Myrtle Beach, South Carolina-After fifteen debates and months of campaigning, one thing is still true of the Republican presidential field: no one wants to take on Mitt Romney.
At first, during tonight’s South Carolina GOP debate, there we signs that Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry would remove the gloves and take the fight to the former Massachusetts governor. Gingrich opened his bid with a defense of his statements on Bain Capital-“I don’t think raising questions is a prerogative only of Barack Obama…I raise questions that I think are legitimate questions”-and Perry continued along those lines, pressing Romney to release his tax returns (to the large applause of the audience). “Mitt, we need for you to release your income tax, so people can find out how you made your money,” Perry said. “The people of South Carolina have to decide whether they have a flawed candidate or not. We cannot fire our nominee in September. We need to know now.”
Santorum attaced Romney on the basis of his relatonship to the Super PAC that supports him, asking the governor to disavow its attacks on Santorum’s record. This too was met with applause from the audience. By the end of the first segment, Romney was on the defensive, and the other candidates were well-positioned to go in for the kill.
But then…nothing.
The conservative candidates, each ostensibly vying to be the anti-Romney, completely backed off of the former Massachusetts governor, allowing him to take the stage-and command it-on questions of the economy. “What I’m concerned with this president is that he’s taking America to somewhere we wouldn’t recognized. I think he is moving us in the direction of a European social welfare society,” said Romney, in an obvious pivot to the general election.
With the exception of Rick Perry’s vigorous performance-where he declared that South Carolina “is at war with the fderal government”-this debate was a throwback to last fall, where the candidates either fell into their familiar roles, or were outshined by the audience. Indeed, if there was anything noteworthy about this debate, it was the extent to which the right-wing extremism of South Carolina Republicans reflected itself in the GOP candidates.
This was most apparent during the questions on race (apropos of Martin Luther King Jr. Day), which were asked-almost exclusively-by Fox News contributor Juan Williams. Between Santorum, Gingrich, and Perry, each worked hard to outdo the other in terms of racial insensitivity. “If Americans do three things: get married, work, and get an education, according to the Brookings Institute, only 2 percent of people end up in poverty,” said Santorum in response to a question on widespread black poverty, implying-in a not-so-subtle way-that African American poverty stems from social pathology.
Newt Gingrich went even further, driving the crowd to cheers as he doubled-down on his view that lower-income children should replace janitors in schools, and attacked Barack Obama as a “food stamp president,” a charge that was lambasted as racially insensitive during a town hall this weekend.
There weren’t many black attendees to the debate, but of those I counted, I managed to ask a few about the candidates and their answers on African american issues. “Historically, once you become a Republican frontrunner, you get deemed as a racist. I think he’s [Gingrich] confronting that head on, which I think is appropriate, because he’s not going to accept the premise,” said Ashley Bell, a black Republican from Georgia who serves as a district commissioner.
Explaining his preference for the GOP-he switched parties last year-Bell noted the extent to which he feels used by Democrats. “It’s a numbers game-the Democratic Party doesn’t care if you’re liberal or conservative, as long as you vote Democrat,” he said, “I want to be in a party that isn’t a cattle call for my numbers, but that cares about my values.”
For what it’s worth, the audience was also enthusiastic about Gingrich’s answers on race, giving him high marks in a post-debate survey from Fox News.
when all was said and done, however, the debate ended with the status quo intact. Romney remains in the pole position, while Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, and Paul remain at a distance. They have less than a week to catch up to Romney, and as of today, they aren’t gaining any ground.
