The runner-up in this category, as I have come to expect, was Michelle Bachmann’s…
“The president, he put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa.”
If any other candidate, or President Obama, had said this, no one would blink: an innocent misstatement, obviously. With Bachmann, however, and her record of historical and factual howlers, one has to pause. Does the Congresswoman really not know that Libya is in Africa? After all, a large portion of Americans don’t. It is not unfair to judge Bachmann’s comment in the context of our general impression of her knowledge and precision of expression, but avoiding confirmation bias is almost impossible. If you think Bachmann’s a dolt, then the gaffe is just more proof. If you admire and respect her, you ignore the mistake (we know what she means, after all) and the criticism confirms that everyone is predisposed to be unfair to your candidate. I will say this: Bachmann is at fault for eroding her credibility to the point that a statement like this raises any doubts at all. I am inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, but the doubt is there, nonetheless.
The winning entry in the debate, revealing a disturbing ethical orientation in a spontaneous remark, was Mitt Romney’s comment in the midst of objecting to Gov. Perry’s allegation about Romney’s hypocrisy in criticizing Perry’s record on illegal immigration after employing illegals himself:
“I’m running For office, For Pete’s sake. I can’t have illegals!”
No, Mitt, it’s wrong to employ illegals whether you are running for office or not. I believe that the statement accurately expresses Romney’s true attitude toward this and other matters: pragmatism over principle. I have no doubt whatsoever that he would have happily hired illegal aliens for housekeeping or yard work like most people of his financial means, while looking the other way, rationalizing, and never harboring a moment of conscience or self-doubt.
Yes, as with Bachmann, there is confirmation bias in this conclusion too. Romney has been characterized by a willingness to adjust his scruples to the call of expediency. Unlike the Bachmann gaffe, however, I do not believe there is any doubt what Romney’s statement tells us about him. His unguarded exclamation will not bother the many who believe that a leader’s integrity doesn’t matter if he can get the trains to run on time. It bothers me a great deal.
One last point: the substance of Perry’s accusation is unfair. Romney cannot be blamed if his yard company hires illegal aliens without his knowledge, and Romney cannot be fairly called their employer, as Perry stated.
Ethics Alarms 
You find me a landscaping company in this country that doesnt employ illegals and I will shocked.
I have one. The guy who does my lawn and garden is a fanatic about illegal immigration, and requires thorough documentation, which he has shown to me. But as a general rule, you are right.
I worked for a landscaping company and they didn’t imploy any illegals. Of course there aren’t many in my part of the country.
I will once again note that everyone running for the nomination is a joke. They make Obama look like a mere disappointment. Whichever side wins in the election, the American public loses.
Bachmann – Has no clue what she’s talking about.
Perry – Unscrupulous Cronyist
Romney – Wind-sock
Cain – no honesty (this is telling – whenever he says something meant as red meat for his base, he later dismisses it as a “joke” etc. for the media then TURNS AROUND AND SAYS IT AGAIN to his base)
Paul, Santorum, et al. – no chances of nomination. Sorry Paul supporters, but it’s true.
I don’t understand how anyone can support these people… I gather you don’t like Obama, but does that mean the Republican party has to just spread its legs for anyone with an (R) behind their name? Have some dignity!
You have fallen for the MSM slog that RP cannot win, despite the number of polls showing otherwise. He makes sense to a lot of American people, just not to a lot of American “opinion-makers.” This is not 2007. A cursory Google search and review of poll results will provide some light on this.
Beyond that, simply “giving up” and not voting for the only honorable Republican candidate pretty much guarantees your role in missing the last opportunity to save the Republic. Do you want such a personal legacy?
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/09/msnbc_distorts_its_own_poll.html
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/08/ron-paul-wins-values-voter-straw-poll/
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/08/ron-paul-wins-values-voter-straw-poll/
http://rt.com/usa/news/fox-paul-debate-poll-257/
http://www.fitsnews.com/2011/09/15/ron-paul-most-competitive-against-obama-in-latest-poll/
Beyond that, simply “giving up” and not voting for the only honorable Republican candidate pretty much guarantees your role in missing the last opportunity to save the Republic. Do you want such a personal legacy?
Wait, Perry is honorable? Did he become a judge? Otherwise, I don’t think that adjective is useful here.
I’m guessing both you and Peter meant “Paul” not “Perry,” right?
Well, it should be quite apparent which “RP” I was referring to, from the self-evident answer as to which of the two is “honorable” in the non-judicial sense of the word, as well as from the context of the prior remark. However, I recognize that I should have spelled out the name for optimal clarity.
I assumed RP had an antecedent. My bad. In any case, my statement stands.
My grandfather was honorable. He would have made a horrendous president.
Honorability is a nice trait, but one can be honorable and be a complete dufus. I agree…that’s no qualification for leadership.
“Missing the last opportunity to save the Republic”? Eventually someone who says this will be right, but I’d say this is evident hyperbole, hysteria, depression, or all three.
