Weigel

The Newt-Huntsman Lincoln-Douglas Debate

As I work on something wholly unrelated, let’s all pay attention to the two-man, 90 minute debate happening in New Hampshire. CNN streams it here; your open thread comments will live below. And I’ll chime in when I can.

4:45: There’s a reason you don’t often host “debates” between two people who agree. Huntsman and Gingrich have fundamentally different foreign policies – he wants out of Afghanistan, Gingrich doesn’t. Neither man is exploiting the difference, and a moderator isn’t pushing them. It’s in Huntsman’s interest to keep mentioning the need for “a foreign policy based on economics.” It’s in Gingrich’s interest to have this debate at all, because Huntsman naturally takes support away from Romney if he manages to surge. The only concrete position I hear so far is agreement, from Huntsman, that “all options” are on the table against Iran. Gingrich is in full-on conversational wise man mode. “This is,” he says of Pakistan, “a much harder problem than anybody in official Washington in either party is willing to deal with.” Also, “I was called in to read the intelligence reports on Iran’s WMD program.”