1. Is it just me, or are the debates hosted by ABC more annoying and worthless than those hosted by most other news outlets? Though the CNBC debate was pretty bad too.
2. Romney on Griswold vs. Connecticut: I never saw any of the the National Lampoon’s Vacation sequels.
3. Good night for Romney. He was the best bell to bell. Somehow, Gingrich and Santorum conspired to make Romney be the pro-business experience, pro-private sector experience, pro-private sector job creation guy and with Gingrich and Santorum seemingly on the other side.
4. This was a really good night for Ron Paul. He was eloquent and basically unchallenged on most of his substantive answers and he came across as a decent old guy. Forgive me. I’m trying to be objective about how I thought it looked. And a good night for Ron Paul is even better for Mitt Romney than it is for Ron Paul.
5. Gingrich had a pretty good night other than the time he tangled with Paul. He seems to have gotten a grip on his emotions and recognized that Republican voters like him a lot more when he is talking about radically transforming everything and going after the debate moderators than when he is attacking other Republicans The other candidates also gave Gingrich the space to do his Gingrich thing by not attacking him (which helps a lot.) You can see an outline of a Gingrich strategy to lie low, focus on building up his postives, let the media scrutiny wear down Santorum’s numbers, and then finish ahead of Santorum in South Carolina, and be the last non-Romney, non-Ron Paul standing even if Romney has swept the first three contests.
6. Santorum didn’t stand out. The whole thing about being against using the term middle-class was strange to bring up in a debate.
7. Who knows what it will look like tomorrow, but right now it looks like Paul and Huntsman will split enough of the non-Romney vote to give Romney a comfortable New Hampshire win and Gingrich and Santorum will split enough of the non-Romney vote to give Romney a win there too.
8. I really hate Romney’s “This election is about the soul of America for the Declaration of the pursuit of happiness and exceptionalism so as not to be like Europe of a President who doesn’t understand America” spiel. It is just so phony-thematic. Coming from a different politician (Jindal, Daniels, maybe Marco Rubio) who had laid out the policy differences and the real life consequences of our choices, a less hysterical version of that argument might actually be powerful.
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