Winners:
Mike Huckabee is a great communicator with a sense of theater. He is also a nice guy. One of the most powerful images of the evening was a frail, but lovely Nancy Reagan leaning on Mr. Huckabee’s arm. He looked every inch the Southern gentleman.
His answers caused every person in the room where I watched the debate to grow quiet. When asked about most people being better off, he answered the question plainly with a “no” and then explained his answer.
When he loses the nomination, as he will, Huckabee should sit with conservative thinkers and hear them out. He should write a few serious books and make sure his ideas match his wit. He has a future, if he will be disciplined enough to do this.
Huckabee was lucky to stay out of the brawl in the second half.
You might not like Huck, and I am not voting for him, but he is good at this . . . something his critics for some reason don’t see.
Mitt Romney:
He knew enough to teach a seminar on any issue and physically loomed over John McCain who seemed to shrink next to him.
He devastated McCain for a shining moment on McCain’s liberal “issues,” but let it go too much after that. Is Romney too nice a guy to really knife a man when he is down? He is not good at putting things in a “Huckabee” aphorism that are memorable. That is a major weakness.
He is best at discussing policy details. He knows his stuff and is prepared to be president.
Look at a man when you are sitting next to him and letting him have it. Romney is a gentleman to the bone and I am proud to support him, but he is not good at going negative.
Still, he looked presidential, sounded presidential, and had his issues down. If you vote on the issues, Romney sounded just right. He needs Huckabee out of debates, because he cannot beat him on style points.
Losers:
John McCain:
As a debater, John McCain was horrible tonight. He mumbles in a monotone. He hunches up in his badly tailored suits and has a weird cackle that channels that of Hillary Clinton.
His views are often wrong-headed and it is hard to see any consistent principle behind his views where he does deviate from conservative orthodoxy. His immigration answer . . . he voted for amnesty, before he read polls against it. He was clear that he would appoint good justices which may have helped him.
His back and forth with Romney was, bluntly, stupid. McCain is winning and looked like a petty loser.
He did not make a gaffe . . . unless his performance made obvious that buying a ticket to a McCain versus Obama debate for a Republican is like buying third class passage on Titanic. John McCain was stylistically miserable tonight and sadly in this media age some of it is visual. That is not going to get better. I have never seen Clinton or Obama perform so badly which for a Republican is bad news indeed.
Ron Paul:
I am clear that he is the man to defeat Bryan and his crazy talk about free coinage of sliver.