Republican Debate Wrap Up!

The Official Commentarama Debate Wrap Up article is upon you. . . guaranteed to by 97% accurate. Who won? Who lost? Who didn’t show? Who had the best answer? All this and more awaits.

● Winner: The Republican Party. This was an excellent debate. It was substantive, friendly and yet challenging. No one shied away from attacking anyone else, but they weren’t nasty about it. The whole group came across as intelligent, unified and Presidential. If I knew nothing about the candidates going in, I would feel comfortable that almost any of them would make a solid conservative president.

● Loser: Obama. The mighty O took a beating. Each candidate not only blasted him on his record, but made it clear (1) he’s in over his head and (2) that anyone on the stage would be an improvement. Obama also can’t be happy the whole group proved to be strong debaters who will easily destroy our TOTUS-dependent president.

● Winner: The Governors. The three governors, Perry, Romney and Huntsman all came across as genuinely solid candidates. They seemed to have strong records, solid experience, command of the issues, and a leadership presence. It helped that MSNBC favored them. . .

● Loser: MSNBC. What a bunch of biased sh*ts! First, they favored the three governors. Secondly, Brian Williams spent the first ten minutes blasting each candidate with attack questions. Then they tried to get the candidates to attack each other using a question format like this: “Candidate Y has been called an idiot for their stupid belief in XYZ. Tell us why Candidate Y is an ass, Candidate X.” Fortunately, no one took the bait and Newt put an end to this, causing one of the best moments in the debate. This all unified the candidates. Moreover, Williams tried to attack Perry because Texas executes criminals. Williams acted like this was something to be ashamed of. But the audience gave a huge round of applause to Texas, showing how out of touch Williams is. Williams was visibly shaken by this.

● Winner: Newt. Newt was in fine form and gave answers that sounded smart and sensible. But his big score came when he blasted Brian Williams and the Politico Kid for trying to get the candidates to fight each other. He finished this by turning this into a blast at Obama. Heavy applause followed. His performance likely will allow him to keep going.

● Winner: Perry. Perry came across as very electable, strongly conservative and highly professional. He dropped all the Texasisms, which will make it hard to caricature him as Yosemite Sam, i.e. the image the Democrats hoped would scare the public. Moreover, no one really laid a glove on him. The candidates tried to hit him over the vaccine thing, but the issue seemed pretty obscure in a debate that centered almost entirely on economics. He was a little unsteady on Social Security, but not enough to hurt him.

● Loser: Perry. Perry never quite managed to separate himself enough from Romney to run away with the nomination. Thus, Romney lives to fight another day. Perry also has a problem with many of Texas’ statistics being near the bottom. The obvious answer is “it’s hard to be near the top when 1/3 of your state snuck across the border in the last ten years,” but Perry was unwilling to raise that point in his own defense.

● Winner: Romney. Romney survived by not getting destroyed, and he showed some fight and came across as a decent leader. He still seems a tad nervous on stage, but he defended himself well and the attacks on him (e.g., RomneyCare) are losing their power.

● Winner: Huntsman. Huntsman has no support, but the moderators treated him like he was tied for first. This will elevate his stature. Also, if you don’t know anything about him, he comes across as smart, competent, a solid (dull) speaker with a solid record, and a man with a good platform. The problem is, he’s lying. Much of what he says is exactly opposite of what he did as governor. For example, his answer on immigration reform sounded very solid, but as governor he gave “driving privileges” and in-state tuition to illegals. His biggest mistake was his defense of global warming, but he lumped it in with being pro-evolution, which will play well outside the religious right.

● Winner: Herman Cain. Cain came across much better than before. Last time, he kept saying, “I’ll look into it and fix it.” This time, he told us how he would fix it, and the difference was dramatic. Cain came across as a solid leader with a thoughtful plan, who could plausibly be seen as the President of the United States. That’s a big step up for him. I would not be surprised to see people give him a second look after this. Unfortunately, it’s probably still not enough to launch him into direct competition with Romney and Perry, but I think he kept himself relevant last night.

● Loser: Bachmann. Bachmann got hurt. The moderators lumped her with the fringers, which gave the appearance that she was not to be taken seriously. She was also (more than the others) the object of ridicule questions where the moderators asked the others to attack her prior statements. They also avoided asking her the key questions about jobs and economics, which made her seem detached from the discussion. Beyond the moderator bias, she suffered from the comparison to the governors who had vastly more experience to draw upon to answer questions. Thus, whereas they could talk about specific programs and achievements they caused in their states, all she could say was “I opposed XX.”

● Loser: Ron Paul. Paul gave a poor showing by Paul standards. As usual, he made some great points, but he always sounds flustered. . . like he’s crazy. Moreover, he is crazy. Indeed, he whipped out the tinfoil hat a couple times, like when he warned us that protecting the border with Mexico was a plot to keep us and our money trapped in the US, or when he blamed 9/11 on big government. Since his support is fixed, I doubt this will hurt him, but this will only cement his “crazy” reputation with the public.

● Loser: Santorum. Santorum simply doesn’t belong on this stage. He had nothing memorable to offer and seemed out of place. Whereas the others debated philosophical questions about the scope of government and economic questions related to reshaping the government’s relationship to the economy, he gave answers that sounded like shallow slogans about issues from ten years ago.

● Loser: McCotter. McCotter didn’t show up. But before you blame him, he was excluded by the organizers who claimed they only wanted candidates with a serious chance of winning the nomination. . . like Huntsman (1% support) and Santorum (1% support). Still, he lost out.

● Missed Opportunities: There were several missed opportunities. (1) On Libya, no one pointed out that the Obama Doctrine is a doctrine of unlimited war. (2) The moderators blasted GE for not paying taxes and no one mentioned that GE’s CEO is Obama’s jobs advisor.... and is shipping jobs to China. (3) On global warming, no one mentioned the “climatologists” faking their warming date, faking their equations, putting out reports they admit were false when they put them out, continuously having the revise their Holy Bible, and the fact that they’ve gone from freezing to warming to freezing.

Conclusion

All in all, this was an excellent debate. The candidates came across as strong and unified and refused to be suckers for the MSM. Obama would have looked like a drooling idiot if he had been on stage. Based just on what we heard last night, I could easily support Perry, Romney, Cain or Newt. I would be a little concerned about Bachmann, who seemed to vanish. And I would have been fine with Huntsman until he got to global warming, where he attacked the party and started my Spidey-senses tingling. Knowing what I know about these people, I am less pleased with them than I was from the debate alone. But who knows how they’ll really turn out when their butts hit the big chair?

Now we need to see what Obama says tonight. . . before the football game. (T-Rav has kindly promised to recap it for those us who would rather not watch TOTUS spew forth.)