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Gibson gives each candidate a chance to take back a remark they made during the campaign. Hillary and Obama dodge. Edwards takes back his comment about Hillary's jacket. But Richardson delivers a genuinely sweet moment of self-deprecation:
"We were asked who our favorite Supreme Court justice was, and I said [Justice Byron] White. ... And then later I learned that White was against abortion rights. He was against civil rights. So that wasn’t a good one."
And with that, he can drop out.
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“Words are not actions. As passionately felt as they are, they are not actions. We have to turn passion into action, and feeling into reality.”
That’s the case against Obama, distilled. Hillary is not appealing while on the offensive -- at least that's my takeaway from this debate. She's more natural, more poised as a frontrunner. But she just encapsulated the argument that is keeping many Democrats from siding with Obama.
Here's his response, a few minutes later: "Words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of congress get in a position to enact legislation."
If New Hampshire buys that, Obama's a lock.
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Almost all of the hawkish Republican candidates have skirted questions about what they’d do in Iraq by saying they’d defer to their generals. It lets them avoid the sticky details while vaguely committing themselves to the war effort.
So Gibson confronts the Dems with the flipside of that question: Would they still pull the troops out if their generals said they needed more time?
Edwards tries to have it both ways. On the one hand, he says, it’s the responsibility of the president to make policy. That said, “I would listen to the generals—directly. … If they say we need more time, of course I’d listen to what they say.” But he still promises to “end the occupation of Iraq within one year.”
At no point does he acknowledge that these two actions -- listening to his generals (with a willingness to act on their advice) and pulling all combat troops out -- could be utterly at odds. A better question might have been: What would you do if your generals told you they needed another 20 years in Iraq?
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Oh here we go. Gibson asks Hillary: What does Obama need to be vetted on?
Hillary dives in, charging Obama with “having a pretty good debate with himself” on the subject of health care. He first supported a single payer system, she says -- now he has a health care plan that won’t cover every American.
Obama tries to clarify, saying “If I could set up a system from scratch, I’d set up a single payer system.” But given the system we already have, under which many people are already covered, he thinks it would be more pragmatic to lower the cost of health care than to force people to buy it.
Obama calls it a “philosophical difference” between them. Hillary says he’s being inconsistent, since his plan would mandate coverage for children but not adults. Obama responds that he requires it for children because “they don’t have a choice.”
These, these are the sparks we’ve been waiting for. And they're flying over one of the most contentious questions of the campaign -- to mandate or not to mandate. Not even Richardson's saccharine odes to positivity can extinguish this one. Props to ABC for letting them rough it out.
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And Sen. Clinton is speaking for the first time.
And boy does she take her time. Responding to Gibson's question about what she would do if she had actionable intelligence about terrorists operating in Pakistan, she gives a five-part answer. She would strike, with these things in mind:
1) We must train the Afghan army so it can help.
2) Any actionable intelligence that would lead to a strike must be given careful consideration.
3) The Pakistani government has to know they’re on the way.
4) Get musharraf to share responsibility for protecting nuclear stockpiles.
5) Repair the failed policies of the Bush administration.
Again, notice how ABC sets up the question so all the candidates have to respond to Obama's statement that he would strike Pakistan if there is actionable intelligence. They're treating him as the front-runner and letting him set the tone.
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Remember a few months ago when the Republicans spent an entire debate slamming Hillary Clinton? ABC sets this up as the Obama debate with a great question: Why not Barack Obama?
The candidates cite his health care plan, his lack of experience, etc. Only Mike Huckabee decides to praise him—probably to remind people of his own co-victory in Iowa. Paraphrased: Sen. Obama has changed the way Americans look at politics. It’s not a horizontal line anymore: not just left-right, conservative-liberal. He transcends labels. He’s exciting people about voting who have never voted before.
And that's coming from a Republican. Obama couldn’t have asked for a better endorsement if he'd written it himself. It's also something Huckabee could regret saying if, however unlikely, he ends up facing Obama in the general.
UPDATE 10:32 p.m.: What does Obama think of all this attention? He weighs in during the Dem debate: "I was flipping back and forth between the Republicans and football."
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Romney was asking for it. Look at the set-up he gave his opponents: “And when we sit down and talk about change, I’ll say not only can I talk about change, I’ve lived it.”
