The big winner tonight was Mitt Romney for one simple reason: No one laid a finger on him. Romney repeatedly turned his fire on Obama while all the non-Romneys fought with each other. Paul called Gingrich a draft dodger. Perry called Paul a hypocrite. Paul called Santorum a big-government conservative. And Romney just stood back and watched it all. Whenever the moderators asked him to join the fray he demurred and turned the discussion toward Obama.
He even went after the moderators for asking a “silly question” and when asked to criticize his rivals said everyone on the stage would do better than Obama. The irony is that that was Gingrich’s role in the debates a few months ago — now Romney has appropriated it.
The big loser tonight was ABC News. We’re at war, the economy is in the tank, Iran is building a nuclear weapon, and ABC was obsessed with … contraception and gay marriage. They spent a good 15-20 minutes on those topics, while failing to ask a single question about Obamacare, the debt, entitlement reform, or other several other pressing issues.
Santorum was a winner tonight as well. He took a lot of fire and handled his job as the latest debate piñata well — and laid a few punches of his own. (The best of which was when he said to Ron Paul “If we followed your policies, we would not have a Navy to rescue those Iranian soldiers.”) Unlike others who came before him, he did not lose ground in his first debate as the leading anti-Romney candidate.
Perry had a great debate too. He’s gotten better and better each time. But I think people have made their decisions on him this time around. He was mocked for it, but he made an important point about Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq when he said that every life lost will be for nothing because Obama wants to appease his liberal base. Obama has handed Iraq over to Iran, even if they are not moving in “literally” at light speed. They are moving in pretty fast. We should not have withdrawn all our troops and the next president will need to find a way to mitigate the damage. Imagine what the Korean peninsula would look like today if we had withdrawn every single American soldier right after the end of hostilities in the Korean War.
Newt had a great moment during the long discussion of contraception and gay marriage when he turned the question around and asked why no one was concerned about anti-Christian bigotry. The Twitterverse erupted and ever those who do not support his candidacy cheered him.
But the bottom line is that no matter how well the others did, Romney is in the lead and pulling away — so if he came away from the debate unscathed, he won.
I agree with a great deal of Mr. Thiessen's offering. But have to disagree with the premise it is just because "No one laid a finger on him". This is simply a deeply flawed premise, which was inspired long ago by some of the fashion amongst us. The idea someone always wins in a debate by knocking someone down is simply silly - as if they haven't been watching the vast majority of political debates over the years.
This concept ignores the actual substance of the offering, the solid answers, the appropriate tenor, the command of issues, the serious articulation, the focus on priorities, etc., which can make a Candidate rise over the others. Romney again has the best offering, clearly.
And the "No one laid a finger on him" tends to suggest to others who did not watch, that no one tried to attack. This simply was not the case. Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, Huntzmann, all tried to debase Mr. Romney and looked poor in the effort. Perry might be the worst, playing populist games with Wall Street. Santorum tried on this level - bizarrely crying foul about class warfare, and then digging in deep with his own form of populist "Blue Collar" rhetoric. Gingrich mindlessly used the NY Times to attack Romney.
The problem is that Romney is a hard target. He is a very strong Candidate, and quite articulate. He is able to handle an attack, and diminish it in the exchange. Few might even recognize the subtle response to Santorum's clumsy efforts, when Mitt Romney referenced Washington Politicians (Rick having been there for 17 years).
The concept of "No one laid a finger on him" doesn't recognize how well Mr. Romney does, and tries to place all the blame for his debate success on the failure of others. This just isn't the case. Romney again did very well, especially in regards to his Economic insight, which proves very influential.
Also, Rick was again hurt tonight by the challenges from Ron Paul. Rick's answers on his failure to vote for "Right To Work", his Earmarks, etc., are very damaging to the concept of being the ideal. Rick in the spotlight is better than Gingrich, but he has problems as well as the conflicted Washington Politician.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOld Fan, that's my complaint too. The media doesn't seem to notice that Romney gets attacked all the time. The DNC does it with ads, and the other candidates do it whenever they've got a microphone. Tonight they tried to attack him but he is so adept at turning it around to a non attack - and he forwards it on to an attack against Obama - that apparently even the press is fooled into thinking the original attack against Romney never even happened!
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"The best of which was when he said to Ron Paul “If we followed your policies, we would not have a Navy to rescue those Iranian soldiers.”
If you're counting on ignorance. In reality, the U.S. has had a relatively strong navy since it's founding (it's also reflected in the wording of the Constitution). In other words, long before people such as yourself decided that carrying out massively expensive and utopian Progressive social policies in backwards nations was somehow a brilliant idea. The Army and Marine Corps would be the two services most cut down to size, not the Navy. In fact, the Navy has suffered greatly due to the emphasis on the land components that's had to be ramped up over the last incompetent decade.
Somewhere in Newport, an institution weeps.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy estimation of why a finger wasn't laid on Romney was that a replay of "You, Mitt, put a mandate in place and this was the genesis of Obamacare...bla bla bla" has been trotted out in the 10,000 other republican debates. It gets awfully dry to hear the same critiques come up that the anti-Romney crowd has been recirculating for over five years. You can only kick the dead dog so many times before it loses it's entertainment value.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, Mitt Romney is not super conservative. No, Mr Limbaugh, you're not as powerful as you would like to be. Yes, Romney promised to overturn Obamacare.........
Newt is still best in my eyes. Santorum was good, and Perry improved a lot.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank you for the comment. It sheds light on the debate since I hae not watched it yet. I am looking forward to see tonights debate as I believe it will be the nail in the coffin for some as NH swings the bat this week. I agree that Romney handles himself well in a way that is so subtle it is difficult to detect. He is good at deflecting and not reaching out his hand to smack the candidate with rhetoric. Sharp minds are what we need in the office NOT people who must fill their cabinet with thinkers to get the job done.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf Santorum really made that "we wouldn't have a Navy" comment, he displayed an astonishing ignorance of the constitution, which pretty much dis-qualifies him in my mind. If he's the nominee, I'm going to have a hard time pulling the lever.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne of the most frustrating aspects of the GOP campaign so far besides having way too many wanna-bes in the race has been too many debates and allowing the liberal networks to sponsor them. It shouldn’t surprise any non-liberal that ABC or any of the mainstream networks would focus on bogus issues such as contraception and gay marriage instead of the real issues and problems facing this country. I suspect these kinds of questions/topics are designed to frame the Republicans around the liberals existing image of racist, bigot, uncompassionate….bla! bla! bla! This is the liberal M.O. and has been going on way too long. What continues to amaze me is why the Republicans allow themselves to be put in these positions in the first place. Of course I wouldn’t expect the networks to ask about Obamacare or the debt or entitlement reform because that puts the spotlight on Obama and his failures and the networks have proven they simple can’t do that because of their own partisan preferences.
So, what is the lesson? The obvious one to me is to reduce the total number of debates and be a bit more selective on who you will allow to sponsor them. I can only hope the GOP smartens up but for some reason I don’t hold out much hope since you would think they would have already known better by now!
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