New Hampshire Debate: Herman Cain Defends 999 Tax Plan; Bachmann Suggests it's From the Devil

At Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate, co-sponsored by the Washington Post and Bloomberg News at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, the field appeared to narrow to a contest between two candidates: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Atlanta businessman Herman Cain. As Cain endured the first real scrutiny of his hyped 9-9-9 tax plan, Romney managed to make no serious blunders, and came out as close as anyone did to winning.

Romney entered the arena buoyed by an endorsement from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the man a number of Republican would-be kingmakers had hoped would supplant Romney in the contest, but who decided last week to stay out of the race. (Now, of course, speculation on Christie's possible vice presidential aspirations run rampant.)

This was to have been the night when Texas Gov. Rick Perry redeemed himself after three previous fumbling debate performances, but the fourth time proved not the charm. Inexplicably, and knowing full well that the whole of the punditry class was assessing his longevity in the GOP presidential contest on the result of last night's debate, Perry came to a debate about the economy unarmed. (And this from a guy who carries a gun to walk his dog.) He had no economic plan. But hold tight, folks -- he'll have one in the next few days, he said. Promise!

Perry intimated that his jobs plan, as well as his overall plan for reviving the U.S. economy will focus on the extraction of fossil fuel in the American homeland, even as he bashed President Barack Obama's focus on green energy. (Everybody knows that dirty fuels are far more manly than clean ones.)

While it might be too soon to write Perry off -- he has a load of campaign cash, and has just begun his negative-ad campaign against Romney with a particularly brutal attack on Romney's Massachusetts health-care plan [video] -- he did little to stop his slide in the polls, which now show him virtually tied for third place with Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.

Cain Gets the Anti-Christ Treatment

Cain's ascendance to second place in the pollsters' rankings was marked by a fierce attack by Ron Paul, especially after Cain said he thought that Alan Greenspan had been a great Fed chairman. Cain himself served as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City for a time, offering a huge opening to Paul and his end-the-Fed credo.

"Alan Greenspan was a disaster!" Paul exclaimed. Not only did he keep interest rates too low for too long, Paul said, he had abandoned his belief in the gold standard -- the old monetary system whereby currency was backed by gold held in U.S. Treasury. But, Paul, said, he had heard that Greenspan was rethinking the gold standard.

(Herman Cain may be sequestered in his New Hampshire hotel room tonight, asking Greenspan to voice his revived gold-standard endorsement sooner rather than later.)

On the matter of his 9-9-9 tax plan -- a tax reduction plan that would impose a 9 percent national sales tax while reducing personal and corporate taxes to 9 percent -- Cain was cagey with regard to its provenance, and to the set of calculations on which it is based. When Bloomberg reporter Julianna Goldman suggested that a Bloomberg analysis of the Cain plan cast doubts on its ability to meet revenue goals, and cast it as regressive to the fortunes of middle- and low-income Americans.

"The problem with your analysis is that it is incorrect," Cain said to an audience amused by his directness. Bloomberg, he said, based its analysis on the wrong assumptions. But he declined to reveal the set of economic data on which his plan was based.

When asked to name the economic experts who drew up his 9-9-9 plan, Cain would name only one: a Rich Lowrie of Cleveland, Ohio, who turns out to be a wealth management strategist for the Wells Fargo Bank. So, one might imagine the plan to be a boon to those who have wealth to manage. (Props to Comedy Central's Indecision site for breaking that story.)