Debate Drunkblogging — The Wrap!
While we wait for Loud Dobbs to shut up and go away (and wait and wait), let’s take a look at who’s here tonight and why.
We’ll start with John McCain. War hero. Maverick senator. Keeps winning, although not by huge amounts, and never by better than a plurality. Got endorsed by Rudy Giuliani today. Can raise money, attract independents, and trample the First Amendment in a single bound. Media darling. George Will calls him “Clintonian,” and he doesn’t mean that as a compliment.
We’ve got Mitt Romney, because he has a fair amount of money and delegates, won Michigan, and came in a very close second place last night in Florida. He also is the favorite of self-described conservative Republicans, even if they aren’t exactly enthused by Mitt. Romney is in an uphill battle after losing a close one in Florida.
Way on down the line is Mike Huckabee. Huck hasn’t won anything since Iowa, and Iowa picks almost nothing but losers. Or at best, candidates who you wish had lost. Huckabee is also broke. He was last seen campaigning in Missouri and Kentucky, asking fellow evangelicals for gas money.
Finally we get to Ron Paul, bringing up the rear, refusing to quit despite his 0-8 campaign record. Why does he stay in? Because he can. As the only anti-war Republican (and also the only libertarian) in the race, Paul has a national constituency eager to keep him going. And unlike most libertarians, who thrive in ever-smaller splinter groups, Paul is inclusive. Racists, neo-Nazis, conspiracy nuts, 9/11 “truthers” — they’re all welcome at Camp Paul. (Y’all come back now, y’hear?)
And what did the candidates need to do? McCain needed to keep Romney at bay, while still looking like a frontrunner — and like a future commander-in-cheif. Romney’s job was a bit tougher. He had to expand his appeal beyond his conservative base, without coming off like a McCain Lite. Huckabee needed to suck up to the eventual winner, win enough delegates to make his presence felt at the convention, and keep his supporters from abandoning all hope. He’s only allowed to pick two. Ron Paul’s job was simple: Keep his voice down in the range of non-castrated male human persons, and keep the spittle from flying past the first three rows.
So how’d they do?
Before I answer that, let’s talk about CNN’s performance. Moderator Anderson Cooper seemed to be working under the impression that he was co-host of The Mitt & Anderson Show. I haven’t seen one candidate get that much face time since Bill Clinton debated both sides of the “Definition of Is Is” issue ten years ago.
To be fair, Cooper kept the debate focused on such timely issues as Sandra Day O’Connor, who the candidates imagined Reagan might endorse today (the one willing to dig him up?), and for the 20th time, why McCain voted against some six-year-old tax cuts. CNN — yesterday’s news tomorrow!
Anyway, so how did the candidates do?
McCain looked small. He was hunched over his microphone, making him seem half the size of Romney. And despite a couple zingers, he spent most of the night on the defensive. I said it during the drunkblog and I’ll say it again here: This was not the McCain who won Florida on Tuesday.
If Romney looked good — and I think he did — part of that was due to Cooper stacking the deck in his favor. Then again, I got this comment from Nathan, who wrote:
Romney is just disturbing sometimes. I think there’s a little computer in the back of his mind that triangulates the most politically savvy response to every stimuli, and when he misfires you get to see how fake the rest of his shtick is.
That said — and I agree with every word of it — I think Romney looked and sounded the most presidential of a very weak lot.
Huckabee? Paul? Who cares? Neither one of them had any business at tonight’s debate — or at any future event, either. I think they get invitations so that the MSM can make the Republicans look bad. Kind of like if they kept bringing on Dennis Kucinich long after he ceased to be a factor. (OK, so Dennis was never a factor. But still, at some point a while back CNN said to him, “you’ll have to wait outside, funny small person.”)
So who won? Probably nobody. But if somehow Romney is able to win the nomination, he can probably point to tonight’s debate as the event that pulled him out of the ashes of Florida.
I’m glad I watched American Idol.
I am a McCain supporter and I agree with you that today was not his best performance. I did not like his comment about For “Patriotism, Not for Profit” …as if being a successful businessman is a sin. He should have acknowledge that, yes, indeed Romney is a successful guy and praise him for that …but he did not , shame
I have not watched any of the debates. I love reading all the post-mortems. Is that strange? I’m a policy guy, so I don’t care who spouts the best gotcha line that was coached into them by handlers. I know what to expect from each of these contenders if elected, and I know better than to think they will actually be able to implement 20% of their earnest boasts.
off topic
your martini recipe is just several shots of vodka – how is that a martini?
