Debate Thoughts

A good night for Romney, as everyone seems to agree. The post-debate CNN poll was 67%-25% pro-Romney, a margin of victory rarely seen. Surely that 25% is only the hardest of hard-core Obama supporters, which means the independents must have sided with Romney in truly overwhelming numbers.

Still, a few tricks were left on the table. I wish Romney had held Obama's feet to the fire more on his record. For example, all those times Obama talked about how Romney would horribly cut the budget and throw grandma out on the street, all Romney had to say was: "For the sake of argument let's say we went back to the spending levels of 2000. Did Clinton throw grandma out on the street? No. But we had a balanced budget and spending was far below its current level. Obama's spending far more, and are you any better for it?" But he continually argued that he wouldn't cut X, wouldn't cut Y. It's OK, Mitt! Cut some stuff!

Also, Romney threw out some talking points without really explaining them. That's something that McCain did four years ago, and it's infuriating. In response to Obama's absurd claim that domestic oil and gas production is up due to his administration, Romney scored a telling blow by explaining that production is up on private lands, but not public lands, but then he just said Romney would (in contrast) "build that pipeline". I know he's talking about the Keystone Pipeline, of course, but it would have made sense to spend 20 seconds explaining this, because many people out there don't know about it.

I'll take it, though. Good performance out there. Next up is the VP debate on October 11, and that should be a joy to watch, kind of like watching your favorite NFL team face your worst football rivals... from high school.

Post-Convention Thoughts

• The Republicans have some terrific young talent. Both Ryan and Rubio gave great speeches. Condoleeza Rice continues to make a case for running for some sort of office: I have to think she'd be a serious contender if she ever wanted it.
• Romney's speech was solid. Not a home run, maybe, but it made the case for competency. It would be hard to watch his bio and not see him as an executive who can get things done.
• Then again, I'm usually OK with the government NOT getting things done.
• Then again, this one time we need to get a few things done, like repealing Obamacare. So if we must have an effective executive, let's have it be a Republican who's repeatedly promised to do just that.
• The mendacity of the Democrats was stunning. You could visualize a mountain of straw men building up around the convention center.
• We were repeatedly told that Republicans will privatize Social Security, end abortion, take away your contraceptives, put blacks back in chains, throw grandma off a cliff, and let your children starve. It's notable that these attacks don't come from minor, fringe party elements: they were mentioned in speeches by President Obama, Vice President Biden, and former President Clinton.
• Consider the following facts: Obama was elected promising to "transform this country." He said if he hadn't turned around the economy in four years his would be a "one term proposition." He did not, in fact, defend the current state of the economy at all, so he has by his own admission not turned it around. His signature achievement (Obamacare) is unpopular and was not mentioned at the convention, and he suffered a massive electoral defeat in 2010. And yet, with all that, he's polling at nearly 50%. I'm an optimist by temperament, but when I reflect a bit I can't help but feel that, just maybe, we're doomed.
• By contrast with the Republicans, the Democratic young talent is pathetic. Antonio Villaraigosa's Soviet-style vote on an amended Party platform was a thing to behold, and he's a guy they're grooming for national office. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's attempt to explain the vote were described by Anderson Cooper as "from an alternate universe." It would be sad if it weren't so important.

Thoughts on Immigration

President Obama's recent decision to use executive order to bypass immigration laws is a lawless act, but it may end up being politically successful because it does raise uncomfortable questions for his opponents.

First, let's quickly dispense with any doubt about its lawlessness. The order was defended as "prosecutorial discretion" by Janet Napolitano, but discretion cannot meaningfully apply in this case. Suppose a Republican president issued an executive order directing federal authorities to stop enforcing penalties on capital gains tax collection (as John Yoo suggested) or federal assault weapon laws. Would there be any doubt that such an order would be interpreted (correctly) as an attempt to bypass Congress? The Obama order should be viewed identically. Prosecutorial discretion is when a prosecutor uses discretion in an individual case. The executive order applies to an entire class of people.

The problem for Republicans, though, is that many of the people who would be helped by the executive order are sympathetic figures. The media has predictably singled out the straight-A students and success stories among them, but one can easily sympathize with any kid brought to the U.S. at a young age and now facing deportation through no fault of his or her own. However, it's for just such stories that prosecutorial discretion was invented. If the DHS chose - on an individual basis - not to deport in such cases, only the most hard-hearted would balk. Republicans need to emphasize this: that the problem isn't one of sympathy, but of Obama's naked politicization of the problem by ignoring the law and issuing the order.

On a larger scale, the reason for the problem in the first place is the ease with which illegal immigration has occurred. It's because there are 800,000 such sympathetic cases that this is such a massive problem. If it were 800 it would never even be noticed. And the reason there are so many is that we have a major illegal immigration problem. It's temporarily been reversed by a stagnant economy, but that will change. Unless reform is implemented to stop future illegal immigration, eventually the problem will recur. One reason it's been difficult to create reform is that neither the left nor the right is willing to make many concessions: the left views illegal immigration as, frankly, good politics (immigrants in general trending leftwards) and the right wishes to avoid the aftermath of the Reagan Amnesty, which promised to legalize many immigrants with the quid pro quo that future illegal immigration would be enforced. The actual result of the amnesty was even more illegal immigration.

Romney has taken a pretty good line in his responses, avoiding fire-breathing while pointing out the legal problems with the President's order. That needs to continue. The best way to avoid this in the future is to make sure the current President is no longer in office come January 20, 2013.