The most important unresolved question of CNN’s GOP debate in Las Vegas may be how to tell an apple from an orange. Herman Cain’s use of a hackneyed metaphor actually helped him to avoid offering an explanation of how his nine percent national consumption tax doesn’t double the sales tax of many states. That apple is rotten, though, and Cain, who was banged around early for his tax plan, and then largely ignored, has discovered what it’s like when the luster fades from a bright, shiny political object.

Because he remains the lead dog of a snarling pack, Mitt Romney had to suffer flanking attacks on health care and immigration. When Rick Perry came after the GOP frontrunner for hiring a lawn care company that used undocumented workers. Romney’s answer to Perry sounded petulant almost like a troubled rich man who has a hard time finding qualified domestic servants. His description of the conversation he had with the yard guy compounded Mitt’s fumble. “I said, look, I’m running for office, I can’t have illegals…..” Does this suggest it would be okay if he weren’t a candidate for governor when this happened? The moment was akin to Perry letting everyone know he can’t be bought for $5000.

Romney scored serious body blows on Perry regarding immigration and jobs. The Texas governor keeps yammering about his experience dealing with the border but he has no real results to report. He has spent about $400 million on cameras and cops and patrols but just last week his hometown newspaper in Austin began running a series of reports about how a drug cartel was using the Texas capitol city as a location to trans ship narcotics to the north. The inflow of undocumented workers and contraband seems unabated. Cameras on poles are pretty easy to spot and walk around in the hundred mile gaps.

Michelle Bachmann’s solution to this problem, though, is halogen-lit ignorance. A 1700-mile wall from San Diego to Boca Chica Beach in Brownsville is a preposterous concept in terms of cost, engineering, and effectiveness. On the border, the recurrent joke is that the only way the U.S. could ever afford to get it built would be if they got the labor from cheap undocumented workers. Can’t be built without Mexicans. Cain’s notion, which was first a joke and then a plan, of building a twenty-foot tall wall that is electrified and will kill transgressors, dismisses him as a serious candidate. It also brings to mind a great line from Texan Jason Stanford who said that, “The only thing a 20 foot wall does on the border is create a market for 21 foot ladders.”

Border issues are complex far beyond the matter of simply shutting down the frontier. Rick Perry is fond of blaming Uncle Sam, who is supposed to protect the borders, but if Perry were as good at dealing with the issue as he claims, he would have shown some traction with reduced immigration and drugs. Nobody in the GOP has seemed even slightly interested in asking the people who live on the border what they think might work.

Perry and Romney might have appeared publicly in the debate to make peace on the question of faith but the issue won’t die off. The Christian evangelicals supporting Perry will keep up their third party efforts to let everyone in their churches know that they ought not be voting for a Mormon. And Perry’s campaign is doing a wink, wink, nudge, nudge approval. His super PAC can also be expected to help fund those communications. Romney, though, missed his chance to make Perry squirm. If he had forced the issue with a simple question, “Governor, do you think Mormons are Christians?” Perry would have been backed into a corner he does not have the political skill to escape. His honest answer would be no.

The CNN debate was also notable for the fact that Newt Gingrich was not the grumpiest person in the room. Rick Santorum, who has nothing to lose, went after all of the lead dogs, whose rear ends he can barely see from where he is running. Santorum’s “Pennsylvania strategy,” though, was more silliness. He got elected twice to the US Senate from his home state but when he got voted out, he was really and truly and forcefully shown the door by an 18 percent margin. Pennsylvania isn’t going to launch Santorum to the White House.

Sort through that and try to find an apple or an orange that isn’t at least badly bruised or almost rotten to the core.

1 Comment for this entry:

• 

  estaweno@aol.com
  October 28th, 2011 on 12:13 pm

  I thought “jmoore@s3.com” would reach you without going thru all this…
  but it came back as that address has “fatal errorrs!” Yikes.

  All I was trying to say was:
  Sparty meets Big Red tomorrow dude! Herbie’s sphincter is already factored!

  Laterrrrr
  Kc