All seven candidates involved in the debate were the least hawkish in a very long time, writes LARA MARLOWE
IF THREE decades of Republican politics are anything to judge by, the former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney is most likely to challenge President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.
The Republicans will not officially anoint their nominee until August 2012. But for the past three decades, Republicans have stuck with their early favourite, a position Mr Romney consolidated on Monday night. Almost all had made a previous serious attempt, as Mr Romney did in 2008.
Mr Romney is “not the high-flying investment lots of Republicans yearned to put their money on, but . . . a man whose emphasis on jobs and the economy makes him a safe enough bet at a time like this,” the Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib wrote yesterday.
With two-thirds of Americans wanting to end the war in Afghanistan, the seven Republicans in the New Hampshire debate were the least hawkish group in a very long time. Mr Romney hedged his promise to “bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can” with the proviso that the withdrawal would be “consistent with the word that comes from our generals”. That gave the libertarian candidate, representative Ron Paul from Texas, his best moment.
“I wouldn’t wait for my generals,” Dr Paul said. “I’m the commander-in-chief. I make the decisions. I tell the generals what to do. And I’d bring them home as quickly as possible.” The six other candidates treated Mr Romney with reverence – perhaps with the vice-presidential nomination in mind – and he came across as the leader of the pack. He focused all criticism on Obama, saying, “This president has failed, and he’s failed at a time when the American people counted on him to create jobs and get the economy growing.”
The Republicans were unanimous in their opposition to abortion, though the former senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum made the vaguest allusion to Mr Romney’s having switched sides on that issue. They all opposed gay marriage. They differed on whether the military should restore its “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy that discriminated against gays.
At the beginning of the debate, the candidates engaged in one-upmanship over the longevity of their marriages and the number of children they’d procreated. “Karen and I are the parents of seven children,” Mr Santorum boasted. Michele Bachmann beat him, with her five biological children and 23 foster children. “I deliver babies for a living and delivered 4,000 babies,” Dr Paul announced.
Ms Bachmann is often compared to Sarah Palin. A strong performance by the founder of the Tea Party caucus gave her an advantage over the absent Palin. Unlike Ms Palin, who is still dithering and circumventing the Republican party, Ms Bachmann made a forceful, surprise announcement of her candidacy, recalling that she initiated legislation to repeal Mr Obama’s financial regulation Bill and his health care Bill. She defended the Tea Party as “a wide swathe of America coming together” and declared emphatically that “President Obama is a one-term president. We’ll win!”
Herman Cain, the African-American former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, who performed well in the first debate last month, stumbled when asked why he would hesitate to appoint a Muslim to his cabinet.
“You have peaceful Muslims and then you have militant Muslims, those that are trying to kill us,” Mr Cain said. “I was thinking about the ones that are trying to kill us, number one.” Newt Gingrich allied himself with Mr Cain, adding communists and Nazis to the mix. But Mr Romney rose to political correctness, saying “people of all faiths are welcome in this country” and reminding the crowd that “our nation was founded on a principal of religious tolerance.”