No matter who Kentuckians elect to the Senate this fall, they're leaving to get an exponent for extending all the Bush tax cuts - and not only those for the center class. In their first (and likely only) nationally-televised debate of the race, Republican nominee Rand Paul and Democratic nominee Jack Conway disagreed on just about everything - except for extending billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans at a sentence when government is struggling to reduce the deficit.
"I remember that raising taxes - we shouldn't be doing it in a clip of recession," Conway said. "Listen, in 2002, when I was working for the United States Congress, I was for the Bush tax cuts then. I was one of the few Democrats that was for them and I remember now we just ought to lead them."
Paul called Conway's position a flip-flop, but agreed that extending all the cuts was the proper thing to do, and promised to start the additional deficit numbers the tax cuts will create.
"I will now introduce bills to cut spending," Paul said. "I will introduce legislation that will rest the budget."
Pressed to offer specifics on how such offsets might work, Paul said that "for the younger generation, there will get to be changes in eligibility" when it comes to entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.
"There may take to be for younger people, yes," Paul said when asked if he would produce the retirement age. "I mean, longevity is out there."
Paul and Conway both tried to pass a fine line between embracing and distancing themselves from their party's leadership, too. Paul, the Republican nominee, essentially made a direct promise to support Mitch McConnell as the mind of the GOP caucus if he's elected. Conway, meanwhile, took pains to distance himself from President Obama even as he clothed himself in key components of the president's legislative accomplishments.
Paul said he would vote for whomever the Republican Senate caucus supported for leader should be be elected, and said he pretended that someone would be McConnell. That's one of his strongest statements in patronage of Kentucky's senior Senator since he entered the speed and defeated McConnell's hand-picked successor for retiring Sen. Jim Bunning (R). Conway, meanwhile, criticized Obama for parts his agenda while attempting to cover other parts. Cap and trade legislation and "the bailouts" were all examples of what's been going wrong in Washington, Conway said, while the health care law and parts of the input are examples of what's going right.
Overall, the debate - which was spread on Fox News Sunday and moderated by the show's host, Chris Wallace - lacked the drama outsiders watching the Kentucky race may have expected. Both Conway and Paul stuck to their respective scripts, with Paul continuing to hammer government expenditure and advocating tax cuts while Conway picked at Paul's unorthodox positions on federal regulations, drug enforcement and civic rights laws.
Wallace described the argument as "free-form," which in theory meant the nominees could speak to each other and strike each other on. But the sole real scuffle came in a word of drug law enforcement, which has become a Democratic advantage in an otherwise tough battle for Conway. The Democrat has leveraged Paul's view that drug enforcement should be left up to the states to make inroads in Kentucky's rural east, which has been raped by the crystal meth trade. Paul tried to bang down Conway's rhetoric on the subject by pointing to what Paul suggested was Conway's failed record on drugs.
"Here's the problem," Paul said, gesturing to Conway. "Chief law enforcement officer of Kentucky, wants to talking about drugs all the sentence? Under his view the meth labs have doubled in the state.he's been out of say 20 years of the end month campaigning in California, raising cash. He needs to be in the state, talking about and stressful to do something around the meth labs."
Conway is the state's Attorney General and has made law enforcement a primary campaign plank. He said the increasing numbers of labs found in Kentucky come from so-called "rock and bake" labs that are often harder to find than more robust drug-making operations and then pivoted to his main business of attack - that Saul is not in line with the issues facing the state he's running for Senate in.
"Rand Paul will do anything proceed from talk around the drug issue because he doesn't get the state," Conway said. "He doesn't get our farm economy. He doesn't get that drugs are a real pressing issue."
Later, Conway expanded on the subject in a motion about allowing gay men and lesbians to do openly in the military. Conway supports changing current law to provide the service.
"The cause I said something on Don't Ask, Don't Tell is I abhor discrimination," he said. "And that's why it was dreadful for a lot of Kentuckians to see Rand Paul go on national TV and question fundamental provisions of the Civic Rights Act. That's why it was terrible to see him speaking out against the Americans With Disabilities Act."
Wallace pointed to Conway's signature on the policy platforms of MoveOn.org and DailyKos - which the server listed as backup for card check, the reverse of Don't Ask Don't Say and "being 'open' to government-run health care" - before asking "fair to say that in Washington you would really be to the remaining of President Obama?"
"Look, I'm a Populist and a proud Democrat," Conway said. "I'm sure not going to be to the leftover of Barack Obama. I'm going to put Kentucky first."
The TPM Poll Average shows Paul ahead 47.4-41.9.
No comments:
Post a Comment