John McCain can’t resist: “Gov. Romney, we disagree on a lot of issues, but I agree you are the candidate of change.”
But Fred Thompson has been saying that!
Mocking Romney's shifting stances on the issue, Thompson called him the candidate of change. "He changes his position from time to time on it."
How about some attribution, McCain? Thompson is a gentleman not to take credit.
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Romney is bearing the brunt of just about every attack tonight. His only breather was when he and Giuliani got to tag-team Ron Paul on foreign policy.
The reason this keeps happening, a friend points out, is that Romney is the most unsympathetic person onstage. He can’t play the victim because he doesn’t appear to have feelings. His two emotions appear to be plastic joy and sour frustration. That’s why Huckabee can toss off a withering aside—and Romney can look visibly irked—without paying any political penalty.
The format also seems to hurt him more than others. The other candidates are eager to pounce on him—he is jockeying for first in New Hampshire polls, after all—and Gibson isn’t really intervening. A long spat with McCain over whether McCain's immigration plan constitutes amnesty ends up reflecting worse on Romney, if only because he's getting slammed from both sides. That's when McCain deals the second zinger of the night: "You can
spend your fortune on your attack ads, but it won’t be true."
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Rudy Giuliani: We have the best health care in the world. People come from around the world to get treated in America.
Ron Paul: Americans are actually going to India to get heart surgery for half price.
Maybe they just run in different circles.
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What is Thompson thinking?
In his first soliloquy, he gives a disquisition on how Cold War foreign policy led to the theory of preemption. Now he’s going on about how the Bill of Rights informs his world view.
I’m trying to picture the strategy session that led to this performance. Fred, you’ve been too … too engaging. Just pull back a little. Relax. Channel your inner high school history teacher.
If Thompson got up and left the room while the camera was looking away, I'm not sure I'd notice.
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The candidates are sitting around a semicircular table. Looks more like an academic panel than a presidential debate. On the upside, it means no silly WCW-style entrances.
The first question – "Would you run on George W. Bush’s foreign policy or run away from it?" – brings the conversation back to Iraq after weeks of focusing on domestic issues. You can tell ABC wants this to be a high stakes debate – no attempt to avoid the most heated issues, a la PBS.
Huckabee is ready for the question. He cites Rumsfeld’s “we go to war with the army we have” quote as an example of the Bush administration’s “bunker mentality”: “I felt that the proper way to approach the war was we go to war with the army that we need, and we make sure we have that army when we do go to war.”
As Thompson gives his blah answer, you can see Ron Paul rocking back and forth, itching to jump in. (And the cameraman knows it; he keeps cutting back to Paul.)
John McCain acts all magnanimous, praising President Bush for his foreign policy and praising Giuliani – a decidedly unrisky move, given McCain’s status in New Hampshire right now.
Finally, Paul has his say – his usual arguments about preemptive war and the Golden Rule – and Rudy and Mitt both pounce. Their gists: It’s not us; it’s them. (The terrorists.) After Romney mentions Islamist theorist and activist Sayyid Qutb, Huckabee gratuitously mentions the date on which Qutb died. See, he knows stuff about other countries!
Soon after, Huckabee lands the first major blow. Romney is talking about his "views," when Huckabee interrupts: “Which one?” The whole press room goes “Ohhhhh!” Romney’s looks like he just involuntarily regurgitated some bile.
Finally, the whole thing devolves into a free-for-all. Gibson holds up a “time out” sign. Anarchy.
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Dennis Kucinich has been griping non-stop -- and even filed an FCC complaint -- after getting shut out of tonight's ABC News/Facebook/WMUR debate in Manchester, NH.
The organizers are allowing the top four Democratic candidates -- Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and Richardson -- to participate based on their performance in the Iowa caucuses. But Kucinich cries foul: "[T]he most recent data from ABC and co-sponsor Facebook show Kucinich
ahead of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who was invited to
participate."
Which data, you ask? Among others: "Kucinich, according to Facebook's own figures, ranks fourth in popularity among Facebook members."
Let's take a look at some other things Facebook members rank among their favorites, according to network stats. (Since we're in Manchester, we'll go with that network.)
Top Music: Sublime, Jack Johnson, Fall Out Boy, Incubus, Green Day, Nickelback, Linkin Park
Top Movies: Boondock Saints, The Notebook
Political Views:
68% None
Rep. Kucinich, is this really a club to which you want to belong?