News Roundup, 1/25/08: Republicans Have Boring Debates Too

Yesterday's Republican presidential debate offered Rudy Giuliani the opportunity to make up ground, to prove himself deserving of the frontrunner position, and perhaps in so doing to perform a little better than third in the Florida polls. Did he succeed? Not really.

As the Democrats learned, for better or for worse, a few debates back, friendly, feel-good debates are great for shoring up the brand of the party, but make it much more difficult to draw necessary distinctions with your opponents — particularly the "I'm better than he/she is because..." kinds of distinctions. This was pretty much the case with yesterday's debate: McCain spoke well of Giuliani, Giuliani was complimentary of his opponents when asked about his dropping poll runners, and even Romney, given the chance to ask Giuliani a question, asked a non-confrontational foreign policy question about China that we'd heard answered in prior debates. Paul was a little more confrontational, and got the most audience applause of any candidate in the debate, but he hasn't had a very good track record of turning that sort of support into votes before.

So, all said and done, Romney was solid on economic answers, McCain was solid on foreign policy matters, and Giuliani had no place to shine. Don't expect much of a bump for him in the upcoming Republican primary on Tuesday.

In other news, we're all a step closer to getting checks in the mail — though how much of an effect that will have on the economy is still in question. The plan includes some tax breaks for businesses, which are widely recognized as having little to no impact on economic growth, and doesn't include extension of unemployment insurance, which has been shown to have dramatic impact. But the plan is likely to have some positive effect, and the version passed by the House has the approval of the Bush administration, so we could see it enacted fairly quickly. The last major hurdle for the package is passing the Senate.

Speaking of Bush and budgets, here's another blow to the should-already-be-dead concept of Republican fiscal conservatism: the Bush administration budgets for next year won't include full funding for the Iraq conflict for the next year. Bush says he doesn't want to commit to any particular military strategy before Petraeus' report in March. Of course, he's never hesitated from making year-long projections on the cost of the war before, so it seems far more likely that he's trying to play down the recent news that the deficit has jumped to $250 billion this year, not counting the hundreds of billions in the stimulus package, and is only projected to go higher.

The New York Times has made its endorsements for presidential candidates. Being a New York paper, of course, they endorsed Hillary Clinton and, um, John McCain. Why not Rudy Giuliani, you ask?

Why, as a New York-based paper, are we not backing Rudolph Giuliani? Why not choose the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly? What about the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL?

That man is not running for president.

It only goes downhill from there, in an endorsement piece that turns into a full-on excoriation of the ex-mayor and presidential candidate.

Speaking of election news, by the way, Dennis Kucinich has dropped out of the race. Submitted without comment.

In local news, a Dallas organization is trying to make Texas supplant Kansas as the go-to state for jokes about being a scientific backwater. The Institute for Creation Research has filed a request with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to be certified to offer a degree in science education.

And State Senator Kim Brimer's badly hidden attempt to keep Democratic challenger Wendy Davis from running failed yesterday, as the Second Court of Appeals threw out the case. Apparently, Brimer would have to bring the suit himself for it to be valid instead of having the Fort Worth Firefighters Association do it, which doesn't seem to be something he wants to dirty himself with.

Also yesterday, we have some prognostications on the next Democratic and Republican primaries, indications that the anti-separation of church and state Texas Restoration Project is apparently a contagious disease, looks at South Carolina where Edwards seems to be getting a late upswing, and questions on mysterious whispers helping Romney out in yesterday's debate.