6:49pm First martini down. Going to run upstairs to pour a second one before things get started. Seasoned political pros claim that Steve has already watched too many debates.
6:51pm FNC found some kid wearing a tie in the spin room, and handed him a microphone. He’s doing everything but spittakes to seem Daily Show-worthy. Is this what it’s come to already?
6:54pm The kid’s name is, apparently, “Griff.” I’m pretty sure he’s a shaved Muppet.
6:58pm So my faithful PJ Media editor tells me, “I’m without a TV right now, so this is fun.” Believe me, buddy, I’d be having more fun right now without a TV, too.
7:02pm “…now let’s meet the candidates.” For livebloggers, this is unnecessary. Also, Brit Hume forgets that familiarity breeds contempt.
7:04pm: (All times Mountain, if that weren’t obvious.) The usual rules – a minute per answer, 30 second rebuttal at Brit’s discretion.
7:05pm First question: Is Fred Thompson smarter than you guys? Answer: If he’s having a postshow cocktail in Leno’s greenroom, he is.
7:06pm Mike Huckabee got the first answer in. Before the Iowa straw poll, he was lucky to get one in the first hour.
7:07pm 70-year-old McCain just picked on Thompson’s age. Viewers my age and older will recognize this as a variation on Reagan’s age judo from 1984. The Gipper said he wouldn’t hold Mondale’s “youth and inexperience against him.”
7:08pm Rudy “I think [Thompson]’s done a pretty good job of playing my part on “Law and Order.” Obviously, the candidates were ready for this question, and had some good canned responses. So far, only Romney sounded canned. Of course, he ALWAYS sounds canned.
7:10pm Romney is getting nailed for allowing MA cities to act as “sanctuary cities” for illegal immigrants. He’s talking a lot, but the correct answer is, “Dude, I was governor of Massafreakinchussetts.”
7:12pm Rudy is playing a little immigration judo, too. He claims he went as far as he could, by cracking down on crime-committing illegals. He makes his answer sound, I think, palatable to the heartland. Practical, at the very least.
7:13pm McCain looks better than he’s looked all year. Is fourth place a good place for him to be?
7:13.5pm I take it back. He looks great when he’s joking. When he’s trying to explain away his support for comprehensive immigration reform, he sounds like any other candidate running for any other office. He’s a goner.
7:16pm Huckabee is talking again, and I’m so impressed by him, all I can think is, “Fox’s webcast has their audio totally out of sync. Either that or my second vodka martini is actually grain alcohol.”
7:18pm Watching Tancredo talk about immigration is always fun. It’s a lot like bringing up the New Deal where your Republican great-grandfather can hear you.”
7:19pm Hunter Duncan (“Duncan Hunter?” -ed.) is bragging about his border fence so vociferously, he reminds me of a joke from 1984. “Why didn’t Mexico send a team to the Los Angeles Olympics?” “Because every Mexican who could run, jump, or swim was already in LA.” In fact, I think Hunter (Duncan?) really did steal that old racist joke. Boo.
7:22pm National ID card, yadda yadda. Rudy has three steps to it: 1. Require national ID card. 2. We’ll get back to 2. 3. It works!
7:24pm Romney wants to talk immigration, and Brit could tell. Mitt was so upset by what McCain was saying, that he developed a twitch in Hair Flock #22187
7:25pm Also, remember that Romney’s tie is “peach” or “salmon,” and not “pink.” He’s Mormon, not Idahoan.
7:26pm Who is the guy with the tone-on-tone lavender thing going on? Just when I think I’ve learned all the candidates, one of those anonymous Jim Beams shows back up.
7:27pm I think Jim Beam (or maybe that Dunkin’ Hunter guy) just said “Democrats promote gays in Congress.” But it doesn’t matter, because I’ve finished my second martini. I’ll see you in three minutes and four ounces from now.
7:31pm OK, I’ve got another martini on my desk. Did I miss anything good?
7:31.5pm That last question was so rhetorical, it just got invited to a Oxford Union debate.
7:32pm Really, I’m back now.
7:34pm Ron Paul gets asked a question! I’m not sure what he’s saying, but it involves waving his pen around while accusing the questioner of having bad premises. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a candidate possessed directly by the spirit of Ayn Rand.
7:35pm Sam Brownback (that last Jim Beam from a few minutes back) wants to “rebuild the family structure” by amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage. He also wants to rebuild the military by getting rid of recruiters.
7:37pm Excuse me, I meant to say “By getting rid of 5-10% of recruiters.” This is going to be a long night, and another short cocktail.
7:39pm Now I’m watching the Fox webcast with the live “people meter” graph superimposed on the screen. For McCain, it’s pretty much a flat line. Coincidence?
7:41pm As soon as Rudy started talking, his meter went up. As soon as he got sarcastic, his meter went down. This could be his Achilles Heel.
7:42pm It occurs to me that talking about graphs is as boring as a candidate talking about… whatever it is they talk about. Since I’d like PJ Media to keep paying me tens of thousands of dollars and a case of scotch every time I do this, I’ll shut up about the people meter.
