US REPUBLICAN presidential candidates confronted Texas governor Rick Perry aggressively in the latest of the party’s public debates, pressing him to explain his views on social security and his decade-long record in Texas, including an effort to require the vaccination of schoolgirls and granting children of illegal immigrants a college tuition break.
The rapid rise of Perry, who joined the race only a month ago, made him a central target for his Republican rivals. He sought to deflect the criticisms with humour and sarcasm, but he tried to clarify his position on social security, whose constitutionality he has questioned.
Employing basketball scoring terminology, he said that he “slam-dunk guaranteed” promised benefits would be available to current retirees, but also suggested the nation should examine ideas such as allowing states to opt out of social security and set up their own programmes.
He repeatedly tangled with Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who pushed him again and again to expound on his positions. When Perry tried to flick away the questions, Romney declared: “We’re running for president.”
The Monday night debate went a long way in clarifying the contours of the Republican contest, both in terms of the strength of the candidates – for the second time in a row, Romney and Perry were the main players of the night – but also in clarifying what issues would drive the race. It is rare in a presidential primary to have such a vivid difference of opinion on a critical issue, as is the case now with Romney and Perry on social security.
The Republican presidential debate often took on the feel of a rollicking political game show, playing out before a studio audience of 1,000 Tea Party activists at the Florida State Fairgrounds. The debate was continually interrupted by applause, but it remained an open question whether the cheers or the jeers provided a more accurate reflection of how Republican voters elsewhere were judging the evening.
A day after America commemorated the 10th anniversary of the September 11th 2001 attacks, the debate dealt almost exclusively with domestic concerns. The criticism that the Republican candidates levelled at one another overshadowed the time spent assailing the policies of President Barack Obama.
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who has struggled to break into the exchanges between Perry and Romney, stepped into the conversation forcefully as she challenged Perry for a programme he advocated in Texas requiring girls entering the sixth grade to be vaccinated against the human papilloma virus, which causes a sexually transmitted disease that is linked to cervical cancer.
After Perry repeated his lament that it was a mistake to have required the vaccination via an executive order rather than through legislation, Bachmann said: “To have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat-out wrong.”
To applause, she reprised questions about the role Perry’s former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, might have played in pushing the executive order as a lobbyist for the drug company that makes the vaccine, Merck, alleging that the company generated thousands of dollars in donations to Perry.
“The company was Merck and it was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them,” he said. “I raise about $30 million – if you’re saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended.”
Perry, who was positioned at the centre of the stage, did not retreat from the criticism. But he drew jeers for his decision in 2001 to allow the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at public universities in Texas. Bachmann sharply criticised him and former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania suggested an ulterior motive.
“Maybe that was an attempt to attract illegal – I mean Latino – voters,” Santorum said.
Perry defended the policy, which is a subject of concern to people he has met in early-voting states. While the economy has dominated the campaign debate, the issue of immigration is simmering and the exchange on Monday night offered a glimpse into its volatility. “If you’ve been in the state of Texas for three years, if you’re working towards your college degree, and if you are working and pursuing citizenship in the state of Texas, you pay in-state tuition there,” Perry said. “It doesn’t make any difference what the sound of your last name is, that’s the American way.”
While it was the fifth Republican presidential debate of the year, it was only the second time that Perry has joined the candidates on stage. His views on a variety of subjects are less well known than many of his rivals’, so the questions often returned to him. He said it was time to bring US troops home from Afghanistan “as soon and as safely as we can”.
Congressman Ron Paul of Texas also took a shot at Perry when asked whether he deserved credit for his economic record in Texas. “I would put a little damper on this,” Paul said, “but I don’t want to offend the governor, because he might raise my taxes or something.”
The candidates were welcomed on to the neon-lit stage by Wolf Blitzer, the CNN anchor, as though they were contestants in a lightning round, complete with nicknames, including Bachmann, “The Firebrand”; former House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich, “The Big Thinker”; and Santorum, “The Fighter”.
CNN’s decision to co-sponsor the debate with the Tea Party Express resulted in a more roiling debate than the more decorous one last week at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California. The audience of about 1,000 made no secret of whom it liked and whom it did not, cheering along Perry and Herman Cain, a former business executive, and being cool to Romney.
The Express is a California- based group founded in 2009 to support the Tea Party Movement, the socially conservative, politically right-wing ginger group of mainly Republicans. Its members of Congress have formed themselves into caucuses in both the Senate and House of Representatives but not a separate political party.
At the debate, Perry and Romney, whose lecterns were positioned side by side, quickly turned their answers into a nightlong match of one-upmanship. At one point, Perry leaned over and patted his rival on the back as the moderator asked Romney if Perry deserved any credit for job creation in Texas. “If you’re dealt four aces,” Romney said, “that doesn’t make you necessarily a great poker player.” But Perry was ready with a quip of his own: “Mitt, you were doing pretty good until you got to talking poker.”
Former governor Jon Huntsman of Utah came prepared with a pocketful of quips, but his dry delivery, coupled with a Tea Party audience who never quite warmed to him, often left his one-liners hanging awkwardly.
Fielding a question on social security, Huntsman tried: "You've got Governor Romney, who called it a fraud in his book No Apology.I don't know if that was written by Kurt Cobain or not." (Not a Nirvana crowd, apparently. There was no applause or laughter on that allusion to the band's hit All Apologies.)
Later, when Perry said it was impossible to secure the border, Huntsman called it an almost “treasonous comment”, alluding to Perry’s early campaign remarks that were critical of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. Huntsman delivered the line with a grin, but the audience offered only a hushed murmur.
Then, trying to land another attack against Romney, Huntsman said: “We could spend all night talking about where Mitt’s been on all the issues and that would take forever.”
But even to a crowd that was far from gracious to Romney, the hall was nearly silent. – (Copyright the New York Timesnews service)