Well, if it isn’t obvious to you what we face, Jack, I can’t help you. We face an economic tsunami of debt, and despite what you and Dick Cheney think, deficits DO matter. It’s not just a bunch of digital ones and zeros on somebody’s balance sheet. Fiscal mismanagement on this scale leads to extreme social unrest. Always. You think that what’s happened in the “Arab spring” can’t happen here? All it takes is for the Chinese and the Japanese to one day (and it can happen in ONE day) stop showing up at the Treasury auctions, and Greece’s riots will look like a tailgate party. We have guns in the USA, and unhappy people who don’t get their handouts from Uncle Sam won’t be shy about using them. You can’t keep printing money without eventually creating big time inflation, and the Fed has zero success in being able to “anticipate and control it” when it eventually raises its ugly head. It just won’t be possible to pull off a “Volcker”, as in the early 1980s, because soon, all tax receipts would not even cover the debt payments with the much higher market interest rates on Treasuries. The usual story is that dictators arise from the ashes because people look to those with the biggest promises (i.e. the biggest liars and power-hungry despots) to get them out of the mess that has taken decades to create. Ron Paul’s proposal to cut $1 trillion in the first year, and have a balanced budget in year 3 can be done. Sure, we’ll have to learn to live with less, a lot less from our Federal government. But then again, most people don’t want to take the Dr’s very bad tasting medicine to cure the disease, and would rather live in denial until the cancer carries them off.
I quit reading when you suggested that I think deficits don’t matter. How did you ever get THAT idea?
I did the same thing. In the rest of the rant, do you think he accuses me of thinking religion doesn’t matter and SMP of thinking children don’t matter?
Yes, it’s a rant. However, if you hadn’t denied the likelihood that our Republic, and our American way of life, are in imminent danger, and that the time grows short to make necessary corrections to the fiscal house which is in advanced disarray, I wouldn’t have made it. Deficits matter SO MUCH, at this stage of the game, that it is not possible to postpone any longer the draconian cuts in spending that will be necessary. Most of the Republican candidates favor trimming around the edges, or ignoring the matter to the degree that it is just the same. So, in this context, in this discussion, I didn’t hear you discussing deficits, their implications, the ethical implications of not discussing them significantly at the debates, and so on. My error to infer that this means you don’t think they matter.
However, if you hadn’t denied the likelihood that our Republic, and our American way of life, are in imminent danger…
The Republic and the ‘American way of life’ have been in imminent danger since 1781.
…[if you hadn’t denied] that the time grows short to make necessary corrections to the fiscal house which is in advanced disarray…
Jack’s been beeting the drum for fiscal changes. Where have you been?
Since you can’t seem to remember anyone’s positions from post to post: I believe in the soul, … the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.
There’s “imminent danger” as when the raft is 4 miles upstream of the 200 ft waterfall, and there’s “imminent danger” as when the raft is 50 yards upstream of the waterfall. We are closer to the latter than the former, and the logistics involved in averting disaster are much more limited and it is much more critical that they be successful. There was opportunity to discuss this in the debates, or to discuss in this blog why there was not such discussion, or how such discussion was circumvented, etc. And, if you DO read the rest of the post, we can carry on that discussion here after all.
As for your positions from post to post, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
You don’t have to give a damn, you just have to stop completely misrepresenting the positions of others. How does that advance the discussion?
An ideologue like Paul might make an effective benevolent dictator (he’s honorable, after all), but is a guaranteed flop as a U.S. President. Ideologues can’t work within the system to get competing interests to unite. The elimination of the Departments advocated by Paul can’t be called a plan, because it’s impossible.Weaving straw into gold is as valid a plan. A plan has to be politically feasible, or it is just grandstanding. In Congress, grandstanding has some value. Not for the executive.
I don’t underestimate the looming problems: I have a long blog post called “Why We Are Doomed” that I have been holding back. But America has a lot of assets other nations do not, and has come through worse—what it needs is leadership. Not theoreticians or revolutionaries, leaders. One would be nice. Indeed, one might be enough. So far, our greatest crises have generated our best leaders. We need to do it again, that’s all. He or she is out there. Unfortunately, he or she is not Ron Paul.
Could be. That would be about as accurate as saying that I don’t think deficits matter.
Well, my apology for being overly dramatic with respect to the “you think deficits don’t matter” issue. Seems to be a common hazard in the blogosphere. I will look forward to your future post in which it is addressed as you wish to address it. For all that we have come through as a nation, we do have history to help, but had a productive economy in the past, and an industrious people, whereas now we have exported our manufacturing in favor of the so-called “wealth” produced by financial assets, and we have more people dependent on government than at any time in our history.
As for idealogues, your point is well taken, in respect to the need to “compromise” in order to enact legislation. I do believe that an electorate that would enable a Paul presidency would also sweep the Congress of the rats compromised by lobbyists, and the intrinsic greed and corruption that exists now, but I guess that makes me an idealogue too….
I don’t much like wind-socks, but they have often been effective Presidents: Washington, Monroe, McKinley, Coolidge, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Clinton. A good argument can be made that the country needs a competent wind-sock about now.
