I watch debates, so you don’t have to — GOP edition

January 6, 2008

Over the summer, when Rudy Giuliani was considered the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, his principal foe was Mitt Romney, who was trying to highlight the former mayor’s less-than-conservative record. When Fred Thompson got in the race, his principal foe was Mitt Romney, who was trying to hold onto the GOP base. When Mike Huckabee started gaining support in Iowa, his principal foe was Mitt Romney, who was trying to characterize the Arkansas governor as unreliable on taxes and immigration. And with John McCain slowly taking the lead in New Hampshire, his principal foe is Mitt Romney, who is trying to prevent the senator from gaining any momentum.

As a result, after nearly a year of campaigning, the top Republican presidential candidates really don’t like Mitt Romney. And last night in New Hampshire, with Romney anxious to recover from a setback in Iowa, McCain, Thompson, Huckabee, and Giuliani seemed to collectively reach the same conclusion: “One of us is going to win this thing, but let’s make sure it’s not Mitt.”

It was ugly, and Romney was clearly dazed by the pummeling. At times, I felt like I was watching the campy Batman show from the ’70s.

* ROMNEY: Don’t try and characterize my position [on Iraq]. HUCKABEE: Which one? (POW!)

* ROMNEY: Let me tell you what kind of [healthcare] mandates I like, Fred. THOMPSON: The ones you come up with? (CRASH!)

* GIULIANI: Charlie, if Ronald Reagan were here, who we all invoke, he would grab the microphone, say it’s my microphone, I paid for it. And Ronald Reagan did amnesty. He actually did amnesty. ROMNEY: Yeah, yeah. GIULIANI: I think he’d be in one of Mitt’s negative commercials. (BAM!)

* THOMPSON: Didn’t you say Republicans were making a terrible mistake if they were separating themselves with President Bush on the illegal immigration issue? ROMNEY: No. That was quoted in AP, it happened to be wrong. That does happen from time to time. MCCAIN: When you change positions on issues from time to time, you will get misquoted. (WHAM!)

Of course, all of this is open to some interpretation.

There’s Josh Marshall’s take…

Have to say I’m disappointed in the Mittster. I had pretty high hopes. But he was being slapped around up there like the dorky kid in the High School locker room. It was sad. And Mitt’s inner humorlessness did not serve him well.

…and then there’s Noam Scheiber’s take.

It was all a bit much. With all the “oohs” and “ahs” in the press-filing center, it felt like we were watching a game of the dozens rather than a presidential debate. At certain moments it had the effect of making Romney look more sympathetic, at others it made him look like the only adult on stage, and at others it made him look like he must be the front-runner, since people were so determined to take him down a peg. McCain in particular seemed to go too far, looking and sounding downright snide at times. I could see the pundits proclaiming Mitt the loser since he took so much incoming fire. But my hunch is that it won’t play that way among voters.

Perhaps, but from where I sat, I saw what Josh saw. Romney was ridiculed and mocked, and struggled badly to regain his footing. Romney wanted desperately to use this debate to shore up some support before Tuesday’s primary, and the barrage of criticism made that impossible.

Aside from all of this, you didn’t miss too much if you spent your Saturday night actually having fun instead of watching debates. I can even summarize the whole thing in a few phrases: “radical Islam,” “socialized medicine,” and “welfare state.”

To say these candidates just aren’t ready for the presidency is a dramatic understatement. The Republican field lacks any semblance of policy depth, rehashes decades-old talking points, and couldn’t articulate a new idea if their campaign depended on it. If I had to pick a winner, it’d be the Democrats; the GOP field is just an embarrassment.

Post Script: Charles Gibson’s hosting of the event was relatively inoffensive, until, about half-way through the debate, the candidates actually started to have an almost-substantive discussion about healthcare mandates. Gibson intervened: “We have an expression in television: we get into the weeds. We’re in the weeds now on this.”

Yes, it’s important to curtail a policy discussion before the candidates actually share some pertinent details with voters. Heaven forbid.

I thought that ABC’s format for these debates was much better than the stand-behind-the-podium-and-give-a-thirty-second-response format that we usually see. That was what allowed the candidates to get their zingers in on one another.

How to choose from among these guys? It’s a sorry lot. “I’m the toughest guy on illegal immigrants.” “I’m the toughest on the Islamofascist terrorists who are hiding under your bed.” “I’m the most like Ronald Reagan.” “I’m the only real conservative – those other guys are really liberals who are trying to fool you.”

Now the Republicans are talking about “change.” That seems to be this year’s big theme. They promise change, yet they don’t dare to criticize the person from whom everyone badly needs a change – George W. Bush.

I agreed with Ron Paul more than any other candidate, but then they didn’t spend much time talking about economic matters where Paul gets really zany.

  • “To say these candidates just aren’t ready for the presidency is a dramatic understatement. The Republican field lacks any semblance of policy depth, rehashes decades-old talking points, and couldn’t articulate a new idea if their campaign depended on it.”

    so very true. now we can only hope that the majority of those voting next fall will also figure that out.

