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We'll leave it to the experts to declare winners and losers. But we hope everyone can agree that 1) Huckabee came across well, despite not being really pushed, and 2) Romney took every opportunity to choke.
And judging from activity in the Romney press shop, everyone was on Red Alert. Check out this inbox, which may or may not belong to a friend from a rival publication (some lines blacked out for privacy):
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Mitt Romney finished off a dreadful debate with an awful last word. The former Massachusetts governor, supposedly a member of Red Sox Nation, said that the Red Sox waited 87 years in between championships. It was 86. This won't sit well in New Hampshire.
UPDATE 10:24 p.m.: Uhh, Chris blogged about this, too. It's like one of those classic Highlights games where there are two images, but one has six things the other doesn't. Can you spot all of the differences?
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Mitt Romney, referring to how long the Red Sox had to wait to win the World Series: "We waited 87 years ..."
Eight-six years, Mitt. It's 86. Botching a major statistic known to every resident of his supposed home state--Romney couldn't have found a worse note to end on.
UPDATE 10:19 p.m.: Ah, the perils of tag-team liveblogging.
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Mike Huckabee: “I will accept the support of anyone and everyone I can get.”
Cut to Chuck Norris sitting in the audience. Someone give these CNN directors a raise!
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Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr asks a question about gays in the military. He is gay; he was in the military. Romney's answer is painful to watch. Anderson points out that in the past, he said he looked foward to getting rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Now, he refuses to denounce it. He may have looked forward to it, but, he says, "This is not that time." When will we be ready? Well, he'd have to consult with military experts and find out.
Again, it's like his "meet with my lawyers" answer from a few months back. The boos say it all.
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Through 23 questions, the breakdown of the main characters in the questions:
White men: 15
White women: 6 (including the woman from Alabama wearing a hijab)
Black men: 1
White cartoon character: 1
No Latinos, thus far.
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... On the question of whether waterboarding is torture. Romney says he doesn't want to get into specifics as a presidential candidate. He might as well have said he's going to consult his lawyers. As Romney speaks, McCain looks like he's getting ready to water-board him right then and there. McCain's response: "I assume Romney doesn’t know what waterboarding is. ... If we’re going to get the high ground in this world, we’re not going to torture people."
Earlier, McCain looked like he was nodding off behind the podium. He appears to have woken up.
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That question from FoxBrosStudios--the one that one of the candidates scolded for exercising poor gun safety--is a low-concept offering from the award-winning team that brought you the under-the-radar hit Vigilantes. The Web-based comedy series takes place on the U.S.-Mexico border, and a cursory glimpse suggests it follows the Citizen Border Rangers, a fictional version of the Minutemen vigilantes that keep watch on the border for illegal immigrants. There's a lot of swearing (bleeped out) and a lot of jokes about the ineptitude of border security, both among vigilantes and the government.
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These questioners make Tim Russert look like Larry King. One of them asks whether Jesus would support the death penalty. Huckabee has the best answer: “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office.” Cooper moves on. I like that if your joke is funny, the moderator gives you a pass. If it’s not funny, it looks like a dodge, and he presses you to answer.
Anderson doesn't ask: What would Joseph Smith do?
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Scratch that earlier quip about Rudy not having to answer the question of diverting bills to city agencies. Looks like Anderson Cooper came to play hardball. Here’s what Rudy said about the report (paraphrased):
It’s not true. I had 24 hour security. They followed me every place I went. There were threats, some have become public, some haven’t. I had nothing to do with the handling of the agencies’ records. As far as I know, the bills’ handling was perfectly appropriate.
Anderson Cooper, the reporter who made his name asking tough questions during Hurricane Katrina, doesn't follow up.
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Did both Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani just say they support corn subsidies because we could face a devastating food shortage?
Romney: “We don’t want to find ourselves in the same position with food supply as we are with energy supply.” Giuliani: “We have to have our own supply of food.”
There are plenty of arguments in defense of ethanol subsidies. As far as I know, impending famine is not one of them.
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Even Mitt Romney admits that, and the audience seems to agree.
Huck puts up a damn good first showing, answering a question about whether he gave tuition breaks to children of illegal immigrants. The money line—“We’re not going to punish a child because their parent committed a crime”—gets applause.
