South Carolina Republican Debate

A Brief Editorial Comment On Super PACs

I have to say, it’s almost farcical listening to various candidates admit that the ads their close personal friends are running via super PACs are full of falsehoods, profess a “hope” that their friends will either take down or edit these ads, and then fall back on the excuse that getting these close friends on the phone is a violation of the law that precludes “coordination” with the super PACs. In my mind, nuking a super PAC’s efforts from space doesn’t exactly fit the conventional definition of “coordination.”

But if it constitutes coordination, so what? By these candidates’ own admission, it would be the right thing to do. If the law prevents someone from doing the right thing, then the law is, as they say, “an ass,” and it deserves to be tested. I would be happy to vigorously defend any efforts from Mitt Romney and/or Newt Gingrich to actively prevent the super PACs that support them from telling lies on their behalf. Who wouldn’t?

Someone, I guess, needs to be the Rosa Parks of standing up to super PACs.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry promised on Monday to secure the border between the United States and Mexico, no matter the cost, in response to a question about whether those funds could be better used elsewhere.

“Americans want that border to be secure,” he said. “The issue isn’t about how much is it going to cost, the issue is when are you going to get it done. And when I’m the president of the United States, that border will be locked down and it will be secure by one year from the time I take my hand off the Bible.”

Moderator Kelly Evans of the Wall Street Journal said that since border crossings are at a 40-year low and undocumented immigration is down, additional funds could be directed at infrastructure. Perry quipped that it is likely because the economy is “probably at a 40-year-low.”

He said that more money should be spent on “strategic fencing,” thousands of National Guard troops, and predator drones on the border.

“Securing the border” is a phrase with no clear definition, and it is uncertain what level of security Perry would require to declare victory in that category, because all of the candidates are dismissive of the government’s current definition.

“The idea that Americans don’t want us to spend the money to secure that border is flat-out false,” he said. “We’re going to secure the border with Mexico.”

Gingrich Pounces On Paul Over Bin Laden Logic

After Rep. Paul equivocated slightly over whether or not he would have given the order to take out Osama bin Laden, stressing that he would rather capture him and cautioning against infringing on another country’s sovereignty, Newt Gingrich pounced.

“He’s not a Chinese dissident,” the former speaker said, picking up a thread of the argument Paul had made about the need to respect civil liberties. “The analogy Congressman Paul used was utterly irrational.”

This is a common dispute between the two GOP candidates, who stand at truly opposite ends of the GOP’s foreign policy pole. But the South Carolina debate crowd was clearly in Gingrich’s corner. They practically jumped out of their seats when he concluded with the following line: “Andrew Jackson had a pretty good idea about America’s enemies: kill them.”

After garbling his first go at the topic, Paul stuck to his usual campaign script on the second. “If another country does to us what we do to others, we are not going to like it very much,” he said. “Maybe we ought to consider a golden rule in foreign policy… We endlessly bombed these countries and we wonder why they get upset with us and it continues on and on.”