggressive: Sure, the Tea Party base will lap up every attack from Perry towards Romney, but Perry has yet to offer an agenda other than attack-dog rhetoric. Supposedly, he is on the verge of offering a 17% flat national income tax as his economic agenda, whose flaws will be immediately exposed even as the likes of the Washington Post’s Chris Cilliza tout Perry for being “bold.” Likewise, Perry's claims about his border security bona fides prove to be empty. But every utterance from Perry against Romney will be caught on video to be replayed in a general election against Obama.
Mitt Romney has several landmines ahead of him that he can’t overcome: He and most of the rest of the GOP field will lose the immigration vote (although the GOP assumes it can disenfranchise millions of blacks and hispanics next year), and Romney faces a building effort from the fringes of the GOP to derail him because of his faith. As for Romney’s solution to the vast middle class fears about the loss of their homes, well, let’s just say that the video clips will sink him in a general election.
The whole GOP field is piling up more and more video that clearly show them siding with Wall Street against Main Street, at a time when nearly two-thirds of registered voters now agree with Obama on jobs and taxes. Seeing these GOP candidates tell the country that Wall Street isn't the problem, at a time when the country's mood is exactly the opposite is lethal for Republicans.
So sit back and watch the upcoming weeks of slugfests with entertainment and awe as the GOP self-destructs into a fringe national party unable to appeal to a majority of the American electorate. Every time one of these GOP candidates tells a rabid debate audience that Wall Street isn’t the problem while attacking protesters as disloyal whiners, the Obama White House smiles. In truth, none of them have a workable plan for the middle class nor do they really care.