Cheers,
Malcolm
P.S. Any idea where Dr Mangrove is?
If debate performance mattered in the election, we’d all be looking at Front Runner Guiliani or Thompson right now, were not, and that says more about us than it does the candidates themselves.
This is a fractured party for a fractured electorate. This is a party that once courted votes from many varied constituencies, now its voice sounds like Cotton Mather sitting begind the bench, asking the defendant if “Ye confess to the crime of witchcraft!”.
Oh and another thing, this endless whining about this or that candidate “not being enough like Reagan for my tastes”. Hell folks when Reagan was a mortal like the rest of us, he was just fine for us when he was running up the deficit and signing real live amnesty for illegal aliens(ah, those were the days…) and bugging out of Lebanon. Now that hes ascended to godhood, no one else can measure up amd good luck trying to find someone who measures up to a god.
We all liked Reagan for little more than the fundamental reason that he won and he wasnt Jimmy Carter but at the time, people whined and bitched about him and his brand of republicanism at every turn just like they do today about this or that candidate. Remember, everyone loves a winner, and they especially love them after they are gone.
I’m not mad about McCain, I would have prefered a number of other choices, but for Reagans sake folks, look at whats on the table here, McCain or Obama or Evita Clinton, thats it, the rest of it is irrelevant because its now proven that even under Party Primary conditions they couldnt even beat that “powerhouse” candidate McCain! We ran the various products with different amounts of conservative ingredients up the flagpole and the only consensus out of the party is that a small number of folks prefer McCain over the other options. Thats Democracy in a nutshell, its not about getting what you want, its about being asked. We got asked, and thats all there is to it.
Are you folks really going to let “the perfect be the enemy of the good” here? You didnt get Thompson and I didnt get Guiliani but we all lose if either of those on the other side get the executive branch.
Frank makes some good points.
I remember when Reagan got the nod over Bush back in ‘80. I thought that was the end of the Republican Party. And that Democrats would rule the country for the next generation as a result.
I was wrong. So I’m not feeling too bad right now.
And if you want to see a real party in conflict, just watch Obama vs. Clinton. That conflict makes the Republican contest look damn near boring.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…..
Frank,
I get your point. I do. But I happen to think that a really bad Republican (McCain) is worse than Evita because it means that no one votes Republican for a really long time. And as much as I don’t like Evita, or the socialist Obama, I’d rather the country see the bs the Dems pull with the Dems in office for four years and leave that deeply burned and long-lasting memory for all of America to savor than have a really bad Republican in office consorting with Dems and then have Republicans take the blame for their lousy president.
If the country wants mediocrity or socialism, we’ll survive it for a brief spell while we get a check-up from the neck up, and then fix it after the four years is over with someone who understands the success of conservative principles.
cheif???
Back away from the vodka and find the dictionary.
I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. I’m an American. My vote counts, and I refuse to waste it on a lousy candidate no matter what their party affiliation is. I wouldn’t vote for McCain any more than I’d vote for Clinton. And I could care less if the Republicans lose the White House or any other house. What matters is the direction this country is headed, and that is decided by the people, not the jerks in Washington.
I don’t know who I’ll vote for in the fall, because I don’t know who will be running. I do know who I absolutely will not vote for. If that bothers you, too bad.
Obvious advantage: McCain
Obvious disadvantage: Romney
Stolichnaya preserved.
Frank,
I loved Reagan because my parents loved him and I was born in 1983. That said, I think the only people asking why so-and-so isn’t more Reaganesque are debate moderators, who are apparently bound by some kind of honor code only to ask superficial questions. The candidates all find ways to compare themselves to Reagan, of course, but I don’t get the sense that it’s really that big of an issue outside the media. I do think you’re jumping the gun a bit in suggesting that McCain has wrapped up the nomination, but I generally agree with your post. A Hillary or Obama presidency would be disastrous. We would get two or three new liberals on the Supreme Court, nationalized health care, and very possibly the loss of all the blood and treasure spent so far to keep Iraq from becoming an Iranian vassal. McCain is far from the ideal candidate, but he’s still far better than those two. I’d vote for him, except that here in Texas it won’t be close, so I have the privilege of writing in Milton Friedman or Wayne Allyn Root or somebody just for the hell of it. But I think your argument is right and it’s one that most Republicans will come around to as the year wears on and the notion of President Clinton II takes on a more robustly terrifying tangibility.
