Whether or not tonight’s debate will influence voters in South Carolina is unclear, but if it does, it should provide a boost to Newt Gingrich. On several occasions, on a wide range of issues, Gingrich had a solid and energetic debate performance. In what’s likely to be the defining moment of the debate, he had a strong pushback when asked by Juan Williams about his comments about President Obama being a “food stamp president,” arguing about the importance of people finding jobs. But he also had other strong answers — on Social Security and on prosecuting the War on Terror.
Mitt Romney, normally unflappable in these debates, was quite shaky tonight. Rick Santorum, early on, challenged him on ads attacking his position on allowing felons who had served their time to vote. Romney struggled to stake out a clear position on the issue, before settling on being against voting rights for violent felons who served their time — but then Santorum noted that he did nothing to change the policy as governor of Massachusetts. Even worse for Romney, he couldn’t give a straight answer on whether or not he’d release his tax returns. He said he “probably” would in April, but added qualifiers such as “time will tell,” whatever that means. This is problematic, because it’ll undercut Republicans attacks on Obama’s lack of transparency if Romney is the nominee and refuses to release his tax returns.
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Santorum started out strong by challenging Romney and had his moments, but he also made some weird decisions. For instance, he let Romney’s defense of his flip-flopping on abortion go unchallenged, and when he could have gone after Romney for signing an assault weapons ban in Massachusetts, he attacked Ron Paul’s gun record instead. It was almost as if he were playing for third place in South Carolina instead of first.
Rick Perry, too, had another much-improved debate performance. If that gives him a boost, it would hurt the ability of any other candidate to consolidate conservative support.
Paul, meanwhile, had his worst debate performance yet. He gave a series of barely coherent answers, and suggested that instead of killing Osama bin Laden, the U.S. should have worked with Pakistan to arrest him like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — which is completely infeasible, given the strong likelihood that Pakistan may have known about bin Laden’s whereabouts, which is why the U.S. couldn’t alert Pakistan about the raid. The bottom line: if Paul were president, bin Laden would still be alive today. That certainly puts him out of step with an overwhelming majority of GOP primary voters, but the question is, how much of his support in South Carolina is among his core committed supporters, and how much goes beyond that. For those still making up their mind about whether to support him, this couldn’t of helped.
It’s always worth keeping in mind the big picture: barring something major, Romney will be the GOP nominee. Even if he loses South Carolina, his advantage in terms of resources and national organization will be hard for any other candidate to match. But tonight, he certainly revealed a number of weaknesses.