Mitt, seeing a looming shape in the rear view mirror, pounces: “Mike, that’s not your money. That's the taxpayer’s money.” Nice to see they put Mitt and Huck next to each other—it lets you watch the battle for Iowa in a single frame.
Also, notice how Huckabee declines to attack Romney on the illegal gardeners question. No wonder he likes Mike.
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Throughout the evening, we'll be doing spot background checks on some of the YouTube questioners' video libraries.
Emilyekins, who wants to return to the small government of the GOP's past, is a blank slate on YouTube. She is a new aunt, though, and judging by her favorite videos, she's a Ron Paul kind of gal. She's a graduate student in political science at UCLA. Google freaks me out sometimes.
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ConservativeVoiceUSA, who asked the amnesty question, is a brooding vlogger. Every video on his YouTube page has the same dimly lit background that made for the awful-looking image you saw on your TV. He's 49, a Fred Thompson supporter, and has video titles like "ILLEGAL ALIENS MURDER 12 LEGAL AMERICANS DAILY 4380 A YEAR." Something tells us he fancies Tom Tancredo, too.
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Rudy accuses Mitt Romney of employing illegal immigrants in his home, saying he not only had sanctuary cities in his state, but that Romney even lived in a "sanctuary mansion," in which he employed six illegal immigrants.
Romney: "Mr. Mayor, you know better than that."
Rudy: "You did."
Romney then asks whether he's supposd to check the papers of every foreign-sounding worker. Mitt should really work in a quip about Giuliani checking that pedophile priest's papers. ...
I also like how Mitt Romney quotes Rudy Giuliani "almost verbatim." Those Bain guys sure are precise.
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Throughout the evening, we'll be doing spot background checks on some of the YouTube questioners' video libraries.
First up, pudgenet, who sang a nice little diddy for the candidates. Pudgenet, né Chris Nandor, is a budding musician who sings Lisa Loeb in his spare time. Nandor is the man behind the scenes at Slashdot, according to his Wikipedia page. The rest of his political-themed songs are up at a snazzy-looking Web page. Insta-judgment tells me that "Osama bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday" is worth a listen.
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So they're doing the staggered entrance thing again. John McCain is making everything awkward by trying to shake each candidate's hand as they come onstage.
Also, speaking of making things awkward: The Politico broke news earlier today that Rudy Giuliani billed obscure New York City agencies for expenses he accrued while making trips to see his then-girlfriend Judith Nathan in the Hamptons. He's probably thanking God right now that all the questions are pre-selected YouTube videos. ...
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The Democratic National Committee wants another "macaca" moment, bad. So bad, in fact, that it launched a new site today, Flipper TV, which compiles footage of the GOP front-runners on the campaign trail.
Here’s how it works, in theory: Web-savvy Democrats comb hours of raw footage, discover telling or embarrassing moments the media missed, mash them up into digestible YouTubes, and unleash them upon unsuspecting Republicans. In theory.
In execution, I see problems. First of all, the footage comes from DNC trackers—people paid to follow candidates and film their every move. If they watch an event and then upload the footage, how are they not going to spot key moments? (Not to mention the media—most of the events on the site are public.) Second, the footage is crap. Wobbly cameras, grainy sound, and, more often than not, some guy’s giant head obstructing the view. And third, who in their right mind is going to sift through hour after hour of shoddy, home video detritus in hopes of finding the gold nugget everyone else overlooked? If someone needs embarrassing shots of Mitt Romney, he’s not going to find it in a video of the Ames straw poll.
Don’t get me wrong, open sourcing raw footage is a great idea. Just look at the glorious results of Romney’s create your own ad contest. And it never hurts to make extra B-roll footage available. But if it’s gotcha moments the DNC is expecting, they’re in for disappointment. More likely, they’ll end up with a lot of Democratic supporters being forced to watch hours of Fred Thompson praising tax cuts.
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"He talks in the third person a lot. That's just the way he speaks. It can make it hard for him to connect to the listener."
-- Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn on Barack Obama, speaking to reporters after the Hanover, N.H., debate in September.
“Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there.”
