In case you didn’t know there’s a sorta debate tonight on Fox News. It’s basically a quick round-robin type interview on Mike Huckabee’s Fox show where Huck and a panel do little mini-interviews with each successive candidate.
Newt …
8:09 PM: Newt’s campaign made sure to send ‘Good Newt’ tonight, pretty cool and polished, making good reference to his knowledge of the workings of the federal government without seeming pompous. I think if you’re a Republican looking to be reassured that Newt’s got his feet on the ground and himself under control, you probably think he’s doing pretty well.
8:19 PM: Newt finishing up. Think he did pretty well.
Santorum ….
8:29 PM: It seems he’s pro-life. Now the AG of Florida (one of the questioners) is flipping out over water standards that are strangling Florida.
Perry …
8:39 PM: Perry seems to have gotten himself in a bit of a jam saying he could basically abolish ‘Obamacare’ with an executive order on day one. Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia AG, seized on this, seeming to realize this didn’t make any sense. Now, Mitt Romney has repeatedly said he’d basically give a waiver to every state on day one in office. And that would severely hobble the law. The key though is that Perry didn’t seem to know that he couldn’t just do something like a executive order veto. He fell back on saying he’d have ultra-politicized appointees who’d undermine the law. But Cuccinelli was right on this. Perry muffed it.
Earlier today, we asked whether formally ‘suspending’ his campaign might still allow Herman Cain to get matching funds for his campaign. Our reporter on the campaign finance beat, Ryan Reilly, got hold of campaign finance law expert Joseph M. Birkenstock.
Here’s his answer:
“Obviously you can only get matching funds to actively run the campaign… The question isn’t only whether you can get them, but whether you can use them. You can only spend the matching funds on a qualified campaign expense. If you’re not actively campaigning, the only thing that would be a qualifying expense is a winding down expense… So the cost involved in laying people off and shutting down offices. Having enough facts to support the conclusion that what you’re doing counts as a qualified expense can be pretty tricky.”
Here’s a good way to visualize the entirety of Cain’s campaign.