Moe Lane

Cain: hurt by TARP.  Will not breakout further.  But will not slip, either.

Romney: hurt by TARP.  Will be crowned winner of debate by the reporting class.  Will not get a boost in popularity.

Perry: he did better in debate than a lot of people expected, and how a lot of people are reporting – or are going to report.  But that’s because he has such a low bar for debate expectations at this point.

Gingrich: NOM NOM NOM MODERATOR LIVER (OK, so I reused that line).

Everybody else: Thanks for stopping by.  Go home.

This is going to be more or less tossed-off, very subjective, and REFLECTIVE OF NOBODY’S OPINION EXCEPT MY OWN. That last bit? Kind of important: the next few months are going to be a time where people are going to be ascribing ulterior motives with what they used to call ‘gay abandon’ before the cultural referents shifted.

Anyhoo:

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Let me explain this one: there’s a debate Thursday that’s being sponsored by FoxNews & Google.  Google is letting people submit questions via YouTube – frankly, this has more than a slight whiff of gimmick about it, but let’s roll with the notion for a moment.  The preliminary survey of submitted questions indicate that the top two categories of questions submitted are “Government Spending” and Debt (17%) and “Jobs & Economy” (16%), with “Social Issues” (12%) and “Energy and Environment” (9%) being the next two.  By my calculations, that means that roughly 54% of the questions being submitted involve one of those four topics, which I think that we can all agree are legitimately of interest to Republican voters, yes?

Well, WE HAVE YET TO HAVE A 2012 REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DEBATE WHERE FIFTY-FOUR PERCENT OF THE QUESTIONS WERE LEGITIMATELY OF INTEREST TO REPUBLICAN VOTERS.  We have, instead, had inane questions at worst and invitations to intra-debate sniping at best. I for one am getting tired of it.  And, apparently, I’m not the only one, either. (more…)

He asked “What’s Keeping Thad McCotter Out of the Debates?“  I ask, What’s Keeping Jon Huntsman In Them?

Honestly, at this point if it were up to me the following five people at most would be on the stage, and only three of them (soon to be two) would be there because of their poll positions:

• Bachmann.   She’s still actually in it, although Bachmann looks increasingly in trouble.  Oh, well, four will do if it comes to that; I will decide whether we need to winnow down the number to four in a month or so.
• Cain.  Not because he’ll win, but because I’d actually like to hear the candidates discuss proper Republican policy on jobs, Cain  knows something about jobs, and having him there will keep everybody else grounded.
• Gingrich.  He’s not going to win the nomination, either.  But he cuts the talking-head moderators for running the debates in a form that they want, rather than in a form that we need.  He cuts them filthy.  I love watching that, and so does pretty much every other right-wing blogger and pundit that has to watch these things.  In other words, this is for… me, you understand?  I want this!  I don’t ask for much!  You can let me have this one little thing!
• Perry.  He’s one of the two likely nominees at this point.  Enough said.
• Romney.  He’s one of the two likely nominees at this point.  Enough said.

The other folks… :shrug:  Sorry, but this isn’t 2004.  We’re kind of in a crisis mode right now.

Moe Lane

James Carville, reliable Democrat, on the President’s attempt to troll the GOP debate:

“I do think this is a really big debate and I think the White House was out of bounds…in trying to schedule a speech during a debate,” Carville said on “GMA.”

[snip]

“Given a choice between watching a debate and the speech I would have watched the debate and I’m not even a Republican or even close to being a Republican,” he said, adding it will be a “barn burner.”

Which it will be, if for no other reason than Mitt Romney will have to take this debate seriously from the get-go.  He’s not the presumed nominee anymore, and Romney wants that status back he’s going to have to up his game – which is why Carville (and everybody else in this business) was planning to tune in next Wednesday.  And why they’re themselves a little ticked off at the President for trying to crash the party; after all, none of the professionals (on both sides of the spectrum) expect anything actually substantive from Obama’s speech anyway…

Via @cayankee.

Moe Lane

I’m traveling today for the RS Gathering, so this is going to be a limited reaction. Short version: there were three people at Ames last night who are running for President, and last night didn’t really do much to change the situation. Bachmann showed last night that she doesn’t take a punch well, but she got hit with a doozy of a question from the moderator which made up for it. Pawlenty threw better punches, but he ticked some people off by going after Bachmann. And Romney kept his head down – which was not the smart thing to do, on the eve of a major shakeup of the campaign.

Put a gun to my head and I say that Pawlenty did best, but then I am unimpressed with Bachmann’s record myself and I wish that Romney had a different one. Take it as you will.