Making Sense by Michael Reagan

I didn’t watch CNN’s telecast of the Republican debate because I was there in person.

For some reason — maybe it was my last name — I was able to score three second-row seats at the Reagan Library for the two debates.

More than 20 million people around the world tuned in, apparently making the three-hour debate CNN’s highest rated show ever.

It was a long night of politics and entertainment. I just hope my fellow conservative Republicans watching on TV saw the same political reality show I did — and learned some lessons.

It’s pretty clear to everyone from Joe Scarborough to the New York Times editorial board that the three big winners Wednesday night were Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio.

All three shined on stage when it came to substance, but Fiorina made herself a national household name overnight.

She was smart, tough, passionate and quick on her feet, proving why she deserves to be on the main stage. She had several big “moments” and demonstrated a phenomenal grasp of the issues.

Christie did well, connecting with voters, hitting several questions out of the park and reminding us why he was once a favorite in the 2016 race.

Rubio still looks like he’s in grad school, but he showed he’s done his foreign policy homework and knows what makes America great.

Meanwhile, the good doctor Ben Carson was a clear loser.

He offered virtually no specifics, had no “moments” and showed that while he’s a nice guy and a great surgeon, the presidency is out of his league.

The biggest loser of the night was Trump, who was as awful in person as he reportedly appeared on millions of split-screen TVs.

He made crazy faces, offended people, refused to apologize when he should have, spoke in his usual platitudes and never said a substantive sentence.

I heard more than a few groans and complaints from the Republicans sitting behind me.

Most of the other candidates — the governors and others who were not there because of their celebrity — did OK. They didn’t hurt themselves but they didn’t stand out, either.

Jeb Bush did better than last time, which isn’t saying much, but he’s in for the long haul. He’ll do better when there are fewer candidates left and the debates turn more serious.

Scott Walker did better too, though he seemed to disappear sometime late in hour two. Last time I remember seeing him, he was staring at fiery Fiorina and nodding in agreement like a bobblehead.

Ted Cruz was correct on all the issues, but he’s not as likable as Rubio, whose only flaw is he still looks like he’s in grad school.

Mike Huckabee got in a lick or two, but he’s still beating the drum for his Fair Tax, which everyone except him knows will never go anywhere.

Rand Paul was there, I think.  So was Gov. John Kasich. Kasich was Kasich — solid and substantive.

He’s a winner who knows how to govern Ohio sensibly, but he probably should have been included in the preliminary debate with Rick Santorum, George Pataki, Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham.

The opening debate, which Graham stole with his humor and GOP team spirit, was better in some ways because without the 2,000-pound celebrity in the room it was all substance.

I’m concerned about Trump for a lot of reasons. Yet for all the trouble he’s causing the GOP, his celebrity presence is actually doing real conservatives a great favor.

He’s already brought tens of millions of new eyeballs to the debate broadcasts that otherwise would never have been made aware of the existence of candidates like Fiorina or Kasich.

I just hope those millions of viewers saw what I saw at the Reagan Library — that Emperor Trump had no clothes on and most of the other real Republican candidates were well dressed.

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By Tom Purcell

Here’s a sobering fact: American entrepreneurship is in decline for the first time since the U.S. government started measuring it.

And U.S. Census Bureau data show that the U.S. ranks “12th among developed nations in terms of business startup activity,” according to Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup.

Believe it or not, when measured in per-capita terms, socialist countries such as Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and Sweden now have more startups than we do.

So does Hungary, formerly part of the Soviet bloc, as well as Italy, which hasn’t had many successes in the economic prosperity column since before the Roman Empire collapsed.

Israel, which is a hub of innovation, entrepreneurship and economic wealth production, is the only country ahead of us that makes any sense.

But it gets worse.

“You never see it mentioned in the media, nor hear from a politician that, for the first time in 35 years, American business deaths now outnumber business births,” writes Clifton.

According to the most recent numbers, 400,000 new employer businesses — those with one or more employees, which Clifton says are the real engines of economic growth — “are being born annually nationwide, while 470,000 per year are dying.” Whereas in 2008, business startups outpaced shuttered businesses by 100,000.

If these sorry numbers don’t worry you, they should.

Clifton says that “when small and medium-sized businesses are dying faster than they’re being born, so is free enterprise. And when free enterprise dies, America dies with it.”

Declining American freedom is contributing to the decline of free enterprise. According to the sixth edition of the Legatum Institute’s Prosperity Index, released last year, America now ranks 21st among the top 25 freest countries in the world.

It isn’t rocket science. Freedom, entrepreneurship and economic prosperity go hand in hand, write the Fraser Institute’s Donald J. Boudreaux and Jason Clemens in Forbes:

“In a free market, entrepreneurs devise new products, as well as new methods of production and distribution. If consumers find entrepreneur Jones’s new product valuable enough to buy it at a price that covers its cost, Jones reaps profits. If consumers find entrepreneur Smith’s new product to not be worth the price necessary to cover its costs, Smith suffers loses that are his to bear.”

The consensual transaction through which consumers and entrepreneurs spend their own money “is by far the best means yet devised for ensuring not only that scarce resources are used as productively as possible, but also that creative human effort is continually called forth to discover ever-newer and better ways to use resources,” they write.

But America is inhibiting, rather than encouraging, consumers and entrepreneurs nowadays. It’s no wonder, then, that the economic recovery we have experienced since 2009 is the slowest in more than 70 years, says The Wall Street Journal.

And that doesn’t bode well for any American.

Want a strong military? Want to provide health care for the needy? Want to pay off our rapidly growing bills before they sink us?

Then America better remember how to unleash the genius of American entrepreneurs: tax simplification, fewer nutty regulations, lower government spending and debt to free up investment capital … .

Clifton says that America’s 6 million small businesses provide jobs for more than 100 million Americans — which produces a significant portion of the tax base we need to fund all that the government does.

“These small, medium and big businesses have generated the biggest economy in the world,” he writes. This “has allowed the country to afford lavish military and social spending and entitlements. And we’ve been able to afford all of this because, until now, we’ve dominated the world economy.”

If we want to enjoy renewed economic prosperity, we need a renewed burst of American entrepreneurship.

As goes the American entrepreneur, so goes America.