The best single performance in this 1-23 debate (it’s January 23) was by Rick Santorum. However, he wasn’t given much time by NBC’s Brian Williams and by the lefty Florida reporters hauled in for a few questions (you can get an idea of the hard time lefty journalists constantly tried to give Jeb Bush, America’s best governor over the past decade and a half, over his term in office from their dismal performance here).
Santorum came on especially strongly at the end, where he finally got a chance to make his (intellectually quite supportable) case that he is more conservative than Mitt Romney and more steady than Newt Gingrich. He hit them both of individual mandates to buy health insurance, on cap and trade and on the TARP bills. His earlier statement attacking both of them on the issue did not prompt Williams to ask them to respond — apparently there was a hard break coming, but this still seems unfair and contrary to the debate rules.
Romney actually has a pretty thoughtful answer on this, which he delivered when he was interviewed over at our offices at the Washington Examiner, and I suspect Gingrich had one too; and both would have been revealing. But, hey, hard breaks are hard breaks, and Williams wasn’t giving any breaks to Santorum in any case. He directed one question at Santorum about Republicans’ attacks on Romney’s record at Bain Capital, to which Santorum, apparently surprised at Williams’s lack of preparation, was able to respond that he had not joined in those attacks—and then went on to argue that TARP should not have been passed and that more financial firms should have been allowed to go bankrupt. This could have been challenged on redirect (would the economy really keep functioning if too big to fail banks had gone bankrupt and shut their doors?) but nothing more was forthcoming from Williams.
The most electric moment of the debates came in the first half hour, with the exchange between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich on the latter’s alleged lobbying activities for Freddie Mac and in favor of the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill. I thought Romney had the stronger half of the argument, and he showed none of the hesitation Tim Pawlenty did, back before the Iowa straw poll when he was an active candidate, when he was asked to repeat his criticism of “Obamneycare” and declined to do so. Romney honed right back in on his tough statements that Gingrich “resigned in disgrace” and unlike Romney “had an office on K Street.”
Gingrich looked wan and dispirited, as many bloggers noticed, perhaps because due to Williams’s cautions—and the fact that Floridians are not as noisy and feisty as South Carolinians—meant that he was getting no positive reinforcement from the crowed in the hall. Gingrich referred viewers to his website, said Romney was a “terrible historian” (and had some dates and events to back him up) and said, many minutes later, that he was ousted as speaker because Republicans failed to hold as many seats in 1998 as many predicted. Actually, it needed only a small number of Republicans, led by Matt Salmon of Arizona, to say they wouldn’t vote for him on speaker in the House’s initial roll call, to oust him, because failure to get 218 votes meant that Republicans wouldn’t organize the House—disaster in a chamber in which control of the leadership positions is because of the rules crucial to legislative outcomes.
Romney pretty adroitly segued questions on his taxes to questions about the impact of taxes on the American economy and the problems people are suffering, especially it seem in Florida.
I won’t go into all the exchanges, though some of them were pretty interesting—Romney and Gingrich, while pandering to Space Coast voters unhappy about NASA funding cuts, both called for more private sector involvement in space exploration—which sounds to me like a very good idea. Unlike the South Carolina debates, more local references were inserted into the commentary by Romney than by Gingrich; Boston (the term Mitt staff use for his campaign headquarters) have been doing some research.
In my view, Santorum looked comfortable whenever he was called on, Romney looked a bit nervous but summoned up the nerve to persevere in his critique of Gingrich and Gingrich—quite contrary to his demeanor in the Myrtle Beach and North Charleston debates January 16 and 19—looked tired and almost morose. Perhaps readers have different impressions. I thought better of Romney’s debate performance January 19 than Republican voters in South Carolina evidently thought two days later, and perhaps I’m misestimating tonight’s performances as well.
But I thought I saw Santorum get a—perhaps unfairly small—chance to make his argument that he is more conservative than Romney and more steady than Gingrich, and I thought I saw Romney show the determination to attack Gingrich to his face the way he has been doing on the stump and his ads have been doing on television. I saw Gingrich, who told me last Tuesday he doesn’t really prepare for debates but waits for the questions and improvises like a jazz musician, not find the opportunity to launch his “annoy the media” attacks which he did in the two South Carolina debates, and to apparently great effect.
Verdict: the polls show that Gingrich got a nice bump in Florida from his South Carolina victory, but the race goes on.
