There was a G.O.P. Presidential debate last night. I had my fun razzing them on Twitter, so I’m not going to bother doing that too much here. (It’s not fair, but it’s fun playing Statler and Waldorff via Twitter in real-time with your Twitter friends.)

Instead, I’ll refer you to analysis from Rod Dreher at The American Conservative (h/t Tipsy).

A couple of notes:

#He was “disgusted” by the crowd at the debate “cheering the execution of 234 Texas death row inmates.” If one supports the death penalty, it ought to be as a necessary evil; not a matter of glee.

#He thinks that Rick Perry “won” the debate, because of – and not in spite of – Perry calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme (and, though he doesn’t note it, a “monstrous lie.”) The main concern with Social Security seems to be that it’s structured such that younger workers support older workers and that it invests in Treasury Bills (which Tipsy refers to as promissory notes signed by drunken sailors.) I also have issues with how payroll taxes are used to fund current expenditures, but I view that as a problem with inadequacies in the general fund, not Social Security. In any event, politically, I don’t see that playing well in the general election; no matter how many times they reassure the elderly that they will get their cut of the monstrous lie, Ponzi scheme — it’s only younger workers that will get cut out. I don’t know how this sort of thing plays with your average Republican primary voter. He notes in an update that the sources he was reading regarded Romney as having “won” the debate.

#Dreher endorses the view of Jonathan Chait that Perry “won” the debate because, by ignoring constraints of reason and debate rules, he better represents the “Republican id.”

The media seems to consider Romney the winner. Pardon the condescension, but they’re not thinking like Republican base voters. Romney approaches every question as if he is in an actual debate, trying to provide the most intellectually compelling answer available, within the bounds of political expediency. Perry treats questions as interruptions. What scientists do you trust on climate change? I don’t want to risk the economy. Are you taking a radical position on social security? We can have reasons or we can have results. His total liberation from the constraints of reason give Perry a chance to represent the Republican id in a way Romney simply cannot match.

#Reps. Bachmann and Paul are largely ignored along with the rest of the field which, it seems to me, has much more anemic support than do those two. I did enjoy Dreher’s description of Rick Santorum: “Santorum came across as jittery and very Doug Neidermeyer tonight.”

#As to John Huntsman, he states:

[H]e’s not on as solid ground as he thinks saying that the Republicans can’t get elected if they “run against science.” Pew Research finds between 40 and 50 percent of Americans believe the Biblical account of creation. Also, Gallup found earlier this year that 43 percent of Americans believe that climate change fears are exaggerated, and the percentage of Americans who say they worry about climate change is at its second-lowest measure in history. I happen to believe that Huntsman is correct, but he is out of touch with political reality.

I noted an Indy Star headline that said, “5 things to watch for in tonight’s Republican debate.”

Made me think of a joke where the stand-up comic said something like, “John Lee Hooker has a new album out. I haven’t heard it, but I understand he’s having trouble with his old lady.”

I expect dissatisfaction with President Obama in a G.O.P. Presidential debate is reasonably equivalent to lady troubles in a blues album; even if the delivery isn’t nearly as cool.

The things to watch: 1) If Rick Perry avoids coming off as Yosemite Sam, he’s probably free to tell outrageous whoppers about how awesome things are in Texas because of him; 2) Mitt Romney needs to not be boring, slag on the President, and swear fealty to conservatism; 3) Michelle Bachmann needs to out-crazy herself to draw attention away from Perry; 4) Huntsman – despite polling somewhere near Dennis Kucinich levels – needs to draw contrasts in a “gentlemanly” way; and 5) Despite doing better in Iowa than anyone but Bachmann, Ron Paul gets lumped together with the G.O.P. also-rans in this piece of analysis.

I’m only paraphrasing a little.

