Garden-gate attack on Mitt Romney and inappropriate show of temper may make Rick Perry wish his performance could have stayed in Vegas by the time the next polls are conducted.
But Herman Cain heartened anti-Romney conservative hearts by offering a blockbuster alternative to RomneyCare and/or ObamaCare with a call for interstate competition in the health care industry.
Bay State Garden-gate
Perry's attack on old stories about Mitt Romney's alleged hiring of illegals shocked this conservative out of my chair more than any electrified border fence could. The Texas Governor referred to an old story about a landscaping company that Romney had hired that was discovered to have illegal workers employed.
There was no evidence that Romney knew the status of all employees of the company and he fired the company after discovering that it had broken the law. Romney was never charged with violating any law.
Perry, who famously questioned the condition of conservative hearts that oppose in-state tuition for illegals, indicts Romney for hiring the mothers of illegals to earn the money to pay the tuition? Was Romney indicted for breaking employment or immigration laws?
Perry temperament problem
For this viewer, Perry's show of temper spoke for itself. I doubt his jobs plan can overcome what was seen of Perry's temperament tonight in Las Vegas that seems inappropriate to the presidency to this Republican. But temperament isn't everything. Witness what cool got is in President Barack Obama's policies. But before Perry gets to be compared with Obama, he has to best the cool customers named Cain and Romney, and on that score I suspect his garden-gate attack makes his quest for the nomination futile.
9-9-9 no VAT
On a brighter note for conservatives, Herman Cain and his 9-9-9 Plan continued to be the target and he refuted the attacks on the sales tax element as equivalent to a European-style VAT tax that is easily hidden by pointing out that double-digit corporate, income, FICA, and capital gains taxes are all embedded in product prices today.
Cain's plan would eliminate capital gains and FICA taxes while drastically reducing income taxes while only adding back a 9% sales tax on new goods. Clearly his plan would embed much less cost in products and services than under current law. The reduction in taxes in this way would be a boon for exports and the creation of jobs generally due to the reduced cost of production and other factors.
Cain was less effective in defending attacks from Mitt Romney that lower income workers and the unemployed would be hurt by the sales tax. Yes, the bushel of oranges, federal taxes now levied, hurt those same groups now; but Cain needs to do a better job in explaining how his reduction of the oranges to but three helps all groups more than the regressivity of the sales tax hurts, especially when applied in states that raise most of their money through state sales taxes.
3400 + 9-9-9 = Cain leaves Vegas still the frontrunner
Cain also found his voice on health care by being the first candidate to endorse a specific replacement for ObamaCare in the debate by backing H.R. 3400, which, among other things, ends state monopolies on the sale of health insurance. This is probably the best single act that government could take to lower heath care and insurance premium costs.
Perry would have been better off simply accepting the mantle as the compassionate on illegals conservative. His stand on in-state tuition was not the reason he comes in 3rd or 4th in polls. His problem has been debate performances and incompetence in defending his record and positions on the issues. I suspect that not only will his personal attack on Mitt Romney's hiring of a landscaping company not help the Governor of the Lone Star State on the issue of illegal immigration but may also have revealed a temperament inappropriate for the presidency in its aftermath.
Time will tell, but for this Rooster poised to vote from his Stone Mountain of Georgia roost come Super Tuesday 2012, the race is now down to three: