My (brief) analysis of the Ames debate – Plus Poll
So, I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t watch the whole debate. I will add updates to the post if I watch the previous segments.
I tuned in during the last hour when every candidate (except Paul) was trying to out-hawk the other on foreign policy. It was a little disgusting.
John Huntsman – Who? By all means, let him debate, but what does he add? How is he different from anyone, besides being more center.
Ron Paul – He did well considering they ganged up on him on social issues and foreign policy.
Mitt Romney – MAAAAN, he’s boring. The Republican Party needs to change their image and move away from these soft-spoken, slick candidates with nothing but Reagan talking points.
Tim Pawlenty – I’m sorry, but I can’t take him seriously. He is way too rehearsed and does not stand out among the other candidates. Update: I just watched the clip where Bachmann attacks Pawlenty on his centre-left policy positions as governor of Minnesota. Instead of defending or talking his way around those attacks, he says the dumbest thing ever to Bachmann: You let Obama’s policies pass in Congress. She only makes up .002 percent of the members in Congress, but who’s counting.
Newt Gingrich – He sounds and looks like a professor; who doesn’t believe the stuff he says. I don’t trust him. Update: I did like his jab at Chris Wallace for the “gotcha” questions about his campaign. The candidates were doing a good enough job making sparks fly on their own. They didn’t need the Fox panel throwing punches out them to make them quiver.
Herman Cain – As always, says a lot without saying anything. Maybe that’s why the Tea Party likes him.
Michelle Bachmann – What the heck was wrong with her tonight? The only time she smiled was when they asked her that “women should be submissive to their husbands” question. At least she made some more Newsweek cover photo opportunities.
Rick Santorum – Two words can describe Santorum’s performance: annoyed and annoying. He was annoyed that he is not taken seriously and was annoying when he tried to out-Christian, out-hawk the other candidates. He was completely disrespectful to both Paul and Bachmann.
Gary Johnson – Wish he was there
Interestingly enough, Gingrich apparently gained a lot of support following the debate, possibly enough to keep him alive through a few more events. His powerful one-liners and blatant attack on the Fox News panel and Chris Wallace struck a chord with the crowd who appeared tired of the ultimately irrelevant points of a candidates campaign and wanted substance. Last I checked, he was leading the online poll by Fox (following, of course, Paul’s massive internet support, of which I am admittedly a member).
Outside of Gingrich, I think you hit the nail on the head.
Bachmann seemed flustered for whatever reason, Pawlenty didn’t have much of a leg to stand on (unless you consider arguing that Bachmann as a single Congresswoman has not produced results a chamber that she shares with 434 people a legitimate argument), Paul is trending on Google above the other candidates (4th most popular trend at the most), and Cain was largely left out of the picture.
And what was with Santorum? He acted as if Paul had run over his dog or something and really got upset when Paul had to lecture him on the history of US-Iranian relations and the concept of blow-back.
I like how Santorum kept shaking his head ‘no’ when Paul was educating him on the 1953 Iran coup. What was he saying no to? No it didn’t happen? No it didn’t create problems?
I couldn’t tell – it conflicted with Santorum’s view of the world, that the U.S. has never made a mistake and that our enemies are only our enemies because of their hatred of what we are rather than what we have done.
If anything, it was, “No – you cannot make me accept it.”
Very much a “James-Taggart-type” move.
Ron Paul, love him to death, needs to become the Ninja master of sound bites.
It’s unfortunate that such anti-intellectual tactics are the only thing that appeal to the voting populace…