Scoring the January 5th Debates 1: the GOP

Damn, talk about some hardball!
These are my post-debate impressions. I have avoided reading or watching "expert analysis" as much as possible since my experience is most media types see what they want to see during these things and a lot of analysis seems to come from someone who was watching an entirely different program. I'll start with the republican debate:

Winner- I don't think anybody looked particularly strong to me, but Ron Paul is making a serious bid to get my vote. It would have been nice if he had at least got some time to speak during the second half of the debate. I think McCain seemed to help himself the most, but he didn't deliver the knockout punch at any point. (Other than the line about romney being the candidate of "change")

Loser- Romney. If this had been a prize fight he would have been carried out of the ring about half way through. He faced a vicious triple-team from McCain, Thompson, and Rudy and did not handle it well at all in my opinion. He came across as a guy who can dish it out but can't take it.

Now for my observations about various portions of the debate in no particular order.

-The first portion of the debate was on foreign policy. I expected to hear a lot of statements with no basis in reality and was not disappointed.
-The first statement I noticed that raised a few eyebrows for those of us in the "reality based community" was Fred Thompson saying that we are winning in Iraq, and we are safer because of it. I guess one of the upsides to having no long term strategy is that you can't be accused of failing to implement it. As a candidate, I think Fred Thompson makes a good actor.
-The best example of the death of conservatism happened when the other candidates snickered and shook their heads while Ron Paul suggested that people don't like having their countries invaded, or to be pushed around. I'm getting more and more certain of my belief that this guy is the only conservative on the stage. Rudy made a particular ass out of himself by once again repeating that we were attacked because they "hate freedom" saying that the attacks had "nothing to do with our foreign policy". (sure, Islamic terrorists and the Muslim world in general couldn't care less about the overthrow that put the Shah in power, our support for Israel, or anything like that. I'm not saying any of these policies are even wrong, I'm just saying that you can't isolate them from the current situation) And in keeping with the World War 2 fetish that dominates the right these days someone threw out the term islamofascism, because remember all bad guys are just like the Nazis in every way. You only serve to undermine your own credibility with that kind of thing. Seriously, a neocon history of the world must read like this: stuff happened, more stuff happened, WORLD WAR 2!, stuff, more stuff, 9/11! None of these guys are interested in rational analysis, they just want to wave the flag. Right Rudy, we've been choir boys all along.
-McCain had interesting (and revealing) thoughts on this issue. First he talks about how great Bush has been as a leader and notes that there have been no recent terror attacks on US soil. A few minutes later he mentioned the need to "restore confidence in government". WTF? Generally those replacing "great leaders" don't need to do much confidence restoring.
- Romney uttered some of the most outlandish lines of the night at this point. He referred to Robert Kagan, neocon icon, war-enthusiast, and self-proclaimed expert as "brilliant". I didn't catch the next part because I was cleaning vomit off of the carpet because of that statement. I guess we know what to expect from a Romney presidency; more faith-based defense policy, lies, and exploiting fear. At another point Romney referred to the current struggle with terrorism as the biggest (or one of the biggest) crises this country has ever faced. another WTF? moment. I guess if we didn't include foreign threats in the late 1700's, the war of 1812 when the British burned the capitol, the Civil War, reconstruction, World War 1, the great depression, World War 2, the Cuban missile crisis (and cold war in general), then yeah this is at the top of the list. I'm not saying we ignore the danger, because it is obviously very real, but we need to maintain some perspective.
-Huckabee came off to me as kind of a lightweight on this issue. No glaring absurdity, but no real insight or details either.This is where I think if he gets the nod he needs a proven commodity as running mate.
-Ron Paul emphasized again that we're not living up to the principles of the constitution. It's too bad he didn't mention domestic spying and some of the related issues right here.