I would certainly take either Thompson or Giuliani over any of the people I saw tonight. I am sad that the candidates I thought were most interesting are already out.
I hate to say it, but Huckabee seemed to make the best statements of the night. He was downright eloquent talking about Reagan. Not that I think he’s the best candidate – he would be downright dangerous as President. But I did admire his verbal style. It was enormously superior to the other candidates.
McCain looked like he was about to be embalmed. I think if he goes against Obama we’re guaranteed to lose. An enthusiastic youthful voice against someone ready for a funeral? It’s Bob Dole all over again.
Romney, on the other hand, at least looked Presidential. I don’t feel like I ever really got to know the guy, and I’m not even sure why. Still, I’d certainly take him over the others. Let’s see if we get the choice.
D
I am very impressed with basically all of the commenters.
Fundamentally, what I think is going on here is a sort of “mirror”. Not of the candidates, but of the electorate itself.
Heres the thing, Since 2000, weve had a 49/49 electorate which is abnormal and uncomfortable to the body politic. I think that fact, that theres a sort of north/south, hatfield/mccoy capulet/montague power play thing thats constantly going in right now is at its source, the reason why politics have become the “new sports” around the watercooler.
I think what I see going on is that what we are witnessing is kind of “card deck shuffling” between the two partys and their constituencies. McCain is “winning” (if you want to call it that) because hes managed to cobble together a coalition of Republicans, independents and 9/11 Democrats. Other candidates have done a solid job of getting conservatives of one stripe or another, but they havent shown any skills at all at coalition building beyond their own natural base.
That goes for the Democrats too. Both of those candidates have to figure out how to make a coalition out of their party and the detrious, flotsam and high tide beach debris thats left out of the other party.
Hillary voted for the war – twice. Many people in that party wont forgive her for that, which is going to bust up her green-socialist wing for her, so much for triangulation. Hillary now has a civil war on her hands, if she continues to handle it badly, even if she gets the nomination, she ends up with a fractured party who may stay home out of spite because no one likes a wiseass.
Obama? goodness me, where do I start.
Ok, lets start here. Your assignment tommorow is to find me a “former republican”, who will actively vote for Obama nine months from now. OK, after that, find me a “former Republican” who will vote for Evita. Thats the Democrat problem. They now have to work for their own party votes to come home and they cant count on independants and republicans whatsoever! So forget about it, if they win, its because republicans sabotaged themselves, not because they got republicans to show up and vote for hillary or barack.
Where do Independents fit in? They fit into that 1 percent sized crack between the two bulbous 49 percent sized buttcheeks of the two partys. But much like sand in your bikini bottom, a little can go a long way and you have to do something about it lest it get to be irritating. Winning the Presidency isnt about perserving a sense of idealogical “purity”, its about winning Independents, winning the other sides “wandering eyes”, and taking a good large percentage of your own party all at the same time.
Republicans, even with McCain can do that and you have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and yes, Evita to thank for it. Democrats, especially with these two candidates have a much harder task making a wide coalition than do the Republicans.
Is McCain a ‘bad Republican”, I wouldnt call him that. I’d say hes more like G.H.W. Bush than anything else or possibly hes the actually the third term of this G.W. Bush. Its easy to see McCain as a sort of “Vice President presumptive” if you squint your eyes real tight. I dont think McCain is particularly conservative, but being a Guiliani guy, I have learned to set certain things aside in the desire to get others things. I think McCain has so far proven that he can build a coalition that works, where each and every other candidate on the Republican side failed to do so. He wont get every conservative, but he will get moderates and independants in their place and it just might be enough to overcome the odds and win.
(Id like to take this time to point out the rather obvious fact that I didnt get anything for my cool headed get along to go along strategy with Giuliani, so it shows just what I know about all of this – which is exactly dick.)
