Houston – You could call it a debate in the style of America’s most famous series of oratorical confrontations — but only if Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had addressed each other from comfy, high-backed armchairs.
And spectators had been willing to shell out at least $200.
Georgia’s two Republican candidates for president, friends who have watched each other’s back during much of the early campaign, will go toe to toe at 8 p.m. (Eastern) Saturday evening in a two-man debate in the backyard of a third contender, Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Last spring, when a Texas tea party group conceived of it , the 90-minute session might have been considered a mere experiment — an antidote to GOP debates that featured an army of candidates reduced to 30-second sound bites.
But in a Republican primary that has made volatility a byword, the Saturday night debate could mark the beginning of a less-than-friendly, tea party-driven fight for the right to challenge former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Friday showed Cain in a virtual tie for the lead with Romney among GOP voters. Gingrich, whose campaign cratered after a May debut, is essentially tied with Perry right behind the two front-runners.
Perhaps more important, other polls show that — should his campaign falter under the weight of the current charges of sexual harassment — Cain supporters prefer Gingrich as a second choice.
C-SPAN has decided to broadcast the debate live, as has AM750 and 95.5FM News/Talk WSB, where Cain once had an evening talk show — and Gingrich often chats with morning host Neal Boortz. The debate will also be streamed live over the Internet at
www.wsbradio.com.
Cain was invited to the debate months ago, on the strength of an April appearance before the Texas Tea Party Patriots, said Julie Turner, president of the group. Gingrich was invited after complaining in an interview about the confining nature of debates hosted by outlets such as Fox News and CNN.
“The debates were so intensely frustrating because you’d have seven, eight, nine candidates up there on the stage, and they have a minute or 30 seconds to respond to the most important issues facing us,” Turner said. So as not to offend their governor, the group has offered to have a second debate featuring Perry and whoever he would like to square off with.
The tea party group chose to go with a modified version of the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, which were actually a collection of long speeches concerning slavery.
The long-form format of the Cain-Gingrich debate will consist of only three or four basic questions, a moderator who will try to stay out of the picture and a great deal of crossdiscussion.
The debate will focus on federal entitlement spending — on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Gingrich will be specifically required to defend his criticism — later retracted — of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to reduce a $14 trillion deficit.
Cain will be required to explain the intricacies of his “9-9-9” plan — a measure that includes a 9 percent corporate tax rate, a 9 percent personal income tax rate and a 9 percent national sales tax.
Gingrich and Cain go back more than 15 years, when the then-U.S. House speaker appointed Cain, then head of the National Restaurant Association, to a commission on economic growth and taxes.
On Wednesday, calling in to AM750 and 95.5FM News/Talk WSB, Gingrich defended Cain as his rival struggled with charges that he had sexually harassed two female employees during his years at the restaurant trade group.
“It is disgusting that the news media, probably led by some leak by some political operative, starts up a witch hunt on a topic where they had no name, no information — there’s no public record — and then they create the whole story,” Gingrich said.
Similarly, in an interview on an Iowa radio station this week, Cain said that he’d certainly consider Gingrich as a running mate — despite the former pizza executive’s distaste for anything that smacks of Washington. “Newt Gingrich is looking well because since he left Congress he’s had a chance to recover,” Cain said.
Expect some polite but strong disagreement Saturday night.
“I imagine they’ll get into the idea of how impractical a sales tax is. I imagine Newt will evaluate [Cain’s “9-9-9” plan] on its merits,” Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said. “These guys have a very cordial relationship. They didn’t just meet. They’ve known each other for more than a decade.”