-- Barack Obama, speaking on ABC's Nightline Monday night.
Bob Dole would be proud.
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Is Duncan Hunter even trying any more? Examples A, B, and C:
- His home page has "60 second Daily Updates" that purport to be daily podcasts of what's happening in the Hunter campaign. The date above the play button changes every day, but the content does not. The feature hasn't been updated since October.
- The "Iowa Virtual Headquarters" page has a countdown timer that says it's counting down to the Iowa caucuses. Unfortunately, it's counting down to the wrong date. The Iowa GOP is holding its caucus on Jan. 3, not Jan. 15. Unsurprisingly, New Hampshire's countdown is also incorrect.
- The "Bloggers for Hunter" page is empty. As in, there are no bloggers who support Duncan Hunter. Don't worry, it's "Coming Soon !!"
Not to be harsh, but when you can't keep track of the primary calendar, it's time to wave the white flag.
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The Republican presidential debates are starting to look like Lost, in which each character gets his own episode. First there was the Thompson debate, with all eyes on Fred. Then came the Hillary debate, in which her name was invoked more than 40 times.
So you'd think, given the recent emergence of Mike Huckabee as a front-runner in Iowa and Ron Paul as a major fund-raiser, that those two candidates might dominate tonight's discussion. But if that’s the case, CNN’s podium lineup (exclusive!) doesn’t reflect it:
Tancredo
Huckabee
Romney
Giuliani
Thompson
McCain
Paul
Hunter
Shouldn't Huckabee, the guy statistically tied for first in Iowa, get a better position than McCain, the guy polling third in New Hampshire and invisible in Iowa? Maybe it would just be too sad a statement to take McCain out of the Middle Four.
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John Edwards unveiled a new Web site today that asks voters not to vote for any candidate who takes money from lobbyists or Political Action Committees.
Sorry, let me rephrase that. Edwards unveiled a Web site today that asks voters not to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Championing his own commitment to a lobby-free lifestyle, Edwards wants to rally a million Americans around an anti-lobby pledge. The Web site is the culmination of a campaign-long initiative by Edwards to move fund-raising away from lobbying and PACs. A noble goal, certainly, but this is chiefly a political gesture, and the politics of the move aren’t that sound.
The problem is, his attacks against Clinton, who has defended the role of lobbyists in politics, continue to help Obama. On a conference call this morning, Edwards’ staff had the chance to hammer Obama, but chose not to. A reporter asked Edwards’ staffers whether the pledge’s anti-lobbyist clause meant pledgers couldn’t vote for Obama. (Obama accepted lobbyist money when he ran for Senate and while he was a state senator.) The Edwards campaign dodged the question, but the pledge implies that since Obama had atoned for his lobbyist sins, he’s in the clear.
At some point, Edwards is going to have to realize that voters he shakes loose from Hillary’s grasp aren’t all flocking to him. And with Obama’s recent PAC flap in the news, he’s passing up a golden opportunity to go after Hillary and Obama. Sure, he doesn’t want to seem overly aggressive. But as Edwards himself likes to remind us, the Democratic primary isn’t a two-person race—certainly not between him and Senator Clinton, anyway.
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Here’s a shot of a young, lawyerly Fred Thompson from his most recent ad, “Marie”:
And here’s Javier Bardem as hypnotic serial killer Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men:
Hulking frames. Rumbling bass voices. Floppy Prince Valiant 'dos. Sign this man up for the inevitable Fred Thompson biopic.
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UPDATE 3:15 p.m.: I have to retract this entire post, which was wholly inaccurate. The Edwards campaign called me to rightfully inform me that the question in the conference call was about whether Hillary Clinton's support had peaked in Iowa and the rest of the country. They then responded that the "Clinton machine is very formidable, and that's what it is." I misheard the question.
I deeply regret the error. You can find full audio of the call here.
The original post, in strikethrough, is below:
During a conference call with the Edwards campaign this
morning a reporter asked an innocuous question: Does the campaign think Edwards’
support has peaked in Iowa?
Five seconds of silence followed. Finally, an Edwards staffer piped up. “Look, the Clinton machine is very formidable,
and that’s what it is.”
Way to be confident, guys.