If the electorate were more conservative by anything approaching a plurality, it would be easy to get a candidate who could reflect that in their actions. We didnt get it from anyone who ran for office, not because there arent conservatives running for office, but folks you have to face the fact that there just arent as many conservatives out here as we would like there to be.
Its not necessarily the candidates fault that they arent selling conservatism well enough to attact more voters – its ours.
I am all basically impressioned with mph’s very comments too.
So now you need most of a butt cheek and a handful of sand to win the Presidency? I guess Candide is the new The Prince!
All these people who think they’ll only get four years of Obama or Clinton are joking. They have to be.
Are they certain the Republicans are going to be able to put up a strong contender in ’12? Are they certain the dems — with even less to lose since their candidate will be unapposed in the primaries — won’t further meddle with the Republican primaries and give us another Bob Dole or *shudder to think* Ron Paul?
I understand not wanting to vote for McCain but this talk of — ‘after four years I’ll get to vote for a real conservative’ — is absurd. I heard it in ’02 when ‘conservatives’ taught GHW Bush a lesson. And in ’06 when we were supposed to usher the scumbag out of the WH we had Bob Dole opposing.
It won’t be four years friends, it will be 8. Lord knows if we’ll have a country or a right to vote by then. And I’m not exaggerating. The dem and MSM meddling this primary season has pretty much disenfranchised Republicans who want to vote honestly for the best man or woman in this election.
Brett – I hear a lot of conservatives saying that they’ll allow a Democrat to win the White House in 2008 with the idea that something magical will happen in the next four years to bring about some new “Reagan revolution” and Reagan-esque candidate that all conservatives can get behind.
What makes you think that will happen? I see no sign of any great conservative in “Triple A” just waiting for their time in the big leagues. Four years is a long time – maybe there will be someone out there, maybe there won’t. What I do see, however, is a number of Supreme Court vacancies that trump all other issues out there. If conservatives like you want to be so ostrich-like and stick their heads in the sand hoping 2012 will somehow be better, well, you get the President you deserve.
Just don’t think that there’s some guarantee that some conservative will miraculously rise up out of the dust to create that perfect candidate you’re so thirsty for. You have to live for and think for today.
I am not really seeing any real criticism of Ron Paul except for his voice. If Hillary becomes President, it will only be 10 seconds after she gives her first military order for the Middle East that 100% of Republicans will suddenly have Ron Paul’s attitude on the WOT.
Don’t believe me? Reagan did not want anything to do with war in the ME even after 243 Marines were killed by a terrorist in one shot.
Now I am pro-war myself and disagree with Ron Paul on his McGovern-style mistake of saying that 100% of bases need to be closed around the world, but one has to recognize that he will not be able to do everything as President, meaning that the liberal Congress will probably see to it that the airbase in Germany would remain.
Even Jimmy Carter, while he embarrassed us over the Iran hostage crisis, managed to get asbestos banned, saving 100,000+ lives including possibly yours and mine.
I want to see a few unconstitutional federal agencies dismantled and the billions of unconstitutional federal $ for feminist organizations cut, because these organizations are behind the nasty new Internet regulations like IMBRA which is the gateway law to mandatory background checks for all Americans communicating with others over the Internet.
McCain and Romney are for regulation of heterosexual males on the Internet so they belong in jail, not on a debate stage.
If McCain is the nominee, much of the base will stay home in November or vote for someone like Ron Paul out of protest.
Getting back to foreign policy, I want to stress that ZERO Republicans and fewer servicemembers will want to continue the WOT under COC Hillary Clinton. She will have a feminist SOS riling the Muslim men and telling them that the US of Feminism will castrate them all and liberate their womenfolk. Madame Albright did this in the 90s.
I want to stress that, for five years from 2001 to 2006, I was the most prolific war hawk over at FreeRepublic. I was always the best person to argue with leftist Moonbats about their “outrageous denial of the dangers of Islamofascism”.
But I predicated my “need for offense against Islamofascists” on the idea that we had a great democracy, or at least patriarchy, back at home…that I could feel proud of and want to see defended.
That was before RINOs like McCain worked with the National Organization for Women (NOW) to get the IMBRA law was passed forcing American men to be background checked before being allowed to say hello to foreign women online.
