You are right. From the Debate in SC the other night:
And Jane asks this question: List three or more specific programs that will put American people back to work.
REP. PAUL: Well, most of the things the federal government could do to get us back to work is get out of the way. I’d like to see the federal government have a sound currency. That creates a healthy economy. I would like to see massive reduction of regulations. I would like to see income tax reduced as to near zero as possible. [SNIP...continues to blather on repeating and emphasizing the above opening]
MR. GINGRICH: Well, there are three things that can be done at a specifically South Carolina level. There’s one easy thing to do at a national level, and that’s repeal the Dodd-Frank bill, which is killing small business, killing small banks.
The three specifics.
One, there $29 billion plus of natural gas offshore. In Louisiana, jobs for that kind of production are $80,000 a year. That would help us become energy independent from the Middle East.
Part of the royalties from the natural gas could be used, then, to modernize the Port of Charleston and the Port of Georgetown. Charleston has to be modernized to meet the larger ships that’ll come through the Panama Canal in 2014. One out of every five jobs in South Carolina is dependent on the Port of Charleston.
The third thing you could do, frankly, is fundamentally, radically overhaul the Corps of Engineers. The Corps of Engineers today takes eight years to study — not to complete — to study doing the port. We won the entire Second World War in three years and eight months.
MR. ROMNEY: So let’s go back and talk about, first, what you do to get the economy going. And — and of course we’ve spoken time and again about our tax code that’s out of alignment with other nations. We’ve spoken about the fact that regulation is overwhelming us, that we need to take care of our energy resources and become energy-secure. We have to open up markets, and we have to crack down on China when they cheat.
But — but I’d like to talk about something else that President Obama has been doing. He’s been practicing crony capitalism.
[SNIP...cut out the crony stuff]
I’m very proud of the fact that throughout my career, I have worked to try and build enterprises — hopefully to return money to investors. There’s nothing wrong with profit, by the way. That profit — (cheers, applause) — that profit — that profit — that profit went to pension funds, to charities; it went to a wide array of institutions. A lot of people benefited from that.
And by the way, as enterprises become more profitable, they can hire more people. I’m — I’m someone who believes in free enterprise. I think Adam Smith was right, and I’m going to stand and defend capitalism across this country, throughout this campaign. I know we’re going to hit it hard from President Obama, but we’re going to stuff it down his throat and point out it is capitalism and freedom that makes America strong.
MR. SANTORUM: Well, on the first question, I believe in capitalism, too. I believe in capitalism for everybody, not necessarily high finance but capitalism that works for the working men and women of this country who are out there paddling alone in America right now who have an unemployment rate two and a half times those who are college-educated, and feel that no party cares about them. Because you have the Democratic Party and Barack Obama, and all he wants to do is make them more dependent, give them more food stamps, give them more Medicaid.
[SNIPPED Iowa story]
We need a party that just doesn’t talk about high finance and — and cutting corporate taxes or cutting the top tax rates. We need to talk about how we’re going to put men and women in this country who built this country back to work in this country in the manufacturing sector of our economy.
And there’s one candidate that has done that. I have done that. I’ve done that throughout the course of this campaign. I talked about who we were going to target and make sure that we can be competitive.
I was in Boeing today and I was up in BMW yesterday. South Carolina can compete with anybody in this world in manufacturing. We just need to give them the opportunity to compete. And we are 20 percent more costly than our top nine trading partners, and that’s excluding labor costs. That’s why I say we need to cut the corporate tax in manufacturing down to zero. We need to give manufacturers a leg up so they can compete for the jobs, half of which — we went from 21 percent of this country in manufacturing down to 9 (percent) and we left the dreams of working men and women on the sideline. We need to show that we’re the party, we’re the movement that’s going to get those Reagan Democrats, those conservative Democrats all throughout the states that we need to win to win this election to sign up with us, and we’ll put them back to work.
[======================== The above was extracted from http://www.cfr.org/us-election-2012/republican-debate-transcript-charleston-south-carolina-january-2012/p27129 =========================]
So of the four on stage, only one was able to give specifics...Paul wants government to get out of the way? Romney thinks Obama is a problem and that free enterprise will fix things? And Santorum wants to cut corporate taxes and wants a party dedicated to what Reagan wanted so we get those vaunted Reagan Democrats to vote for the party???
Your post, in a nutshell, explains why Newt won South Carolina. Newt has knowledge, fire and ideas, not merely platitudes. Is he always right? Nope. But I would rather have someone who is willing to swing for the fences than someone who tries to play it safe with a bunt and still strikes out.
Interesting thing about Newt is that he was able to give 3 specific examples that did not include cutting taxes. Which he is for, of course, but many Republicans give the impression that they are only for cutting taxes as the one solution for all problems.
It’s all talking points for them. They won’t talk about the Port of Charleston since they didn’t see it listed in ACU’s key votes.
There needs to be a conservative view on infrastructure. We should not be for the short term shovel-ready jobs that are just a sop to construction unions. The government should only invest in long term projects that will have benefits for our entire economy long after the projects are finalized.
He's the one candidate who can talk about issues and you know it's not just a talking-point or factoid learned for that one appearance to pander.
He has a comprehension of the network effects of proposals and historical context.
Given one of our nation's problems is its inability to pivot to meet new challenges today, particularly in manufacturing which is a big part of why China is eating our lunch, someone like Newt could really do a lot of good educating this nation on its way to recovering and renewed prosperity.