First off, the (literal) round table format was great. As I mentioned yesterday, it gave the whole debate a 'businesslike' atmosphere, yet it was also much more 'casual' than normal, simply because they were sitting so close together. It was also cheerier, in that when someone cracked a joke, you could hear everyone laugh. Cozy, might be the word. For the record, Michele Bachmann has a delightful laugh.
And while I was wondering how they'd handle the numerous cameras required to keep everyone in front of the lens, they solved that little problem by not shooting anyone from the front. Most of the shots were offset a good angle, and then there were the you-are-there shots like this:
I thought it was terrific, and the next 'standard' debate is going to seem almost stilted in comparison. Notes are below the fold.
I don't view these things as 'win-lose' events, but since that's how everyone else looks at them, I'd say that Romney 'won' again, and everybody else pretty much held their own with the one exception of Santorum. Perry didn't muff anything or excel at anything, so he gets a draw, although that'll be interpreted as "continuing his downward slide" by the pundits.
The subject was — yawn! — 'economics' for the entire two hours, but it actually came across pretty well. None of the candidates got bogged down in the minutiae, losing the audience in the process.
One of the reasons Romney keeps 'winning' these things is that he's got great opening lines. In the very first round, a few candidates were asked some generic economic question and they responded in kind. Romney's asked the same question and the first words out of his mouth are, "This country needs a leader!" Then he rambles on how said leader would fix the economy. It kind of woke the whole place up. He and Newt were also the only two who kept referring back to you-know-who in the White House, which is also something you expect a presidential candidate to do.
The highlight of the night was how they came right out of the starting gate and immediately put the blame for our current economic woes right where it belongs, on Congress' shoulders. They were asked (if you can believe this) if they thought anyone on Wall Street should go to prison for the economic harm they've done. Bachmann wasn't having any of that bullshit and immediately hauled out Barney Frank's and Chris Dodd's role and what they delightfully kept referring to as the Housing and Jobs Destruction Bill throughout the evening. You won't see it in the MSM, but Bachmann & Co. took that whole 'blame Wall Street' meme and threw it back in the moderator's lap like an atom bomb. Newt flat-out stated that if anyone should to go to jail, it should be Ben Bernanke, and that a federal inquiry should be made into Frank and Dodd's role.
The moderators kept trying to change the subject, but someone in the group would eventually get back to it. When someone mentioned repealing Sarbanes-Oxley along with Dodd-Frank, there was a general nodding of heads all around. If Romney woke up the room as to the reason they were there, Bachmann woke up the country by letting everyone know that this wasn't going to be the usual gang of talking heads blaming everything on Wall Street like they usually see on their telly. This group was angry.
As for ol' Herman, well, you can tell everybody likes the guy and wishes him well, but they just don't like his 9-9-9 plan because it opens up yet another in a long, endless string of money troughs for Congress. Cain listed out the 'deterrents' he'd put in place, but everyone knows them Congresscritters is wily things and capable of all kinds of sneaky mischief when you're not looking.
At one point, each candidate got to ask another candidate a question. The thing is, rather than acting as an 'attack' on the candidate, what it really did was allow the recipient to expound on that one 'flaw' in their plan and explain why it wasn't really a flaw. For example, Romney was asked how RomneyCare differed from ObamaCare, which gave him the opportunity to list out how vastly different they are.
When it came time for Mitt's question, he turned to Perry and asked him how he could justify once being a Democrat and campaigning for Al Gore in 2000. That gave Perry the perfect opportunity (talk about being ready for a question) to pull out Ronald Reagan... (half the room swoons in ecstasy) ...and note how Reagan was also once a Democrat, and that Perry switched to the Republican Party... (drum roll) ...at a younger age than Reagan did!
You can picture the liberal producers of the show sitting around beforehand, salivating at the prospect of the candidates pulling out their sharpest knives and whittling each other to pieces during the personal question segment. "Should we keep an ambulance standing by?", asked one of the assistants.
What a disappointment.
In the humor department, while Cain has been the one to crack the most jokes at these things, and you can tell both Newt and Perry have a great sense of humor, it's Jon Huntsman who comes across as the wittiest/wiliest of them all. There's a difference between having a joke at the ready and making one up on the spot. He had a couple of spontaneous quips tonight that were pretty sharp.
Ready-to-go quips included Huntsman claiming that when he first heard of Cain's 9-9-9 plan, he thought it was the price of a pizza, and Bachmann noted that if you turn '999' upside-down, well, the devil's in the details.
Has anyone mentioned Romney's stutter? He stutters two or three times at every debate, usually with his t-t-t-tees. It's very brief, but it's there. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to come across as a negative, but more of a 'makes him a regular guy' kind of thing. Put another way, it takes away some of that 'robotic' stigma he's labeled with by making him more 'human'.
Rick Santorum actually came across as something of an asshole during the show. He hogged camera time over and over again, going way past his limit, and then, at the very end, as they were getting ready to go into their wind-up 30-second monologues, he interrupted and flat-out stated that, while the subject of 'poverty' wasn't on the evening's agenda, he was going to talk about it anyway, then promptly burned up about 45 seconds before the poor moderator could wrestle the mic away from him.
If anyone drops out between now and the next debate, I expect it'll be Santorum, and possibly Huntsman. Gingrich and Paul are in it for the long haul.
Summation
My impression is that Perry shot himself in the foot (those Texans and their guns, huh?) right after he entered the race and has done nothing but make Romney appear all the more presidential by way of comparison since then. You don't see ol' Matt shootin' from the hip and calling parts of our government "treasonous" or indicating they might be illegal Ponzi Schemes. And Bachmann was the one who made the big stink about Perry slaughtering Innocent Young Girls™ with his evil HPV vaccine, leaving Mitt unsullied.
Romney, by way of contrast, just remains cool, calm and collected. Given how much emphasis these debates have been given by the media, if all Perry can do is tread water like he did during this one, he'll probably end up with a good, strong, second-place victory. At this point, it looks like Mitt is going to pull away with it.
On a personal note, I'm fine with that. I have to assume that if you're a Republican governor of a traditionally Democratic state, you've learned how to reach across the aisle and get things done.
On the subject, because he's been the governor of Massachusetts, home of the exalted Kennedys (the other half of the room swoons in ecstasy), he hasn't been on the Left's traditional hit list. Not 'slipping below the radar'; just given a certain exemption.
So, when it comes to him matching up against Obama, I wouldn't expect to see near the fervor and vitriol coming from the Left like you'd see with a Texan candidate, aka, 'another Bush'. In that regard, and because of the delicate exemption he's held in the past, he might be the one Republican the disappointed and disenfranchised Obama supporters might vote for.
Furthermore, I-
Wait, hold on a sec. This just in via Twitter:
That Mitt Romney! He's such a nice young man!
- Mrs. Glenda Milhowzen, age 74, Greenville, Ohio
If you've won Glenda, you've won Middle America.
While I did a pre-debate post on this yesterday, I'm re-mentioning just to make sure everyone catches it. This debate is a late arrival and wasn't listed on any of the dozen schedule sites I checked, yet promises to really be something s
Tracked: Dec 03, 10:15