-Next came health care. I think this is one of the biggest areas where the republicans are going to get hammered in November. I didn't hear any statements last night from the candidates that I would think will resonate with voters.
-This may have been the strongest segment for Huckabee. When he pointed out to Romney that you can't get anything more than a bandage in an ER for $1,000 he subtly showed himself to be the populist candidate or "guy who gets it" while at the same time casting Romney as an out of touch elitist. The best part of this exchange was that Huckabee didn't do it in a way that looks like "going negative". I think he'll be the one who's assumed the "compassionate conservative" mantle from Bush (who ironically is neither compassionate nor a conservative)
-Rudy caught my attention by making the claim that "We have the best health care system in the world." What a completely meaningless statement. Best by what standard? longest life expectancy? lowest infant mortality rate? number of individuals covered? most money spent? He might as well have started a "USA!" chant. (And don't think you can win me over just by mentioning Reagan 11 times in 4 minutes.)
- Fred Thompson said " A good number of people who don't have health care can afford it." Voters watching the debate probably heard: "most people who don't have health care can afford it."
This seemed like a major blunder to me that helps reinforce the notion that republicans don't have a clue on this issue. What do you mean by "a good number"?
-McCain probably scored some points by mentioning free clinics and bashing the pharmaceutical companies. I think that's an argument that plays well with voters. Here's an industry charging 500 bucks a pill in some cases because otherwise there would be no money for "research and development", I'm willing to bet they could still find money to fund congressional junkets, the largest Washington lobby of almost any industry, and ads on EVERY PROGRAM on television telling me to go ask my doctor for their drug.
-Romney then rode in on his white horse to defend the drug companies. "no drug company left behind", I can see the bumper sticker now. This looked pretty weasely to me. I thought this would be the topic he would manage to score points on, but he seemed flustered and off his game at this point (and rightfully so, it was clear all night who the others were looking to damage) . From what I understand, he's had success on this issue as governor, but didn't really drive that point home here. Instead he went the route of using the word "change" at least 10 times in 5 minutes. Way to latch on to the hot buzz-word of the day.
-Ron Paul also did nothing to distinguish himself in this one (or the illegal immigration debate that followed). As a medical doctor who still occasionally delivers constituents' babies, I expected more insight from him. Basically he simply pointed out that inflation is the problem and that we have to quit running massive deficits to stop inflation, and mentioned people flying to India for surgery. Not a good night for him.

-Next came the issue of illegal immigration. I can't really seem to stir up the vitriol a lot of people can on this issue (I've tried). It seems like everyone you talk to is either completely naive or a complete xenophobe on this one. So we have 2 parties talking about the need to secure the borders ( just one border actually), and 0 parties actually making anything happen other than lip service.
-I thought this was the first issue Rudy looked good on. Most of the candidates have positions on this issue so similar that any variance in position gets blown completely out of proportion. I think some of the misconceptions he had on this issue were the ones shared by pretty much everyone on the stage, but he came across as striking the right balance between toughness and compassion.
-McCain probably had the most to lose with the base on this one. He and Romney looked ready to fight each other on this one. There was like 5 minutes of back and forth over the word "amnesty". Best line from McCain at this point was "Ronald Reagan gave out amnesty, so I guess he'd have appeared in one of your attack ads, too." I'm normally not a big fan of these guys taking Reagan's name in vain but it was good here. He was also the only one to mention going after those who employ illegal immigrants which is vary popular on the left.
-Romney had another bad moment in my eyes when after agreeing that you can't just throw out 12 million people, talked like he wanted to just throw out 12 million people. I hope I'm not the only one that caught that one. The Thompson, Rudy, McCain triumvirate stuck together to go at him early and often on this issue just like the previous two.
- Huckabee seemed not to want to wade into the mud on this one and was content to let the other combatants hack away at each other. Most of what little he said was positive and exceedingly vague. Paul and Thompson were non-factors in this discussion, besides Thompson jumping in to help McCain when Romney attacked (I think someone's looking for the veep nod.)

- Overall analysis, not the best debate for anyone in terms of striking a chord with the general populace. I think you could say McCain was the winner simply in terms of New Hampshire because of the damage done to Romney from all sides. There's a lot of work to be done on this side of the aisle between now and November 4, because I don't think anybody really did anything that would attract more people to the party in the general.