ThinkProgress has an outstanding blog journal of the Republican candidates’ “debate” from Faux News last night.
Among the more interesting highlights:
9:07: Romney says he wouldn’t raise the debt ceiling without first rewriting the Constitution to make it impossible to fund Social Security, Medicare and the military at the same time.
9:12 Newt Gingrich rings in with first mention of Ronald Reagan at debate. Says Reagan’s 1981 tax cut led to seven years of growth. Gingrich failed to mention Reagan’s 1982 tax increase.
9:17: Pawlenty wants people to look at his record in Minnesota. Like one-third of his budget relying on the 2009 Recovery Act?
9:20 Bachmann says she “fought cap and trade” by introducing legislation to reverse lightbulb efficiency laws, which has nothing to do with a cap-and-trade system.
9:33: Cain chides Chris Wallace, tells him he never said that Americans have the right to ban mosques in their community. That’s exactly what he said–to Wallace.
9:35: Herman Cain says that a combination of “high fences and wide open doors” is the principle the country was founded on. In fact, immigration into the United States was completely unlimited until the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Immigration from Latin America was unrestricted until the second half of the 20th century.
9:40: “I don’t believe in raising taxes,” Romney said. Yet in a 2004 presentation to Standard & Poor’s, his administration touted tax hikes as a reason that Massachusetts should get its credit rating raised to AA.
9:53: Romney said he would issue a waiver invalidating ObamaCare on his first day in office. A president doesn’t have that authority.
9:55: “I will not rest until we have a filibuster-proof Senate,” Bachmann said. Yeah, like that will happen.
9:57 Santorum scores with first gay-bashing of the night, taking a hit at Bachmann for saying that marriage should be left to the states. He generally attacks federalist themes from his fellow candidates “there are things the states can’t do,” cites Lincoln as an authority and appears to compare state-initiated marriage equality and Mitt Romney’s universal health care plan to slavery. “Does that mean that the state has the right to impose polygamy? To pass sterilization? No! We are a country based on morals.”
10:29: Byron York asks Bachmann if she would be submissive to her husband as president. Bachmann says that she interprets “submissive” to mean respect. That’s not what that word means to anyone else in the world.
10:36: Santorum says allowing a raped woman to receive an abortion would “put her through another trauma,” so we should force her to carry her rapist’s child for nine months instead.
10:56: In closing, Herman Cain cites a “poet’s” lyrics that “Life can be a challenge / life can seem impossible.” The poet? Disco singer Donna Summer.
