Tonight’s CNN debate in Las Vegas was the liveliest one to date. There was no clear winner, but several candidates bloodied each other.
Now a contender, Herman Cain was the first to come under fire, for his 9-9-9 tax plan. The criticisms of the plan from the rest of the field were on target from a policy standpoint. His rivals are right that it would add a new sales tax on top of existing taxes and be a bit more complicated than he lets on. But his broader message of wanting to shake things up and simplify the tax code has clearly been appealing to voters. And his likability and simple message may have cut through tonight’s policy criticisms.
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Romney found himself against the ropes for the first time of the campaign. Early in the debate, he came under fire from both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich for his Massachusetts health care program. Santorum and Gingrich combined to make more detailed criticisms of the health care law than rivals have offered in past debates. For more on the criticisms, and video of the exchange, check here.
The most heated moments of the debate came in exchanges between Romney and Rick Perry, which got particularly nasty when it came to immigration (described here). The normally cool Romney got visibly angry at Perry for interrupting him, at one point accusing Perry of being angry because he had some bad debates. At another point, when Perry said he had experience handling the border issue, Romney shot back and said it was like a college football coach who lost 40 games in a row touting his experience.
Who won the exchanges? Depending on how you view things, they either both brought each other down (by highlighting unflattering things about each other and looking nasty) or did each other good (the normally robotic Romney showed some passion, while Perry showed signs of life). Perry demonstrated a higher energy level and ability to answer questions more cogently than in past debates, but it likely wasn’t enough to give a boost to his campaign.
Santorum had a strong debate by going on the attack and proving that he had a deeper understanding of the issues than many of the candidates, and an ability to discuss them fluently. However, his braggadocio about being the only one to have been reelected in a swing state (leaving out the part when he lost by 18 points) was unnecessarily off-putting.
For Gingrich, it was almost as if he was the moderator of the debate – trying to present himself as an honest broker of the competing claims. He praised Cain for offering a bold tax reform proposal before honing in on some of the practical problems. He said it wasn’t fair to say that Romneycare was as bad as Obamacare, but he did attack Romney’s plan as being a big government program. At the end, he told Republicans that they wouldn’t be able to beat Obama if they bickered with each other like they had been all night.
Overall, I’m not sure it changed the dynamic of the race. Romney absorbed more blows than in past debates, and showed why he remains vulnerable, but is probably still the best positioned to win the nomination given the weaknesses of the rest of the field.
