Pretty busy today, but I had a couple quick thoughts while watching the debate last night:



Huckabee: A good showing. During his interesting spat with Paul, I think Huckabee showed two things: 1. Good at Rhetoric 2. Poor at substance. Yes, a president should make decisions based on his honor and morals, but we all agree why not defend the war on factual statements. How about specifics? Huckabee is gaining traction for his ability to speak to a higher cause, but right now I am a little unconvinced of his abilities to speak the nitty-gritty.




McCain: I think Huckabee and McCain seem to be cut from the same cloth. McCain was also light on details. Most of McCain’s responses where based on gut instincts and feeling. He made a good argument about torture, but I think his presence seems to be more novelty than ability at this point. His comment on Romney’s usage of “Apparently” was an astute political move on his part but hurt the debate substance in general. His comments on “apparently” added little in the way of value to the argument, yet it allowed him to attempt to portray Romney as weak on the war- which Romney clearly is not. In fact while it hurts John McCain in the short term, in the end it does the conversation on Iraq no good. Also the fact that the debate turned into a McCain love fest at some points seems to show the lack of seriousness the other candidates take his candidacy.




Romney: Was pretty good. I think he took a couple of cheap shots from McCain (as discussed above) and Chris Wallace on immigration, but he did the best he could. I think he really shone (and exhibited the biggest difference between him and his competitors) on the Iran Case study question. To me his answer was text book business style. List what we can infer from the hypothetical situation, list the pro’s and cons, define the issue, how we will attack, and then ad some sweet rhetoric. His answer was about as comprehensive as could be expected in a few minutes. The others gave less comprehensive answers in my opinion, which is a common theme in the various campaigns to date.




Giuliani: Ok. While I thought his answer on his family life was about as good you could ask for, it was factually wrong. Unfortunately he has a record in NYC that shows his personal life affecting his political judgment. These would include offering state protection to his mistresses, arguing the government to pay for abortions, leaving his city in massive amounts of debt, Bernard Kerik, etc. These all seem like reckless decisions that in my opinion reflect a reckless personal life. I suspect these questions will be brought up again. Yet Rudy does get high points for answering with detail- such as his answer to Wallace’s immigration question.




Over all these debates mean less and less the more we have them. The candidate invite list needs to be whittled down. Paul, Brownback, Tancredo, Hunter and to some degree McCain are irrelevant at this point.




We would get much more out of this with Rudy, Mitt and Fred.