Why I Want To Be Your President: The Palmetto Freedom Forum Edition

Who knew South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint had such power?

Five of the Republican Party's leading presidential contenders traveled to South Carolina on Labor Day to kiss the ring of tea party kingmaker Jim DeMint at a first-of-its-kind forum devoted to the Constitution and the role of government.

DeMint, a South Carolina senator who rose to national prominence during the 2010 midterm elections as a power broker of the tea party movement, joined with Iowa Rep. Steve King and a Princeton law professor at the Palmetto Freedom Forum in Columbia.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann is ready for a “confrontation” with the Supreme Court over Roe v. Wade, by pushing a bill through Congress that would make abortion illegal.

"If the Supreme Court, by a plurality of the justices, may impose their own personal morality on the rest of the nation, then we are quite literally being ruled by those individuals as opposed to giving our consent to the people's representatives," Bachmann said.

When it’s her personal morality, I suppose.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney wants us to know he makes decisions with his knees, as much as with his brain:

“I go on my knees,” Romney said of his decision-making process. “I’m a person of faith and I look for inspiration.”

Texas Rep. Ron Paul seems to be sticking with familiar points: reining in the Federal Reserve, eliminating the capital gains tax and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Business Herman Cain has found a way to turn his clever quips into economic policy:

Speaking Monday in South Carolina at the Palmetto Freedom Forum sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, Cain laid out his "bold" plan dubbed "9-9-9." The former businessman explained that he would do away with the existing tax code and replace it with a nine percent tax on corporate income, a nine percent tax on personal income and a nine percent national sales tax.

And Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich seemingly came off as a nice guy:

After the forum, Gingrich had kind words for his GOP rivals and said the tea partiers have been unfairly vilified by the media and Democrats.

He made reference to recent reports that Vice President Joe Biden called tea party activists "terrorists" in a closed-door meeting during the debt ceiling debate.

"It strikes me that despite every effort of the news media and every effort of the Democrats to isolate the tea party and treat them more hostilely than we treat terrorists who are trying to kill us," Gingrich said. "Here you have a Democratic Party where it's OK to call American citizens 'terrorists' but it's not OK to call terrorists 'terrorists'? There is something really bizarre about that."

And there’s a debate on Wednesday, no?