Labor Day Campaign Kicks-Off With GOP Beauty Pageant

The official beginning of the Presidential campaign will begin tomorrow with Labor Day and a special  forum for the Republican candidates. Senator Jim DeMint, the so-called Tea Party "king maker" of South Carolina, will host the televised event and has been making the rounds of the mainstream news cycle in the last week to promote it. Called the Palmetto Freedom Forum, it promises to be pageant of grandstanding and Obama-bashing for a state that has embraced the Tea Party's short-sighted platform whole-heartedly. Candidates will take the stage and be given 21 minutes to explain themselves and their platforms, and then will be given a question-and-answer session by three panelists; DeMint, Rep. Steve King (R-IA), and Robert George, a Princeton professor and founder of the American Principles Project, which is sponsoring the event. This according to TheState.com, a South Carolinian news site.

DeMint has announced that the forum will, "be seeking more thoughtful answers than those given in many forums." "This event will present a vital opportunity for the 2012 presidential candidates to discuss their positions on a number of key issues and to outline their vision for the future of our nation instead of looking for ‘gotcha’ questions and sound-bite answers." This is most likely a reference to the previous Republican Debate, hosted by Fox News and taking place shortly before the Ames Straw Poll. Many GOP voters were upset, feeling that hosts Chris Wallace and Bret Baier were unfair in asking difficult questions to the candidates; a fact that Newt Gingrich even became defensive about during the actual debate.

On This Week, on ABC, Jim DeMint told host Christiane Amanpour that, "instead of forcing them to answer my questions, we are going to encourage them to define the issues on their own terms." In other words, the Labor Day forum will follow a beauty pageant style format in which candidates can attempt to portray themselves however they life, rather than be forced to speak straight to an issue or obfuscate their weaknesses behind a lot of rhetoric and sermonizing. This forum, and DeMint's unabashedly codependence on these Tea Party candidates, should be expected.

And they are, but his show horse forum wouldn't be as vexing if it weren't for the fact that in the same show he dismissed President Obama's upcoming jobs speech out of hand. He "isn't interested" in it. In fact, he and other congressional Republicans are considering opposing tax cuts and business tax credits ahead of Obama's actual plan, a move that the Huffington Post called "a remarkable turnaround". There's nothing remarkable about it. Republican lawmakers are opposed to anything that comes from the White House, even if it's policies and programs for which they've traditionally asked. In fact, just a month ago House Republicans wanted tax cuts included in their debt deal plan, actually lowering revenues in the face of major spending cuts. However, with Obama's announcement that he'd like to see a further 2% payroll tax cut (about $1000 extra bucks in Americans' pockets), as well as business tax credits to stimulate growth, they want nothing of it.

Essentially this Labor Day charade in South Carolina is going to be a play-nice pageant of Republican candidates to frame the debate without any scrutiny; a lot of sermonizing, to be sure, but with no substance. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are dismissing their President's jobs announcement out-of-hand based on, as DeMint reported on This Week, "what [they've] heard coming down the pipe". The campaign has been underway folks, the "official labor Day start", is just the point at which things are going to get really ugly.