From the Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt:

Everyone Made a Nice First Impression at the Big GOP Speed-Dating Session
Now it feels like a campaign season. Sure, it amounted to Republican speed-dating – two minutes of basic questions, and a thirty second close – but now we’ve seen them all get together – well, with Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz speaking via remote from Washington.
If you didn’t watch… congratulations, you have a life. But if you didn’t see it, you didn’t miss any race-defining flubs or many shining moments. Each interaction was basically, “hello, America, this is who I am and why I’m running for president.”
I missed Rand Paul. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio clearly would have preferred to be addressing everyone in-person. It didn’t seem like there was too much of an audio delay, but both of those guys feed off a crowd’s energy. Having done those sorts of remote interviews, I know it’s tougher when all you’re seeing is a camera in front of you.
Lindsey Graham was funny; discussing D.C.’s dysfunction, he quipped, “maybe we in Washington need to drink more.”
Rick Perry was energized; people who haven’t paid much attention to him since the 2012 race will be surprised by how much more emphatic and assured demeanor. Maybe the hipster glasses are magic.
Carly was poised. Hard to believe she won’t be on the big stage Thursday night. Rick Wilson compared her to the television show “Firefly” last night: “Fan favorite, network doesn’t get it, beloved after.” That sounds like a particularly unjust fate, since most Firefly fans who discovered it after its exceptionally short run on Fox consider its inability to find an audience one of the greatest pop culture tragedies of our era. Picture Arthur Conan Doyle stopping after a dozen Sherlock Holmes stories.
Sing it with me! “Take my Huck, take my Rand, take me where I cannot stand… I don’t care, I’m still free; I’ll take the woman who ran HP… Our country’s gone out of whack; fix it or we ain’t comin’ back… Help this land and economy, we’ll still be the land of the free…”
I could tell Bobby Jindal was attempting to not speak too quickly.
It did seem a little unfair to hit Rick Santorum with the out-of-the-blue lighter question, what woman should go on the $20 bill. His first suggestion was Carly.
It’s hard to discuss Christie without acknowledging the obvious – by his sheer size, he’s a much more physically imposing figure than most of the rest of the field. Lindsey Graham could probably fit in one of his pant legs. He flashed a bit of the Christie glare; he’s clearly going to be running as the tough guy to deal with tough times. Whether there’s room for that in this crowded field remains to be seen.
This was the first time I had seen George Pataki speak since the 2004 Republican Convention. I’m still not sure what he thinks he can offer that no one else in the field can – or where he’s been while the rest of us have been fighting Obama tooth and nail. The cameras caught Scott Walker closing his eyes for several seconds during Pataki’s remarks. We relate, governor.
Jeb Bush looks slimmer. He’s going to be a calming, authoritative voice, all the more now that Trump is in the race. Team Bush is thrilled that Trump is rampaging through the field, confident that if it comes down to a two-man race, Bush will emerge on top.
By and large, this is a group of people whose job for the past year (an for much of their careers) has been speaking in front of groups and running for office. Nobody tripped or wilted under the spotlight (even if a few appeared to be sweating).
I realize that analysis sounds suspiciously like when Jon Gruden says, “That guy… is a football player. He really knows how to play the game.” Hey, it was Monday night!
Our Alexis Levinson was on scene:
“Hopefully we’ll have forums where you can get into more than a one- or two-minute sound bite and really delve into what people’s solutions are,” Ben Carson told reporters after the event. But, he said, “it’s better than nothing.” The format allowed the candidates to answer the question they wanted to answer, rather than the one moderator Jack Heath actually asked them. With just about four minutes of speaking time in each of the two rounds, there was no time for Heath to push back when candidates opted to sidestep in their answers. For the most part, candidates stuck with their stump speeches.