I can guarantee you that, if the Army Times let the troops know about IMBRA, they would go on strike until it was put back on restraining order (a Bush appointee judge lifted the restraining order saying “there is no fundamental liberty interest in an American man contacting a foreign woman”.
Chris Matthews was right to say that anyone who would vote for or agree with Hillary, as her Senate buddy McCain does on most matters, was a member of the Castrati in the Eunuch Chorus.
IMHO, the “neocons” like McCain are modern day Castrati. The fake issues of abortion and immigration pale in comparison with the willingness of RINOs to bow before the NOW.
I want every last one of them removed from the Republican Party, even it takes staring into the dragon’s mouth of a Hillary presidency for 4 years. A President Hillary would finally cause Republican politicians to dare to mention the word “feminism” again, instead of scurrying like scared mice at the thought of upsetting the “women’s vote”.
This will mean removal of McCain and his buddies from the Senate as well…the Republicans will probably lose 5 RINO Senate seats in November and not because the electorate is getting more liberal, but because they are getting more disgusted with RINOs.
A lot of commenters act like progressive liberalism is the only way to win elections…the comments above pretend that the “Independents” are pulling the US to the left and we are supposed to accomodate them.
You can kvetch about the Republicans bringing up Reagan, but look on the bright side. That goes back only 2 decades. The Democrats are digging up JFK, which takes us back 48 years to the ’60 campaign.
What’s interesting is how both parties see their most successful and attractive Presidents. The Dems with JFK totally reject his expressed beliefs, ie tax cuts, strong national defense, fight wars to win them, not lose them. While the criticism of Reagan is that even Reagan wasn’t Ronaldus Magnus. He raised taxes, signed an amnesty bill and bugged out of Lebanon.
Reps want Reagan’s beliefs implemented, while the Dems totally ignore JFK’s beliefs,
You said “Kind of like if they kept bringing on Dennis Kucinich long after he ceased to be a factor.”
There is an easy answer to that – they wanted to keep seeing his hot Brit wife.
Frank Martin – that line about sand in bikini bottoms was precious!
Sanderson – you need to get lucky more often (and don’t look here for heaven’s sake)
As for myself:
McCain-Giuliani! Rah Rah!!
For the love of mercy, people. Write this down. If you get 4 years of Clinton or Obama, you’re gettin’ 8. If liberals’ sins of the past were fair game, and people really were held to their records, Hillary wouldn’t even be in this race. What does it mean? It means terrorist attacks, Iraq being puppetized by Iran, high taxes, and a foul economy will not be pinned to president Hillary. We’re all clients and proprietors of ‘new media’, but way too much of the electorate still gets its political views shaped mostly by the MSM. That’s how we got where we are with these primaries.
Any Republican/Conservative/Libertarian who would withhold their McCain vote, or even crazier, vote for Hillary, thinking that this offers an opportunity to ‘purify’ or ‘heal’ the conservative movement, is a fool and a tool. Sorry. You’ll be looking at 2016 and a Dem veep/incumbent to run against.
“It’s dead, Jim.”
The Republican Party died when Fred dropped out of the race.
The Bush Legacy will be how he turned the Republican Party into a bunch of “One World-ers”, with some silly notion of buying the world a Coke.
I’m pretty sure the world will want Chai Tea …and Tacos.
I do think McCain is a bad Republican, and I think he will turn people away from conservatism because he’d be the biggest Republican there is, should he be the nominee.
Do y’all remember McCain’s performance with Michael Reagan in 2000? That was the turning point for Rush. He played that segment of Michael’s show where McCain just went bizarre and hung up on Reagan. Reagan sat there, on air, wondering how in the hell we could trust a guy with that demeanor with “the football.”
I think that’s what is driving Rush here. If either McCain or Clinton wind up in office with a democrat congress, there is a strong likelihood that some aspect of the Fairness Doctrine will be passed, because McCain hates talk radio as much as he hates Romney.
What measure of Republican do you have to be to go after the 1st amendment? I guarantee McCain will do it more. Limit my free speech? Yep – you rank as “bad” if you author and support that.
Cooper is a democrat. Democrats in the media always have an agenda. I think he sees McCain as the greater threat toward keeping Hillary / Obama out of the White House. So Cooper helped Romney as best he could.
Hopefully the liberal MSM will decide to tear down McCain BEFORE Super Tuesday and not after, which is what I expect.