Richard Longworth, the Midwesterner, takes Ron Paul and Rick Perry to task for their anti-Fed rhetoric. In particular, Mr. Longworth recalls his experience with a mid-size farmer in the 80s. Boom had gone to bust – small farmers without a lot of debt who had second jobs survived as did big farmers growing fat off of subsidies. It was the mid-sized farmer that got crushed. The farmer he recalls in particular was desperate; and therefore susceptible to snake-oil salesmen who preyed on the desperate:

As night fell outside on the leveraged fields, we sat at his kitchen table and he brought out document after document, article after article, learned paper after learned paper, proving that he didn’t owe the money after all, that it was all a Washington scam perpetrated by the Federal Reserve Bank. He would take it to court, he said, and he would win.

Of course, he never had a chance. But he, like many other farmers, had been convinced by far-right “consultants” that the act of Congress which created the Federal Reserve system in 1913 was unconstitutional. According to this reasoning, all the Fed’s actions, including its creation of the U.S. currency, also are unconstitutional. Hence, the dollar is an illegal currency. This farmer’s debts, of course, were denominated in dollars. Therefore, the debts were illegal and didn’t have to be paid. He was in the clear. Or so he thought.

I never heard what happened to him. I assume he lost the farm. Other farmers like him took the constitutional argument to court, and invariably lost. Some of the so-called consultants peddling this snake oil went to prison.

His discussion of these far right “consultants,” such as the Posse Comitatus, and their challenges to government legitimacy reminds me of the folks I ran across pushing the Redemption theory to claim they were not responsible for their debts and that the courts had no jurisdiction over them:

The basic idea, so far as there is coherence to it, relies on the dissolution of the Union following Southern secession; creation of a sort of government corporation which, via the 14th Amendment, created ‘citizens’ as a sort of involuntary asset. The Federal Government secretly went bankrupt in 1933 and then pledged the labor of all citizens by depositing their birth certificates with the Department of Commerce.

Agree or disagree with policy, but to a greater or lesser extent, this business about the legitimacy of the Fed or (or the IRS or whatever) is ridiculous. Maybe it’s all just good fun for Rick Perry to accuse the Fed of a capital crime for exercising a power specifically granted to it by Congress and to threaten to treat Ben Bernanke roughly down in Texas. But, with people in such dire financial straights, perhaps they won’t recognize that Perry is just a trash talking blowhard. (And, for the sake of “balance,” if any politicians on the Left are questioning the legitimacy of government institutions and trash talking, they should knock it off as well.)

From where I sit, it feels like there is not a huge distance between Ron Paul on the one hand and Posse Comitatus, Sovereign Citizens, and the Redemption Movement on the other side.

I’m not going to pound on this too much because we’re stuck in a lesser of two evils political system and protestations of my Libertarian friends notwithstanding, until I see a better offer from one of the two major political parties, I’m not going to aid and abet the cause of a worse alternative.

But, Matt Taibbi and Frank Rich are hammering on a central failure of the Obama administration:

Obama entered the White House in the middle of a great economic crisis, and his Geithner/Rubin solution was to spend mind-boggling amounts bailing out Wall Street, while extracting no conditions or reforms in exchange, and punishing no one. Then, by abandoning jobs programs and taking up the Tea Party’s “austerity” model, he essentially asked ordinary Americans to foot the bill for this no-strings-attached rescue program.

Would Hillary have done things differently? With Bill’s DLC background, I have my doubts. I’ve not heard too many Libertarians proposing to yank Wall Street’s choke collar. Romney or Bachmann certainly won’t. McCain would not have.

For now, guys like me are probably resigned to impotent muttering followed, at best, by Obama muddling along trying not to upset the financial status quo too much and, if Obama is not elected, Katie bar the door, because we’ll be going full throttle in favor of the folks who brought us this economic mess. There are no viable economic populists on the horizon.

Every newspaper and blog in the vicinity of Indiana has this, so I’m not sure I’ll add any value with my own entry. But, for sake of posterity, I’ll go ahead and link to Eric Bradner’s piece in the Evansville Courier Press indicating that Gov. Daniels won’t be running for President. And this time, I guess, he really, really means it.