  • Thanks for the summary, Steve. And the creative “Batman” presentation. One of our fave TeeVee shows back in grad school. Holy Plato’s Symposium, Batman! Professor Foskett responded to our request to move his History of Social Thought seminar later by one hour so we could all catch the show (and get a one-hour head start on the night’s drinking). CLINK!

  • At times, I felt like I was watching the campy Batman show from the ’70s.

    You’re showing your age, or lack thereof. The campy Batman show was in the 60’s (though you may have watched reruns in the 70’s);>

  • I watched a few minutes of the debate and have to admit I felt sorry for Mitt. If I had watched longer, maybe I would have had CB’s take, but it felt painful and I don’t even like Mitt. Thompson, in particular, seemed strangely activated. Maybe spitefulness is his normal awake activity.

  • Post Script: Charles Gibson’s hosting of the event was relatively inoffensive…

    i caught the dem debate, which i’ll reserve comment on for part II. however, re: the moderator — charlie’s much better at hosting cooking segments on Good Morning America than he is bringing out the true flavors of a political debate… imho.

  • CB wrote:

    It was ugly, and Romney was clearly dazed by the pummeling. At times, I felt like I was watching the campy Batman show from the ’70s.

    My brother was running upstairs to give me the play-by-play while I was making stuff in the kitchen. I agree, all the snide remarks were pretty funny.

    As for actually watching the Republican debate, though, I think their candidates should just be given some foam karate sparring gear, and allowed to fight it out instead of jawing it out.

  • I’m tellin’ you, ol’ Fred Thompson is the stealth candidate for the rethuglicans this cycle. Mitt is a Mormon, that’s a no-go. Huckleberry drinks too much Jesus Juice and wants free healthcare, the country club boys ain’t buyin’ that schtick! McCain is a has-been that clashes with the base. Giuliani and his three marriages, New Yawker style and drag queen persona don’t sell in flyover country. Do I even have to go into Ron Paul’s disqualifications? Who’s left? Good ol’ Fred! At this rate, he’ll slouch into the White House. This country will not elect a black or a woman in our lifetimes. Thank about that and you’ll know it to be true. Everyone here has gobs of friends, relatives and co-workers who would never pull the lever for a female or minority candidate. If the democrats don’t run a white man (Al Gore?) they’re sunk!

  • I see where Noam is coming from – I cant stand Oven Mitt and I still winced for him at times – but in the end I think voters will take away three things. (1) Yeah the hits were hard, but amost all of them were made available by one inescapable reality: this guy is the worst flip-flopper in history. (2) All candidates have to go after each other, but these very diverse “leaders” of segments of the party who have watched Mitt closely for a year now all really personally dislike him. That says something. (3) He doesn’t handle the heat very well.

    The only thing that gives Mitt any lifeline is that the winners of the first two Repub contests will be candidates without enough money to capitalize. But if McCain can keep making Romney’s war chest into a negative, even that may not help Mitt survive.

  • I think the perfect metaphor the Republican race (especially, but not only Huckabee) is the empty bookshelf which so many confused with a symbol of piety.

  • Go thou, Huck!

    But, really, it sounds like all the fellows took some nice slices out of Romney. Who knew
    manyly men were so good at being bitches?

  • Charlie Gibson showed his insider, Republican talking points-swallowing ignorance when he asserted during the Democratic debate that a married pair of St. Anselm college professors would be hit by Democratic tax increases on those earning over $200,000. The St Anselm audience audibly laughed at him.

  • From the network’s point of view, the reason for these more-or-less pointless debates is entertainment, not enlightenment. Gibson has internalized that requirement and thus automatically shuts off any substantive discussion – assuming that bunch of Rethug losers is capable of having one.

  • I don’t like Mitt either.

    McCain at least mentioned global warming.

    Thompson sounds quite regal, in a sort of weary of it all, looking down his nose, disdainful of the masses way.

    But all in all they reconfirmed my bias that the Republicans are the party of Hate.

  • There’s no question that Romney brought this on himself – but I’m surprised that no one brought up to McCain that his standard line of opposing the Bush policy/strategy on Iraq is pretty much crap. Do these other guys – including Charlie Gibson – not know that McCain was cheerleading for the war for a couple of years before the surge – totally supporting his BFF Bush?

    I mean, maybe I’m misreading McCain, but it seemed to me that even a couple years ago, he was postioning himself for a presidential run and even though the rest of the country was uniformly lining up against Bush, McCain was still kissing ass – and I suspect because he knew the Bush capacity for revenge, suffered the consequences of it in 2000, and was deternined that he was not going to unleash the Rovian machine against him if there was any way he could help it.

    Last night he was snide and childish and mean – thanks – but I’ve seen enough of mean and snide and childish, and it really does not wear well on a man who is almost 72.

    I thought it was a terrible debate – maybe that was a function of there being so many of them on the stage, but the content of their responses was just so awful. Millions of Americans out there who cannot afford health insurance, or can’t find a company to insure them, are supposed to get excited about these out-of-touch, old white men who think the answer to everything is the “market” and some kind of tax deduction? On health care, Romney probably made the most sense – and he could, given his experience in Mass.

    A terrible showing in total.

