Debate Thoughts

Sorry I’m late getting to it, but work and family . . .

1.  Gingrich’s response on Freddie Mac was weak.  That thing about how he only worked with people who shared his values is begging to be made into an ad.  Just the same, the other candidates left points on the floor over the whole crony capitalism thing.  Only Bachmann and Paul went at Gingrich directly and Paul only once.  The rest of them had veiled barbs for Gingrich but I don’t they changed any minds.

2.  The other candidates mostly gave Gingrich the space to do his thing.  Gingrich love bombed Romney and that makes Gingrich’s attacks on Obama more effective (for a conservative audience) and makes Gingrich himself look much bigger.  See?  He isn’t a hostile, condescending jerk.  It is just Saul Alinsky radical liberals he can’t stand.  When he has to mix in criticisms of his fellow Republicans on stage with his attacks on Obama he looks like a much smaller and more self-interested figure.

3.  Romney decided that a sliding Gingrich (even though a declining Gingrich is still top tier in the most recent Iowa polls) is no longer a real threat for the nomination and observed a nonaggression pact.  Gingrich even said some nice things about Romney.  Better to let the ads and Bachmann do the dirty work.  Romney has a good debate, but I wonder if there is a significant body of voters who care how Romney does in the debates.  He did good in the early debates and ended up behind a buffoonish con artist in the polls.  He had a bad debate last Saturday and his poll numbers either stayed steady or rose.  Short of throwing up on his podium or raising the dead on live television, it isn’t clear what Romney can do to change his numbers through his debate performances.  For better and worse, impressions of Romney seem set in concrete.

4.  Just a grand slam answer by Gingrich on judges.  The dynamics of the Senate and the filibuster are such that it is very unlikely that Congress will be abolishing the seats of liberal judges (and NRO has been explaining why that might not be right.)  It is more likely that Gingrich will sit on a couch with Elena Kagan doing a joint commercial for greater civility in discussing judges than that President Gingrich will sign a bill abolishing the Ninth Circuit.  But that wasn’t the point.  The point was to demonstrate how strongly he believed it was important to stop liberal judges.

5.  Gingrich’s response on the pipeline issue was awesome.  He is a master at channeling the incredulous contempt that many conservatives feel for Obama.

6.  The reaction to Gingrich’s debate performance yesterday was a photographic negative (do they still have those?) of the reaction to his performance in the Saturday debate.  He had a tough debate on Saturday as everybody took their shots but the news clips focused on smackdown of Romney.  Gingrich has about 110 good minutes yesterday and ten minutes where Bachmann hit him hard.  If you saw the whole debate, Gingrich looked good (even if some Freddie Mac-related doubts were reinforced.)  I was listening to the FOX & Friends show this morning and the first segment was dominated by Bachmann’s attacks on Gingrich.  The theme was that her attacks were mostly (but not totally) accurate.  I don’t know whether the impression created by the debate itself or the impression create by the debate coverage will predominate.