Tonight, the Republican Presidential hopefuls gathered in front of a Florida crowd and answered questions from ordinary people via YouTube. With the Iowa caucus just a few weeks away, the candidates went all out to differentiate themselves from each other, and most of them were successful.From the very opening of the debate, the fight was on between the two GOP frontrunners, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. It was in that opening exchange, on the topic of illegal immigration, that Romney got the upper hand and set the tone for the rest of the night. To put it simply, agree with him or not, Romney creamed Giuliani. From that point on, Giuliani was mostly on the defense for the rest of the night, while Romney was red-hot. Romney is often called a "flip-flopper", but tonight he actually appeared the most socially conservative candidate. While I might strongly disagree with Romney's positions, his statements tonight were right on point with the right wing of the GOP. Romney was unquestionably the winner of the debate and I am even more confident in my earlier prediction that Romney will be the Republican nominee.
Two other candidates who I thought had a great night were John McCain and Mike Huckabee. McCain gained major points in my view for standing up to the other candidates and the traditional Republican view that waterboarding is okay. McCain made it clear that waterboarding is indeed torture and is indeed illegal and indeed should never be practiced by the U.S. On that issue I have major respect for McCain. Huckabee, yet again, was the most charming candidate on the stage. He is consistently able to make his point and state his positions without appearing negative. He also had the best line of the night when he said that Jesus was too smart to get involved in politics.
As far as the losers, I would say that there were two big ones. The first loser was Sen. Fred Thompson. Thompson needed to re-establish his frontrunner status, but he utterly failed. I have yet to see Thompson come out firm on a single issue. His debate style is also lacking to say the least. Thompson has a problem with taking long, odd pauses during the middle of his responses or taking several seconds to stare into space while trying to think of a response. If anyone is wondering why Thompson is doing so poorly, just watch this debate and you'll quickly realize why.
The biggest loser of the night, however, was Rudy Giuliani. This was Rudy's worst debate performance. Romney completely destroyed Rudy during the immigration debate early on and also later when it came to Rudy's pro-gun control stances. With Romney gaining on Giuliani in Iowa, New Hampshire, and now leading in South Carolina, tonight was Rudy's chance to gain back some of that support. He didn't though. If anything, Rudy did more to lose support to Romney than he did to win it.
I am going to point out one thing that was said that I take absolute exception to. Duncan Hunter said that the majority of people who join the military are conservative. I take great exception to the claim that liberals don't stand up to serve their country. The fact is that the military is just as diverse as America is as a whole. To imply that liberals don't serve their country is disgraceful and frankly Rep. Hunter should apologize.
The tide is turning on the Republican side. I think in the coming weeks we're going to see the decline of Rudy and the rise of Romney. Romney will win Iowa, win New Hampshire, win South Carolina and then have enough momentum to propel himself through Florida and beyond.
3 comments :
From what I've read, Huckabee lost a lot of ground with conservatives over his plans as Arkansas governor to provide college scholarships to children of illegal immigrants. This may be the right thing to do but not if he's depending on the Republican base.
I do not like the debate format of last nights debate. Showing commericals of candidates is a turn off for me. Anderson Cooper needs to find another job. I can't help saying again, I did not learn anything new last night. The biggest loser was CNN and Fred Thompson. I like people asking questions but the moderator should follow up because the candidates do not answer the questions.
^The candidates NEVER answer the questions. They have prepared speeches covering every topic. When a question is asked, the candidate assigns it to a certain topic, starts off like he's honestly going to answer the question and then eases into his/her prepared speech on that particular topic. I haven't seen a candidate give a firm answer to a question in a long time. You never know any more about their stance after they answer it than you did before the question. BTW, I'd much rather have real voters asking questions than the softball questions that the networks or Faux News ask.
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