  • I agree, Anne – I think the Democratic Party strategy should be to have all debates run back to back for the rest of the spring so people can compare our entire slate to their entire slate. I can imagine nothing more likely to help the voter registration imbalance. Richardson, who on our side is marginalized and hanging on by a thread, would be a million times better than the best among the Republican collection of circus sideshow acts.

  • Shorter Romney, via Groucho Marx:

    “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.”

    I didn’t think the Democratic debate was all that great–mostly because they’re all so damn tired–but on substance grounds it was like going from toddlers fighting in the sandbox to an Oxford seminar.

  • It was ugly, and Romney was clearly dazed by the pummeling. — CB

    If Romney can’t take a bit of back and forth from a few old farts from his own party — and basically with the same general principles (or lack thereof) — how is he going to defend us against another 9/11, 9/11, 9/11?

    Charles Gibson’s hosting of the event was relatively inoffensive, until, about half-way through the debate, the candidates actually started to have an almost-substantive discussion about healthcare mandates. Gibson intervened:[….] — CB

    Perhaps he’s a relative of Charles Dana Gibson, who also liked things to be pretty and “combed” on the surface, even if there’s nothing underneath…

  • It made me wince every time someone referred to ‘madrassas’ last night… the kind of petty, baseless digs at Obama that we can probably expect in a general election if he keeps his momentum.

  • Regarding #10 Vince DeMatto’s comment:

    To be blunt, I think you are wrong. There are certain some who will act as you describe, but they are a dying breed.

    The time has come for change on a whole lot of levels.

  • Rudy – If you can’t be faithful to a wife, you won’t be faithful to our country.

    Huckabee – If you let over a thousand criminals out of jail + 12 murders, how you can say you’re not soft on crime? How much of MY TAX $ will you give to illegals for college? You remind me of a snake oil salesman.

    McCain – You’re not even a real Republican, what are doing on our side of the race? You are soft on illegal immigration. You are from a border state and you can’t even get a fence built in your own state. You would be equally ineffective as a president. No Thanks McCain, you can go now. And all your goofy laughing in the last debate looked irreverent, classless, childish and unbecoming of the office of president.

    Ron Paul – I discussed you with one of your supporters recently. I can’t support you because, from what I understand, you would rather wait until a nuclear bomb levels one of our US cities before you take action. Purely Defense – Not Good. The best defense is a good offense. I don’t want to wait to be killed before my country acts to keep me safe. And I don’t believe they’ll stop coming after us if we shut our bases down overseas.

    Mitt Romney – If they’re picking on you, they realize you’re the ONE. Romney clearly has the best qualifications. He’s a leader. Romney has done what none of the others could do, in Government & Private life. He’s happily married, hasn’t cheated on his wife, or married multiple women. He’s raised 5 good kids. Romney has the Golden Touch in business and in Government. He has a presence about him. He has the demeanor to be President. He has the seriousness. He has the class. He doesn’t just “talk” about making positive changes, he HAS made positive changes in everything he has touched. He’s turned companies around, he’s made other people financially secure, he has brought jobs to people in his personal life. When he left the private sector to get into government, he worked in a state of mostly liberals and brought them positive change. He is clearly, by far, the most qualified, the BEST MAN for the job. Yet, people are distracted and blinded, shooting themselves in the foot, by the negative attacks from his opponents.

    I honestly believe that if Romney was a different religion, most other candidates would have dropped out by now, because Romney would be so far ahead. He’s a good man. He is conservative. Sure, he’s made political changes, but changes for the BETTER. He’s applying for a job, The job of REPUBLICAN President. That job, due to our preferences, calls for him to represent us and our CONSERVATIVE views, not just his own personal views. I believe, with all of my heart, that MITT ROMNEY is the best man to represent our conservative views in the White House.

    Every candidate has been accused of flip-flopping, changing their minds on issues, or being conveniently “more conservative” now that they are running for Republican President. The fact that all of them are somewhat guilty of that – shouldn’t that level the playing field, and get us to stop arguing over that junk?

    Now it is time to forget the past, and look at what they are committing to do if we give them the job as President. As a life long Conservative, I have looked at all of them, what they’ve said in the past, but more importantly, what they’ve DONE in the past. The man that stands out, stands far ABOVE the others in Personal achievement and Government achievement is Mitt Romney. After looking at all of them through the eyes of a classic conservative, the choice is easy and clear – Mitt Romney. It’s time to unite and come together behind Mitt.

  • Thinking (?) Man:

    Now it is time to forget the past, and look at what they are committing to do if we give them the job as President.

    You’ve already violated your own suggestion. You should forget Rudy’s philandering past, Huck’s prior tax raising, and McCain’s prior support of immigration.

    Unless of course you’re suggesting that one rule should apply to Romney and a different one to everyone else. But that’d be hypocritical.

  • Mitt is a joker.

    Mitt talks a good game, but he’s flip-flopped on everything, and he didn’t govern like the conservative he talks now.

    He got owned in Saturday debate. He didn’t lose his cool, but he looked like a fool and the audience laughed AT him like 10 times.

    Rudy stands head and shoulders above the others and our party is retarded if we can’t see that.

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