I suppose you may be right. But I am just worried because I have no idea what his real beliefs are. I fell into the same trap with Obama, and was disappointed because the man failed to match the rhetoric. But I at least was able to predict he’d tend towards liberal policies. (My mistake was in hoping he’d be able to unite the country. The enthusiasm for him of my generation turns out to have been anomalous.) With Romney, I have no idea which wind he’ll blow to. Will he blow towards the majority even if he offends his own party? Will he blow towards the whole Republican party and try to split the difference? Will he try to please specific factions? I don’t know. In this case, it may be better the devil we know than the one we don’t.
About Bachmann’s comment, I don’t recall any more than your quote (out of context). Why can this not be read as EMPHASIS and REPETITION, i.e. first stating the nation invaded, and THEN the continent in which it is found? (Unless I missed something about US troops now invading ANOTHER African country….. )
We’re in Uganda now. Which is what she meant.
Thanks for clarification.
I can, and if it was anyone other than the candidate who said that the Battle of Concord was in New Hampshire, it would be. And I agree that this is probably what she meant.
I think this is especially troubling since I read somewhere Michele Bachmann worked on a kibbutz in Israel after h.s. graduation.
I call bull on Libya being in Africa. Gaddafi wasn’t no Afro-American.
Black = Africa. Nonblack = specific country.
You all just kill me. Back and forth, back and forth, over terminology, phraseology, etc. (By the way, only morons think black=Africa, non-black=specific country. Whatever happened to maps???? If Bachmann had ever looked at a map or taken 5th grade history, she’d still be a moron and unfit for the presidency, but perhaps she wouldn’t be embarrassed quite so often.)
But to my basic point. If people won’t vote for a Republican because that Republican isn’t “perfect,” and may in fact be and act like a “politician,” then shame on them. In 2012, not voting IS voting… for Obama. And believe me, his campaign staff is counting on it.
The worst of them will drop out naturally. I’m not fond of Romney, particularly, and his comment about illegals demonstrates a frame of mind I don’t like, but FDR, for example, was an adulterer and committed a host of impeachable acts to help Britain before we entered World War II. He also, however, saved Europe from Hitler and the far East from Japan. You just can’t have it all.
Obama convinced Americans that in fact they could have it all — in him. Haven’t we learned this little lesson yet? Stop parsing words and picking on every little thing. Look for a leader. He won’t be perfect, but none of them will be.
By the way, only morons think black=Africa, non-black=specific country.
Have you ever called an American of Eyptian descent an African-American?
Just because something is stupid doesn’t mean it’s not common.
But to my basic point. If people won’t vote for a Republican because that Republican isn’t “perfect,” and may in fact be and act like a “politician,” then shame on them. In 2012, not voting IS voting… for Obama. And believe me, his campaign staff is counting on it.
That is the problem with our discourse. Vote for someone because of their party affiliation, not because of their ideas! Obama’s economic positions nearly all garner majority or super majority support from republicans…so long as his name isn’t associated with them. We can’t support the “enemy!”
The worst of them will drop out naturally.
When your satisfaction level is “not the worst of them,” you deserve crap. I hate that this sentiment is common. (See: Kerry, 2004)
Obama convinced Americans that in fact they could have it all — in him. Haven’t we learned this little lesson yet? Stop parsing words and picking on every little thing. Look for a leader. He won’t be perfect, but none of them will be.
I’ve heard John Wayne is frozen. I’d follow him.
So are you saying I should vote for ANYONE BUT OBAMA? Even if this person is worse than Obama. Just because they have ideas that differ from Obama, what makes their ideas better than his? Because they are republican ideas and not democratic? In other words vote for the party, not the person? I have not nor will I ever vote for a party! Most of the candidates are cronies within the partys they represent. NONE of the candidates have come close to deserving a definite vote. I think it would be a good idea for you to start watching and reading more than one viewpoint.
Clearly not. I would say this, however. The current president has proven to me beyond all doubt that he possesses none of the leadership abilities, vision or political skills essential to guiding the nation out of its current rut, and thus there is no chance that he will be successful if re-elected. As the nation faces multiple crises, ant candidate whose chance of rising above his previous stature and becoming the leader America desperately needs—regardless of his current positions—is a wiser choice. There are other candidates that are untrustworthy, and do not qualify for what I call the1% advantage, but if there is a 1% chance that another candidate will be a leader, that 1% is better than zero.
Still, there is always hope. Leaders have changed for the worse or the better in the past. People and teams change. No guarantee.
Agreed. But I cannot find a single US President who was notably stronger in term #2 than term #1. Most were much, much worse. Luckily, President Obama can’t get much worse…that’s something. Maybe even a campaign slogan. “You won’t be disappointed this time!”
There are two types of people that throw away their votes:
1) Those that don’t vote.
2) Those who vote for a party candidate without considering every option.
3, Those who vote based on group membership, such as gender, race, religion, region, or socioeconomic class.
4 Those who vote for candidates their friends or family support.
NOTE: #1 is far, far preferable to the remaining three.