Iowa Post-Mortem

I stayed up just late enough last night to watch a furnance-faced Mitt Romney speed read through a speech like a coked up version of the guy who recites the legalese at the end of a 30 second radio ad for a car dealership. Except, unlike the ad guy, Mitt was really bad at it. At one point he attempted, for whatever reason, to add in a few lines from America The Beautiful but ended up slurring something about "amber waves of rain" before getting on to the MSRP part.

Mitt's a pretty wooden actor so it's difficult to know if he was exultant or just pissed but there can be little doubt he wanted the room to know he was excited. And why shouldn't he be? Here's Mitt leaving Iowa with an ever-so-slight 8 vote win over Crazy Hopeless Alternative Candidate Of The Week Rick Santorum which entitled him to.. well actually just 13 of 25 delegates.

But, on the other hand, Iowa was supposed to be the phase of the primary where the turbulent anti-Mitt imperative coalesced around a spokesperson with a legitimate chance at denying him the nomination. Instead it flirted with a series of laughably non-viable alternatives in a desperate game of spin-the-bottle which happened to be pointing at Santorum on the day the caucus was held.

Don't worry. It won't stay there long. Santorum's "victory" speech was maybe even funnier than Romney's. Not only did he have to suddenly pretend that he had been doing and saying things in Iowa all this time that anyone had paid any attention to, but he had to do it with that icky smirk on his face. You know the one that says to the world this is a man deeply conflicted over whether to be a corrupt douche or a sanctimonious weirdo from one minute to the next? Yeah that one. Expect to hear a lot more about that between now and the time Santorum becomes completely irrelevant again. Probably Saturday.

Meanwhile former Crazy Hopeless Alternative Candidate Of The Week Michele Bachmann is finally out. For a while last night it wasn't clear what she was going to do. At one point she said "I am not a politician" and then moments later insisted to supporters that she was not dropping out of the political campaign she had been engaged in since last summer. And then today she's gone.

But if last night's results are any indication no one will notice. Bachmann's poor performance, most perturbingly, screwed up my projected numbers. Because Bachmann, Roemer, Huntsman, and the remnants of Herman Cain couldn't combine for more than 5% of the total, there was far more Crazy vote out there to spread between Santorum and Paul than I expected. Also note that even though 123,000 Iowa Republicans is a ridiculously small number of voters for us to be giving all this attention to, it is also a record high turnout for a GOP caucus. More highly motivated Crazy Caucus Goers than at any time in history were on hand last night, they were less divided than they could have been if Bachmann still pulled any interest at all, and, even still, Mitt finished first.

So Bachmann's departure shouldn't affect Mitt's ability to fend off the Crazy vote in future primaries. And now that Rick Perry has apparently decided not to go back to Texas and secede from the race, the Slightly Less Crazy Anti-Mitt vote he split with Newt in Iowa will probably split again in South Carolina.

Restless GOP voters may not have much confidence in Mitt but the rest of their field is a mess. And now, because of the long experience in Iowa, they know it. I'm sure there's still some time left for one half-hearted feint at a stand in South Carolina but after that, don't expect there to be much sport left in this race.

Boring

Zogby has Cain at 45% and Perry (who, incidentally I don't mind telling you, I was correct to think would fizzle faster than Rudy! 2008 once people saw him in action) all the way down at 7% now.

What's boring, though, is that despite all of what we're supposed to believe is wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on the part of "real conservatives" and just as much despite all the "LOOK OUT FOR THE CRAZY EVIL BACHMANN-PERRY-SANTORUM MONSTER UNDER YOUR BED" scaremongering coming from the Obama apologists, the GOP nominee is going to be Mitt Romney and was always going to be Mitt Romney. And if you don't or didn't get that at any point, you've never known how to pay attention.

Also 5318008 upside down spells "BOOBIES"

Michele Bachman during this week's GOP debate:

"The 999 plan isn't a jobs plan, it is a tax plan. ...when you take the 9-9-9 plan and turn it upside down, I think the devil's in the details."

You know what? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And I guess if it's stuck on 9 and you turn it upside down at 6:00 you can make it right four times but that's not important right now.

The point is 999 is a pretty diabolical idea any way you happen to look at it.

Cain’s tax plan consists of three different 9 percent taxes — one on wage income (investment income is exempt), one on sales of goods and services (including food, housing, and medicine), and one on business income (investments and purchases from other businesses are deductible; wages, however, are not). But most Americans will end up paying all three of those taxes, for a combined tax rate of 27 percent of their income.

That’s because middle and low-income Americans get all, or nearly all, of their income from ordinary wages — all of which would be subject to Cain’s 9 percent wage tax — and then they spend all of their income, which means it would be taxed again by the 9 percent sales tax. Finally, the burden of the 9 percent business income tax would be passed on to them as well, either in the form of lower wages — since wages are not deductible — or in the form of higher prices for goods and services.

The bottom line is that most Americans will pay all three of Cain’s taxes, making their real federal tax rate 27 percent. Compare that to the current tax code, under which someone in the bottom quintile pays two percent of their income in federal taxes and someone in the middle quintile pays 15 percent. The fact is that pretty much everyone making up to around $100,000 a year would pay more under Cain’s plan than they do now.

The good news here for you if you happen to be among the "working poor" which we must assume lies somewhere within Cain's $100,000 or below box, you can probably still make ends meet while paying the much higher total tax rate because Cain promises you'll be working a second job, anyway.

When questioned on the Face The Nation television program as to exactly how his economic plan would bring about an improvement in the economy, Cain responded that his plan would expand employment so much that "the working poor would be able to hold two jobs."

We could ask Cain what he thinks about pizza delivery as a moonlighting option but I'm not sure Godfather's ever offered that service. Besides, as is often the case with Cain when pressed for details, the odds are he has "no idea".

I wonder if Gene's Po Boys is still looking for help.

Quotable

“Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you may understand the crises of our age. Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda.”

-- Ignatius Reilly Michele Bachmann