McCain was a member of the Keating Five and there are new, serious allegations of him working for lobbyists while in the Senate.
I fear the liberals want to trick those Republicans who still listen to them (the older Republicans who watch TV) into nominating McKneePads before they rout him in the media. What we could see in September is a situation where 90% of the delegates do not WANT to vote for him on the first vote but they MUST according the rules that the primaries must decide the behavior of the delegates on the first vote.
The whole trick, and the strategy of the Romney and Ron Paul campaigns now, is to make sure that McKneePads does not reach 1191 delegates before April…and then just let him self destruct or become old news this spring and summer.
[Sanderson - you need to get lucky more often (and don’t look here for heaven’s sake) As for myself: McCain-Giuliani! Rah Rah!!]
This is just one Republican woman’s response to the fact that John McCain and Sam Brownback worked with NOW to force men into background checks just to socialize online…Here is a libertarian woman’s response:
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2006/0111.html
By the way, nobody is having their love life altered by this because nobody is obeying the law.
Also, it is mainly the successful upper middle class white males who can travel and they date both Americans and foreigners. The reason for the law is to stop rich married men from cheating on their wives. This “patriarchy” is the only subset of Americans that can be bashed or regulated with no political repercussions (or so McCain thinks). So the above article needlessly condescends to men, but at least it shows the law to be insane. The people, including women, who are organizing a challenge to remove federal funding for radical feminist “shelters” in Washington are mostly married as well.
A liberal Clinton appointee judge (who is high on the list to be promoted to the Supremes by HRC) recently upheld that law saying “Meeting someone is like buying a gun, both should require background checks”.
No problem there right? Us womyn have demanded that kind of accountability (they call it “disclosure”) for a long time…for conservative reasons of course…
This issue is only part of a much larger problem of betrayal of both conservatives and/or males by the likes of McCain and (in Massachusetts) Romney.
Read the archives over at http://www.mensnewsdaily.com to see how the GOP as been snubbing males since Karl Rove made the idiotic decision in early 2005 to start wooing what he thought was the women’s vote, but which has turned out to be the fake support of the radicals like the 25% of “Republican” women who intend to vote for Hillary secretly but won’t admit to it publicly.
Romney could outperform McCain but will stand little chance unless Huckabee drops out.
Jack –
A) I stand by my remark. Getting lucky often is wondrously healing, calming and restorative to many male ills – especially the kind that manifest as irritability, hostility and resentment – particularly towards the opposite gender.
By the way – if you can’t even muster a chuckle at my good humored teasing it definitely bears out what I said.
Analagous case in point:
How many feminists does it take to change a light-bulb?
Answer: PATRIARCHAL OPPRESSION IS NOT A LAUGHING MATTER!!!
And by the way –
Never call someone a Republican unless you know that they are one. Most conservatives would not take that kindly.
Good point Miriam.
However, I did not understand the point about resentment. The NOW does not represent women. Women have nothing to do with the alliance between John McCain and organized feminist groups in DC.
And because radfems will do what they have to do, the only resentment is against men like John McCain for stabbing other men in the back (it seems he passed the above law in a quid pro quo for Maria Cantwell helping to kill the filibuster on Sam Alito in December 2005 – a stab in the back as a quid pro quo).
It is just this simple: any Republican who feels that organized victim-oriented feminism has to be “placated” in their bizarre attempts to regulate the Internet, etc, deserve to lose their bids for President and their seats in the Senate and House.
In November, there is going to be a rout as there are at least a million American men who are very aware that the GOP is snubbing their interests, whether that is regarding their right to say hello to someone online or in divorce proceedings or, as in the case of the Duke Lacrosse fake rape scandal, their right to remain free after a false charge.
If Hillary wins the Dem nomination, the phrase “radical feminist” will finally come out of its 5 years of hiding behind a wall of political correctness.
The above linked website is a good place for journalists and bloggers to investigate the discussion of all the new laws and trends.
You are parsing my comments too carefully. Have a laugh and go get lucky. Then come back and tell me if it is all so serious….
(P.S. If I was out there carrying on about radical oppressive patriarchal males, my friends would tell me that I needed to go get some and calm down -and they’d be right…)
This thread has certainly taken an interesting turn!