Well, the market has continued it's roller-coaster ride, which really isn't a surprise. There is a good chance we have another week or so of these wild swings. That's what happens when you have fear combined with the majority of the volume being generated by algo computer trading. It has been a surprising light news day. Cisco reported better than expected earnings and revenues. The jobless claims were essentially inline this morning. Apple has also become the largest company in the world, just passing Exxon on it's latest selloff.
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Dylan Ratigan delivers a wake-up call to Congress
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The Republican Iowa debate is tonight. It is usually very important because it their polls help decide the next candidate. I hope Ron Paul looks good. I think he is the best candidate.
Republican debate candidates brace for Iowa fight night
Forget about the pledges of civility and the widespread reluctance to engage in explicit personal attacks. The polite phase of the 2012 campaign is about to come to an end.
When eight Republicans face off in the first Iowa debate Thursday night, almost all of them will be feeling pressure to get noticed — and get tougher.
That’s because in the two months since the last debate – a stiff, largely uneventful New Hampshire forum – few of the GOP hopefuls have done anything to shake up the low-key, largely civil primary race. Among the declared candidates, only Michele Bachmann is on the move, and her Iowa-centric surge has yet to put a scare into national frontrunner Mitt Romney.
That could begin to change Thursday evening, as a pack of lagging hopefuls seeks to make up ground on the eve of the Ames straw poll by taking on both Romney and Bachmann.
“This is that window where the candidates can rise to the occasion or crumble. We’ll look back on this in about five months and the field won’t look anything like it does now, because some people will have risen to this moment,” said Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, who is unaligned in the 2012 race. “This is the beginning of the real campaign here.”
Veteran consultant Mark McKinnon said that at the Iowa debate, “the real games begin,” adding: “Everyone better wear helmets.”
Each of the candidates will have a slightly different objective in the Iowa debate. For some – including Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum – the most immediate goal will be firing up their core supporters for the Saturday straw poll. Bachmann has the additional burden of meeting high expectations set by her strong performance in New Hampshire.
Two other candidates who are not competing in the Ames ballot – Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich – will be seeking to prove they’re relevant to the race, despite languishing in the single digits in national and early-state polling.
Romney, meanwhile, will likely attempt to keep his focus on President Barack Obama and hammer away at the economic message that has made him the early favorite.
If any of the other candidates can knock him off balance – or even bait him into a real confrontation – it would be the first time in the race anyone has truly laid a glove on the former Massachusetts governor.
“I don’t see how it’s not going to be tougher for Romney [in this debate], as the prospects for beating Obama have grown to the point where several of the candidates can realistically envision winning next year,” said conservative strategist Keith Appell. “There are deep reservations about Romney because he didn’t govern as a conservative and he has changed positions on a variety of key issues, so why trust him now?”
Going after Romney may be easier said than done, however. Because he’s not competing in the Iowa straw poll, Romney is not necessarily an ideal target for candidates such as Bachmann and Pawlenty, who are.
For candidates who have more riding on Iowa, the temptation to attack in-state rivals instead of Romney may be overwhelming.
“My strategic goal, if I’m Pawlenty, Paul or Bachmann, is to rev up my troops for Saturday and continue to draw a distinction between myself and the other two,” said Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, adding Santorum’s name into the mix of Iowa combatants.
Former Rudy Giuliani campaign manager Mike DuHaime predicted that Romney “may be a bit of a target, but the fact that the straw poll is there makes this [different] than a debate without an event happening afterward. Most of the participants at the debate are going to be focusing on the straw poll.”
Of the candidates placing big bets on the Ames ballot, Pawlenty might be the one with the most to prove Thursday night. His weak performance in the New Hampshire debate – when he fumbled over an attempt to criticize Romney’s record on health care – has haunted his campaign. And the perception that he lacks Bachmann’s confrontational, red-meat style has been a drag on his efforts in Iowa.
“Pawlenty will want to extinguish the perception from the last debate that he shied away from taking on the frontrunner,” said Curt Anderson, a former top aide to Romney’s 2008 campaign. “The challenge for him is to do that effectively without being so eager that it comes off as a pre-planned, over-the-top outburst.”
Pawlenty and his fellow straw poll competitors will also be scrambling to stand out ahead of Rick Perry’s imminent entry into the presidential race—which means showing they’re capable of clashing with the famously sharp-elbowed Texas governor.
“If Perry joins the race soon, the whole race changes very substantially,” Anderson said. “Think of this as the last pre-season game. It’s significant for sure, teams will be fine-tuning their game plans, but without Perry on the field it is still a pre-season game.”
In a category by himself among the debaters is Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and onetime Obama administration ambassador to China who has failed to gain traction since entering the presidential race in late June.
The Iowa debate will mark Huntsman’s first, giving him the opportunity to reintroduce himself to an audience that showed little interest in the massive media coverage of his campaign launch.
The moderate Huntsman is skipping the Iowa caucuses entirely and has vowed to conduct a civil, take-the-high-road campaign. But his advisers have vowed in recent weeks to use more aggressive campaign tactics against Romney, whose strength in New Hampshire is a serious obstacle to Huntsman making any headway there.
Thursday night’s debate is a chance for Huntsman to scuffle with Romney – and perhaps more importantly, to generate more interest in his campaign and turn the page on a week’s worth of damaging stories about staff turmoil.
“Huntsman needs more now than leaked stories about infighting. They need a better process story. He may try for a big moment in the debate,” said presidential campaign veteran Mike Murphy.
Huntsman, Fabrizio agreed, “needs to say something that separates him from the crowd that does not look craven – that does not look desperately craven. The sands are going through the hourglass here. They really are.”
“Maybe he goes after Romney because of New Hampshire. But if I’m Romney, I don’t even pay attention to him,” Fabrizio said. “Romney’s thing is: ‘You can say whatever you want about me … but I never said that Barack Obama is a great president.”
While the Iowa debate is likely to feature some of the first serious bladesmanship among Republican primary rivals, Murphy and other strategists suggested that the toughest attacks would probably still be aimed at a figure not on the debate stage.
All the candidates, Murphy said, want “a golden TV moment where they can electrify Iowa straw poll voters.”
“What do all Iowa straw poll voters want to see?” Murphy asked. “Someone beat up Obama.”
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