According to CNN, 3.6 million people watched the Tea Party Express Republican Presidential Debate on CNN last night, 1.1 million of them in the coveted age bracket between 25 and 54.  What is interesting to me is that means 2.5 million of them were either under 25 (unlikely) or over 54.  My guess is it was the over 54 crowd that tuned in in a big way to hear about Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  Social Security was one of the dominant topics.  While Gov. Rick Perry has referred to it as a Ponzi scheme in the past, he said Monday night that it will be there for anyone who has paid in.  Mitt Romney gets the bold stroke award for having the guts to come out and say it will be there for those now drawing benefits but it probably won’t be there in its current form for those in their 50s and young people just starting to pay into the system.  Don’t forget the Congressional Budget Office has already said Social Security will be paying out more than it gets by 2016. 

In the meantime, I thought I would highlight some of the better quotes from the debate.

Newt Gingrich quoting Ronald Reagan, “Turn up the light for the people so they can turn the heat up on Congress.”

Jon Huntsman on Mitt Romney on Social Security, “Gov. Romney called it a fraud.  Don’t know if that was written by Kurt Cobain.”  Kurt Cobain?  As in Nirvana?  Hmmm.

Michelle Bachmann, “It’s easy to turn around this economy.”  You don’t really think that, do you?

Jon Huntsman, “We have a heroin like addiction to foreign oil.”

Newt Gingrich, “We can balance the Federal Budget.  Be smart rather than cheap and actually modernize the Federal Government.”

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/fact-checking-the-cnn-and-tea-party-express-debate-in-tampa/2011/09/12/gIQAPCkXOK_blog.html

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63445.html