Ongoing score of the debate.

At the first break: Romney & Santorum winning, Newt got hit a couple of times.

At the second break: dammit, Ron Paul got in some good points. And if this is Santorum’s last debate – it probably is – he’s going out well.

Preemptive comment before the third break: we’re going to lead with a First Lady question.  Nobody’s getting out of that one with their soul and/or dignity intact (and, yes, there really is a The Ron Paul Family Cookbook (December 2009)).  Yup, it was painful.

Last question: “…How you are the most electable?” You have got to be kidding me.

Anyway.  Newt got hurt tonight, Romney handled it well, Santorum had a great debate that won’t matter in the slightest, and Paul was the least crazy that I’ve ever heard him.

#rsrh Meh. A debate.

I’m going to go against consensus here and give it to Romney by default: Ron Paul is irrelevant, Rick Santorum reverted to being whiny, and while Newt Gingrich had an excellent start to the night he’s going to have to come to terms with the fact at some point that, no, [most]* people don’t want Lincoln-Douglas debates anymore.  Sitting through three hours of this stuff would tax me, and I’m a motivated New Media partisan blogger.  Romney continues to benefit from his opponents not punching at him directly: which is maddening, of course, but somewhat distantly so, given that my favored candidate is currently waiting for the TX legislative season to start and wondering which candidate will end up calling him about the VP slot.

I do now think, however, that Mitt Romney will not win South Carolina.  Which means that this is going to go on for a while longer.

Moe Lane

[*I’ve had at least one commenter indicate a desire for Lincoln/Douglas-style debates. Fair enough.]

RS Interviews: Heritage/AEI Post-debate reactions.

I talked with several folks from Heritage and AEI after the debate, in order to get their reactions to how the debate went, how it came off, and how they felt the debate came across to watchers.

As you can see, spin rooms are kind of noisy; they’re also pretty focused places. Everybody in there – including probably you – needs a specific piece of information and/or quote to finish up their own material, and the sooner they get it, the sooner they can get somewhere about ten to fifteen degrees Fahrenheit cooler. This is actually conducive to good manners; after all, arguments and shouting matches eat into time. Should you ever participate in one of these, I recommend patience, waiting your turn, and hitting the restroom on your way in.

And business cards. They’re highly useful in these situations.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

The CNN/Heritage/AEI debate, the day after.

My post-debate take, which is of course made vastly more relevant by the fact that… I followed it onsite rather than online.  Well, online at onsite.  Generally, these events are a bit different from the inside, including (surprisingly) less chances to schmooze with the candidates than you’d expect.  A ‘spin room’ is there primarily to get access to raw material for the article that you need to write the next day; if you were thinking that candidates would hold court there, well… no.  Still useful for getting access to campaign managers and press liaisons, though.

Anyway, my take, alphabetically: Continue reading The CNN/Heritage/AEI debate, the day after.

So, here we are at the CNN/Heritage/AEI Debate.

Soren and I are here to cover the debate and the post-debate ‘spin.’ The debate will be at 8PM; it’s hosted by CNN, Heritage, and AEI, and will focus on national security and foreign policy. And now, a look at the glory that is a Press File Center:

(Or… not)


I know: fascinating. This is going into diaries; most of my commentary will be via Twitter. Also, I’d like to apologize in advance to the Perry campaign, as he’s had his best debates when I wasn’t covering them. I shudder at the thought of what’s likely to happen tonight, when I’m actually attending.

Song called on account of Twitter.

Stupid thing decided that I tweeted too many times tonight.  Anyway, short version of my take on the debate: Romney won, Perry lost, Cain was at his best (which is pretty damn good).  Romney will continue to get establishment support, Perry needs to get better at debating if he wants to win.  If Perry was a better debater this nomination fight would be over; if Romney was anybody else besides… Romney it might be over the other way.

And those are the only two candidates who matter at this point.  Everyone else has faded and/or never had a shot to begin with.

Moe Lane

President wishes to troll GOP debate.

I cannot BELIEVE that I had to write that out.

The basic gist of this is as follows: President Barack Obama has requested – please note that word – that he be permitted to address Congress about jobs in a special joint session next Wednesday evening at 8 PM. Unfortunately, the White House is apparently as self-aware about national events as is, say, a brain-damaged basset hound, because it unaccountably missed noticing that there was a major Republican debate scheduled for that date and time. One being hosted by a major news network (NBC) and online news site (Politico). Such an abject lack of intellectual curiosity about one’s surroundings – remember, it’s the White House itself which is claiming that they had not known about the conflict ahead of time – is perhaps not unexpected from this administration, but it’s certainly not what you would call seemly. Or adult. Indeed, calling it ‘adolescent’ defames teenagers.

Now, everybody here knows the truth – the White House is desperately trying to control the conversation about Obama’s performance to date, largely because if they don’t the conversation will be Barack Obama: Tedious Idiot, or Blithering Idiot? – but we’re expected to pretend otherwise. I shall not: and before I go any further, let me just note that there’s a reason why we have a minimum age requirement for the Presidency. It’s because the Founding Fathers wanted to keep children from running this country.

Alas. Continue reading President wishes to troll GOP debate.

#rsrh Video of the day, Fred Thompson edition.

I had completely forgotten about this one until Jim Geraghty reminded me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUn8GSbUl_4&feature=player_embedded

I’ve come to the conclusion that – nothing against CNN – but we need actual conservatives to moderate Republican debates.  Even when they mean well (and I think that more of ’em mean well then we generally give ’em credit for) liberal media folks simply don’t know how to ask the right questions that will demonstrate the difference between various Republican candidates.  From what I managed to see last night, they were trying to determine said differences… and failing.

Just saying, that’s all.

CNN calls Alex Sink (D CAND, FL-GOV) a liar.

And no, it wasn’t Erick who did that. It was John King.

Background: there was a debate on Monday night between Alex Sink and Republican Rick Scott. There had been an agreement beforehand that there would be no notes or outside help… and Sink promptly ignored said agreement by taking advice from a campaign staffer via cell phone. The staffer has since been fired; and that might have been it… except that Sink last night decided to double down on stupid by claiming that she didn’t know that the call had been politically-related when she took it. Relevant quote: “…the makeup artist held up her phone and said ‘I just got this message, I don’t know who it’s from…'”

CNN says… no, actually, that’s not what we heard.

Relevant quote there: “But we listened very closely to the audio, and the makeup artist, when she approached Alex Sink, said ‘I have a message from the staff.’ And at that point they looked, it was on a cell phone, it was two sentences…” Continue reading CNN calls Alex Sink (D CAND, FL-GOV) a liar.