Tough Tea Party crowd makes for spirited GOP debate

By Karoun Demirjian

Monday, Sept. 12, 2011 | 8:36 p.m.

National Republicans have long deflected accusations that there’s any particularly Tea Party pressure pushing the politics of its rank and file to the right.

But at Monday night’s debate, the force was undeniable.

It slammed into each of the front-runners as they tried to present their cases to a tough Tea Party crowd — save for Michele Bachmann, who’s been working with this Republican constituency, and expertly catered to its strongest sympathies to reassert her relevance in the presidential field.

CNN sponsored this fifth GOP debate in partnership with the Tea Party Express, whose members submitted questions and audibly made up the bulk of the studio audience. It was moderated by Wolf Blitzer — and no, Nevada’s own Sharron Angle, though she brought her book tour to Tampa in time for the debate, did not ask any questions.

The Tea Party was an excuse for a few extra bells and whistles: Viewers were treated to a full 13 minutes of introductory material before the first question, including a first-in-debates rendition of the national anthem by Christian pop vocalist Diana Nagy, who sang dreadfully out of tune. (The next CNN debate is in Las Vegas next month. It should be an opportunity to improve on the showy stuff.)

It also brought a fair amount of hooting and hollering from a crowd ready to boo answers deemed unacceptable.

Mitt Romney took heat first for his defense of Social Security, and later, for defending the Fed.

When Rick Perry repeated his “Ponzi scheme” designation of Social Security, Romney went for what based on the last debate, should have been an easy point. “I think Social Security is an essential program,” Romney said, telling Perry that “the term ‘Ponzi scheme’ is what scares seniors.”

Perry went on the attack, saying politicians need to be honest with people and charging that Romney, in fact, agreed with his assessment: “You said if people did it in the private sector, it would be called criminal.”

Romney’s retort: “You’ve got to quote me correctly. What I said was Congress taking Social Security money out of the trust fund is criminal and it’s wrong.”

Perry got the cheers.

But it wouldn’t last long. When the subject turned to immigration and the Latino vote, Perry did what Texans do: tell Hispanics that “It doesn’t matter how your last name sounds” and defend Texas’ policy of status-blind in-state college tuition for residents who have been in Texas for three years or more.

And he trashed the idea of building a full-length border fence.

It was the wrong crowd for that. In the next few minutes, Rick Santorum would mistakenly say “illegal vote” when he meant “Latino vote,” and Jon Huntsman would accuse Perry of treason for his fence comments, but neither of those possibly more-incendiary statements received a negative reaction. Perry got booed.

But let’s be honest: Half of Romney’s and Perry’s draw, in poll after poll, isn’t that voters think they’ve got the best conservative credentials, it’s that the voters think they can win in a general election.

That sort of pragmatic politics has been the downfall of many an electable Republican in recent times — just look at Nevada in the last election.

But it shouldn’t be the downfall of everybody, which is why the biggest and most surprising Tea Party misstep of the night was Ron Paul’s.

Paul, who was calling a Tea Party-style army to constitutional revolution before “Tea Party” groups existed, received the night’s loudest boos when he said that U.S. expansionist military policies had incited 9/11.

That was too much for the rest of the field, and the audience that had been with him all night, to stand. Once they were through with him, Paul’s normal defiance of the establishment had been turned to look like anti-Americanism as they painted him as being an apologist for the only thing worse than Barack Obama: Osama bin Laden.

But while the Tea Party certainly chewed up some losers Monday night, it also crowned some winners who were in desperate need of a bump.

Bachmann sparked the crowd with her “Obamacare”-driven message in the first 10 seconds she spoke, and continued to fan those flames throughout the debate. But while health care arguments usually hurt Romney, a proponent of universal health care while governor of Massachusetts, the Texas governor would get burned worse when Bachmann turned her attention from government planned health care to government-mandated health services.

The debate over whether or not Perry should have signed an executive order mandating girls in Texas receive human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations received more time than the flat tax or prescription drug benefits, and scored Bachmann tremendous crowd points.

But Tea Party allegiances weren’t exclusively won by candidates one-upping one another’s independent conservative credentials.

Newt Gingrich scored points for being a peacemaker.

“I’m not particularly worried about Governor Perry and Governor Romney frightening the American people when President Obama scares them every day,” he offered at one point to settle a Social Security argument.

They cheered.