Though Gov. Mitch Daniels wanted to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012, his family gave the idea a firm and final veto, he announced late Saturday night.

I did find this paragraph amusing:

In the end, he said, the hopes of Republicans who hoped his message of fiscal conservatism – he called the nation’s $14 trillion debt the “new red menace” – could give them a serious alternative to President Barack Obama were outweighed by his family’s opposition.

Given Gov. Daniels’ not insignificant role in helping to create that “red menace” as part of the Bush administration, it would have perhaps been difficult for him to credibly run as the savior to defeat that menace.

In any event, with Gov. Daniels apparently out of the national race, I can probably start gearing up to recall his administration wistfully as a Pence administration shows me what disagreeable policy really looks like.

Update Also, Brian Howey got a tiny bit burned on the timing of this column about a possible Daniels Presidential run that ran alongside the news that Gov. Daniels would not run. According to Howey, “At this writing, there are a cornucopia of clues pointing to a run.”

Stephen Colbert is having some fun with campaign finance law. He went to the FEC for an advisory opinion as to whether Viacom would have to make disclosures if he was promoting his PAC on his show. This highlights a lot of what Fox News does, putting high profile political candidates or potential candidates on the air to promote themselves. Some of Colbert’s better lines:

Colbert explained his move was motivated by his belief in “the American dream. And that dream is simple. That anyone, no matter who they are, if they are determined, if they are willing to work hard enough, someday they could grow up to create a legal entity which could then receive unlimited corporate funds, which could be used to influence our elections.”

. . .

“I believe that the Citizens United decision was the right one. There should be unlimited corporate money and I want some of it, I don’t want to be the one chump who doesn’t have any.”

. . .

he described its purpose as setting the stage so “the Colbert Nation could have a voice, in the form of my voice, shouted through a megaphone made of cash” in the 2012 elections.

. . .

“Why does it get so complicated to do this,” Colbert said. “I mean this is page after page of legalese. All I’m trying to do is affect the 2012 election. It’s not like I am trying to install iTunes.”

The Associated Press has an article about how Mike Huckabee is blaming the “Hollywood media” for distorting his comments – which, in this case seems to mean reporting exactly what he said. His beef with Portman was that she’s pregnant out of wedlock and that sends “the wrong message.”

“One of the things that is troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine.’

Earlier in the week, Huckabee criticized Obama for, in essence, being un-American.

Huckabee suggested in a radio interview on Monday that President Barack Obama’s childhood in Kenya shaped his worldview — even though Obama did not visit Kenya until he was in his 20s.

Later, he corrected himself by replacing Kenya with Indonesia, and doubling down by saying that Obama didn’t grow up going to Boy Scouts, so that means he’s Different.

Simply put, Huckabee needs to pick better targets. I’m not sure he could’ve picked two people who better exemplify what you can do with hard work and talent. Obama’s improbable rise and (at least apparently) story book family is pretty well known at this point.

Portman, in addition to her well known acting efforts, appears to be crazy smart.

As a student, Portman co-authored two research papers that were published in professional scientific journals. Her 1998 high school paper, “A Simple Method To Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar,” co-authored with scientists Ian Hurley and Jonathan Woodward, was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search, in which she was named a semifinalist. In 2002, she contributed to a study on memory called “Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence” during her psychology studies at Harvard.

And, of course, she’s got good comedic chops:

If Huckabee wants to criticize media portrayals of the prospects of single mothers, I suppose he could start with Bristol Palin. But, even if he doesn’t want to wade into that political thicket and just wants to make political hay criticizing the lives of movie stars, it’s a target rich environment. But Portman is not that target. His attempts to portray Obama as The Other is just cynical politics. Even if you hate his politics, Obama’s personal history is pretty much in line with what we tell our kids to do — work hard, excel, choose a good spouse, raise your kids right.

In short, I used to have an impression of Huckabee as someone with whom I disagreed but who was essentially likable. This past week has seen him throw his likability into the toilet.