Post Debate Thoughts

Next debate: Bean bag chairs.

Unorganized, here's a stream-of-consciousness series of thoughts on the final GOP debate before Super Tuesday.

The audience in every Romney - Santorum exchange early on seemed to be members of Mitt Romney's immediate family.  Those tense exchanges made Santorum look underwhelming and made Romney look arrogant and unfriendly.  Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul probably benefited by staying out of the way and letting that train wreck happen on its own.  But when they spoke later on both Gingrich and Paul came across well.  Gingrich was the most statesmanlike.  He also had some clear and well-spoken points.  He won the debate, but he did not dominate.  He just did well, while Santorum and Romney came across poorly.

CNN Debate tonight - do or die?

Tonight's debate is especially important for each candidate as it could shape the next portion of the race, including Super Tuesday.  It's the last debate before that delegate deluge. For Mitt Romney, it's his chance to re-emerge in Arizona and Michigan.  If he loses in Michigan, by many accounts, the establishment will bail on him.  That sounds like mission critical stuff if it is true.  For Rick Santorum, attacks have been dredged, or Drudged up against him that makes this debate important for him to establish his credibility and electability.  And for Newt Gingrich, this may be his last chance to mount a last surge with a strong, positive debate performance.  For Ron Paul - this may be a rare chance to come across better on foreign relations, which is where he most lacks credibility with the Republican mainstream.

The debate may have higher ratings than previous debates I suspect, because of partisan interest and because with growing news coverage of the Republican contests, more people will be tuning in for the first time.  That makes this debate all the more critical.  Sadly, given the high expectations and the pressure to perform, I suspect 2 if not 3 of the contenders to falter.  Ron Paul, with the least pressure to exceed expectations, has the best chance of performing well, depending on the lines of questioning.  We shall see.  It should be lively.

Debate without a winner?

A bit of a yawner.

As we get further into the GOP presidential debates, the GOP primary candidates all seem to be hitting their strides in the debate venues - no big mistakes, get the talking points out, and differentiate yourself from the other candidates.  They all seem to be getting there - albeit a different rates of speed.  Perry for example spoke better but still had a pause or two that was a couple of seconds too long.  Given that emerging dynamic, and the fact that there are fewer and fewer areas of new ground to go over, is it possible for anyone to win?

Romney's comment: It's not a gaffe, but it's not good.

Via ABC, Mitt Romney in last night's debate offered up his second not-ready-for-prime-time moment by  offering to make a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry.  He was just trying to make a point about his conviction on his  point about his health care position.  But after his previous faux pas in an earlier debate (regarding his lawn care company hiring an illegal alien, and him being concerned because he was running for office), this doesn't help Mitt.

Offering to bet isn't a smart thing to do during a presidential debate.  It's not a gaffe in the sense that he's done something illegal (some would say it's immoral), especially since it's pretty easy to argue he was using it to make a point and wasn't serious about betting.  But it's playground politics.  My dad can beat up your dad.  It's not presidential timbre.

Michele Bachmann's camp jumped all over it and pointed out the other reason it was not a good move - it can come across (if you don't buy Romney's defense) as being out of touch with regular people:

“For someone to go and throw around a $10,000 bet, just goes to show even more that he’s not the same level as the people of Iowa or the country,” said Michele Bachmann’s spokeswoman Alice Stewart.

One concern it raises for me is the debating skills. Previously I felt that Romney would fare pretty well in a debate against Obama.  Mitt's not my choice but I felt that if he were the nominee, he'd hold his own in a head-to-head debate versus Obama.  Now I'm less sure, and if you take away Romney's claim to being most electable, what's he left with?

EXIT QUESTION: Did anyone else think this?

What to look for in CNN's GOP debate tonight

CNN is hosting another in a series of seemingly endless GOP primary debates tonight.  The topic: foreign policy and national security.  This will be the second foreign policy debate, and it provides candidates one more opportunity to make an impression on voters for better or worse.  There's two things I'd expect to see in the debate tonight.

Romney-Perry main event fizzles

The gloves are off. Almost.

It's not exactly an exploding fireball of death for Rick Perry, but last night he did himself no favors.  Then again neither did Mitt Romney in a night that seemed just a little bit disjointed.  Instead of one debate I saw two distinct scenarios.  It was a like a boxing match with an under card.

Live-tweeting the GOP debate tonight

I will be live tweeting thoughts and observations on the debate Google-Fox GOP candidates debate tonight in Florida.  So will 2.4 million other people.  The likely hashtag will be #GOPdebate.

If you are interested you can follow me on Twitter here.  If you were brought to this post from Twitter, this could be the start of an endless loop.