Tina: The New Hampshire debate formed the foundation for the view I’ve maintained throughout the early stages of the 2012 campaign season — that the size of the Republican field is an asset for the GOP. But a couple months have passed and it appears the party would benefit from a little whittling. Too many candidates on the stage tonight.
The inter-candidate squabbling (so accurately predicted by Ed), the candidate-moderator bickering, the Ron-Paul-centric foreign policy segment and the absence of any meaningful discussion of entitlement reform all combined, unfortunately, to reinforce the idea that Republicans haven’t yet found their candidate. In light of a certain declaration right around the corner, it could be, of course, that the eventual GOP nominee wasn’t on the stage. But it could also be that he or she was and was just buried beneath cheap shots (Tim Pawlenty on Mitt Romney’s lawn size, for example!), misstatements (Michele Bachmann on Pawlenty’s “era of small government is over” quote) and nonsensical answers (excusing the threat Iranian nuclear power would pose to the world, advocating the abolishment of the Federal Reserve, promoting the gold standard, etc., etc., etc.).
In general, the out-of-control evening yielded no winners, even though reporters around me keep uttering the phrase “rose above the fray” in connection with Romney. To a certain extent, he did, but partly because the moderators didn’t pointedly pitch him questions designed to draw him into the fray, as they did to the other candidates. For example, he alone of the seven didn’t have to sound off about either of the prominent non-candidates. His excuse for his belated response to the debt debate was a little thin, too. “What I did wasn’t what I would have done if I were president,” he said. Seems to me a presidential campaign ought to provide a window into how a candidate would act if he were president. Sure, campaigning is quite different than actually serving as the president (as Obama proves daily!), but the best predictor of the future is the past and it’s unfair of Romney to ask voters to ignore his, on the campaign trail or otherwise. On that note, he also failed to disavow or defend his still-objectionable Obamneycare.
Pawlenty and Bachmann both managed to make each other look petty and unprepared, although, contrary to the apparent Twitter consensus, I actually thought Pawlenty bested Bachmann this evening. She definitely dodged his experience point — one she does need to clarify. But she remained relatively poised throughout, while Pawlenty frequently appeared flustered. But poor, poor Pawlenty. He had to peel off the gloves (just to prove he had a pulse, according to a few commenters on Twitter!), but, as soon as he did, he just came off as cranky and desperate. Romney certainly spoke for me when he said he liked Pawlenty better in the last debate.
A few fringe candidates — Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum — spoke intelligently to their relative areas of “expertise” (Gingrich to divided governance, Cain to business creation, Santorum to social issues), but Paul went completely off the deep end and Huntsman registered virtually no impression with me whatsoever, other than that he recognized all the candidates were in desperate need of prayers tonight.
In general, I prefer to reward action over inaction and I respect the willingness of these candidates to “put themselves out there” tonight, but I have to agree with the cliche: Rick Perry was the real winner tonight.
Ed: I tweeted that as the debate ended, Tina, and Chuck Todd followed it by predicting that sentiment would be the trite, cliche tweet of the night — but I think it was true to some extent. As the gloves came off between Pawlenty and Bachmann, then Santorum and Paul, and all night between Newt Gingrich and the same Fox News that employs him, it seemed that the entire debate ran off the rails.
Of the candidates on stage, Romney did best, even if he didn’t perform in spectacular fashion. Thanks to the sharp and frequently personal exchanges taking place around him, Romney mainly steered clear of incoming fire. Pawlenty took a couple of shots at Romney, but they didn’t appear to faze Romney. He stuck to his game plan, which was to attack Obama and ignore everyone else on the stage.
Fox has a few criticisms to answer. While they kept up the pace nicely, they also managed to have an entire two-hour debate without one question on entitlement reform. How exactly did that happen? Chris Wallace ended up exchanging barbs with Gingrich as though he was one of the candidates. Byron York’s question to Bachmann on “submission” wasn’t unfair — the issue has come up before, and Bachmann handled it well — but it was a question better suited for a one-on-one interview, not a debate with seven other candidates on the stage.
This debate was a lot more entertaining, but not much more enlightening.
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