7:42.5pm Tens of thousand of dollars, case of scotch, my editor is getting very, very sleepy…
7:44pm It wasn’t that many months ago that McCain said it was a “moral imperative” to end things in Iraq. Now he says the “surge is working.” What changed?
7:47pm Ron Paul is still on this fiction that oil would somehow pay for the Iraq War, and that it would be a “cakewalk.” And he keeps waving his hand around.
7:48pm “Are you saying, [Mr. Paul], that we should take our marching orders from al Qeada…?” And that, in a nutshell, sums up my problem with the nuttier Ron Paul.
7:50pm Brownback is talking from the Biden playbook, calling for a kind of semi-partition of Iraq. While I’d hoped, pre-war, for a multiethnic Iraq, some form of partition or confederation is looking smarter and smarter.
7:52pm “We must continue the surge.” -Mike Huckabee. Of course, he’s also saying we “broke” Iraq. I call BS. We didn’t break Iraq any more than we broke the Soviet Union — totalitarian states can only be fixed, because they’re already broken.
7:53pm Now Ron Paul is white-knuckle-gripping his microphone. He’s got to switch to decaf.
7:55pm The problem with Paul in particular, and with big-L Libertarians in general, is that they don’t understand (or won’t understand) the importance of honor and prestige in international relations. Until and unless they do, scorn is all they deserve. (Sometimes, I’m an angry drunk.)
7:56pm Hey, Tom Tancredo! He’s from Colorado like me! And that’s about all the enthusiasm I can muster there.
7:59pm Good question from the dad of a GI in Iraq: “How do we come to an endgame, with honor for us and the people of Iraq?”
8:02pm Sue me, but I’ve got one more people meter comment to make. Romney couldn’t move that meter very much. But conservatives and moderates both went up for him when he picked on Democrats for their Iraq stance. Say what you will, but I think it’s far too early to write off the GOP in ’08.
8:04pm The subject, once again, is legalized torture. And the answer is always the same. In normal times, the American public won’t sanction torture. In extraordinary times, the American public wouldn’t prosecute or convict anyone who stopped the (very unlikely) ticking time bomb. Which strikes me as sensible.
8:05pm “We can’t close GITMO, because nobody will take the people there.” -Rudy G. Duh!
8:08pm Why is it only Republicans even start to make sense when it comes to Gitmo? Why can’t just one Democratic candidate say, “There’s some dangerous mofos out there, and we need a safe place to lock them up for a very long time.”? After eight years of Bush, I’d vote for that Democrat. Where is he?
8:10pm OK, we’re talking taxes now. Watching Republicans talk tax cuts is like watching children chase after candy. It’s fun, and nobody loses so long as there’s enough to go around. Also, hey, I like the money.
8:13pm McCain sounds principled on taxes and spending, but principled won’t cut it. People are so fed up with Congress and earmarks, that principles are no longer believed.
8:15pm Rudy really is doing his best to channel Reagan. For a NYC mayor, that’s quite a trick — but one it seems he can turn.
8:17pm Romney just promised to make “the Bush tax cuts permanent.” I might be drunk, but I’m pretty sure that’s the first time anybody on stage tonight has used the B-word.
8:18pm I would so hire Mike Huckabee as my accountant. Heck, I might even vote for him for city council. And that’s about it.
8:20pm Ron Paul wants to eliminate the FBI and the CIA, and defends his position because of 9/11. He’s on drugs. And worse, he’s not sharing.
8:21pm In ten minutes, I’m going to grill some strip steaks. Do you know how much interest I have left in this debate? Probably still more than the average, well-fed viewer.
8:27pm Scenario set up by Hume. Iran is producing nukes, has kicked out the UN inspectors, is still messing with us in Iraq, is still making threats against Israel, and the UN isn’t cooperating. What do you do?
8:28pm Ron Paul: “We should back off.” All I can say is a word my editor won’t let me get away with: f***er.
8:29pm Tancredo is totally flubbing his answer, and it’s only the third or fourth he’s gotten all night. I call him: Toast.
8:32pm Huckabee makes sense, saying the President can’t know all the scenarios before going in. Which makes Ron Paul’s pre-surrender declaration all the more cowardly.
8:37pm The candidates are still talking about Hume’s hypothetical, and so far, only Huckabee has made much sense. Except for Rudy, who said you don’t take options off the table. He might be the first candidate since Goldwater to do that unilaterally. And bless him for it.
8:38pm “At the end of the day… Iran cannot have nukes,” followed by a long list of Tehran’s sins. That’s John McCain talking, and concluding that “at the end of the day,” the US will have to make things right. He sounded sad when he said it, and that strikes me as the best and truest thing I’ve heard in any of these debates.
8:40pm It’s all over, except for the spin. I’ll let people who care about that kind of thing actually tell you about it. Me, I’m going to drink some red wine and grill some red meat. Cheers!
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