Category: Debates

Warren ‘Got Her Fake Native American Ass Handed to Her’ by Brown in Debate

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So says Aleister at American Glob, admitting that his judgment is perhaps not entirely objective. Da Tech Guy was less sanguine:

This debate was pretty much a wash, I think that helps Warren because of her slight lead. When a great part of your appeal is likability a debate that makes you want to throw rocks at the screen is bad, that could hurt, Scott Brown.

Dan Riehl highlights this excerpt from the Boston Herald:

Sen. Scott Brown immediately targeted Elizabeth Warren’s purported Native American heritage in a heated exchange that kicked off their first debate, saying she “checked the box,” as a minority when “clearly she’s not.”
“The only way to set the record straight is to release your personnel records … and you refuse to release your records, and I think that speaks volumes,” said Brown, who questioned whether Warren received advantages when she identified herself as a minority on law school directories.
He said the story of Warren’s lineage goes to her character

Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection provides an extensive analysis, concluding:

[T]rying to be as neutral as I can, I think Brown helped himself tonight. It wasn’t a knockout, but he won easily on points because Warren needed to demonize him, and he came across as he always comes across, as a regular guy the people can relate to.

Ain’t I Done Told Ya So?

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Perhaps you remember this Sept. 23 headline:

Does Pain Explain Perry’s
Poor Debate Performances?

Once more, I give credit to Brian Ledbetter of Snapped Shots for the e-mail tip alerting me that Rick Perry had undergone back surgery in July, thus permitting me to become the first national journalist to suggest that there might be a connection between the Texas governor’s back pain and his problems in the TV debates.

The day after I posted that at The American Spectator, Perry’s campaign denied (to Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post) that the governor’s back pain was a problem. It was nearly three months later — in an interview with the Des Moines Register published Dec. 11 — that Perry admitted he was “pretty fatigued” because of his back problems.

Ah, but it was worse than mere “fatigue,” as I was told during my trip to Iowa and reported on Dec. 31:

Earlier this week, I talked to a well-informed conservative who claimed to know — from sources close to the Perry campaign — that the governor had been prescribed Oxycontin for pain, and was subsequently taken off that medication when it became apparent it was affecting him negatively.

The Iowa source who told me that was speaking off-the-record in such a way that, when he described (but would not name) his source, I suspected I knew the quite famous political operative. However, I don’t burn my sources, especially not in such a way that it would burn my source’s sources, so therefore:

  1. I only mentioned it once, burying it in a blog post on New Year’s Eve; and
  2. I made sure the sourcing was vague.

Also, given that this was a second-hand sort of item, I didn’t want to seem to be spreading malicious gossip without substantiation. However, in my defense — another fact that was necessarily omitted from that Dec. 31 item — I knew it wasn’t malicious because the Iowa source actually had a favorable disposition toward Perry, despite being disappointed by the mismanagement of Perry’s campaign in the Hawkeye State. (Note to self: Call source and see if we’ve reached “now it can be told” status.)

OK, so that’s what happened from September through December, from my first speculation until the subsequent confirmation that back pain was a major factor in Rick Perry’s undoing. Now, via Alex Pappas at The Daily Caller, the denouement:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry was under the influence of painkillers during televised presidential debates over the last year to help relieve severe back pain, according to a soon-to-be released eBook on the 2012 Republican race for president obtained by The Daily Caller.
“It became an open secret that he was using painkillers in sufficient dosages to keep him standing through the two-hour debates,” write the authors of “Inside the Circus.”
A source provided TheDC with an advance copy of the eBook, authored by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas. The book comes out Tuesday.

Read the whole thing. And keep this little episode in mind next time I tell you something that seems too strange to be true.

UPDATE: My smartass friend Doug Winship — one of the world’s greatest bartenders — knows just how to stick the knife in:

Too bad you quit blogging. You could brag about this….

Yeah, thanks, smartass. I would have actually quit, too, if tip-jar hitters hadn’t talked me out of it. So hit the freaking tip jar.





Newt Attacks Santorum at Red State: Gingrich’s Bankrupt Narcissism

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“Newt Gingrich has more debt than cash on hand, according to the FEC report he will file today. . . . Gingrich continues to carry $1.55 million in debt and the cash flow has evidently slowed. . . . [T]here are already complaints in the extended Gingrich universe about unpaid bills. . . . Gingrich’s February fundraising total puts him at the back of the GOP pack, after Mitt Romney’s $11.5 million, Rick Santorum’s $9 million and Ron Paul’s $3.3 million.”
— Alexander Burns, Politico

“Had the dominance of televised debates reduced the 2012 campaign to the level of a show-biz publicity stunt, manipulated by TV networks? Had the relationship between poll numbers and media coverage become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, so that only those with good poll numbers could expect good coverage, and vice-versa? Had network executives and pollsters completely replaced Republican voters as the deciders of the GOP nomination? These were obvious questions raised by the long campaign, but none of the moderators in any of the debates ever raised those questions, perhaps for the same reason the Wizard of Oz warned Dorothy to ignore that man behind the curtain.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “The Campaign as TV Show,” The American Spectator, March 2012

“The self-consciousness that mocks all attempts at spontaneous action or enjoyment derives in the last analysis from the waning belief in the reality of the external world, which has lost its immediacy in a society pervaded by ‘symbolically mediated information.’ . . . To the performing self, the only reality is the identity he can construct out of materials furnished by advertising and mass culture, themes of popular film and fiction, and fragments torn from a vast range of cultural traditions . . . In order to polish and perfect the part he has devised for himself, the new Narcissus gazes at his own reflection . . .”
— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, 1979

One of the great dangers of our age is the pervasive superficiality that mistakes seeming for being. This is a problem that extends throughout society and is certainly not a new thing under the sun. Christ excoriated the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocritical self-righteousness, describing them as “whited sepulchres” — whitewashed tombs — “which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”

There have always been those who excel at seeming virtuous, but who fail spectacularly at actually being virtuous, and so skillful hypocrites have always been able to deceive those who view human nature superficially. Yet this problem has taken on new significance in an age when “symbolically mediated information” (or, as most of us call it, “the media”) so often shapes our perceptions and personalities.

The phenomenon of “the performing self,” as Lasch explained it, is peculiarly common in an era when so many people spend a significant part of their childhoods on the sofa watching TV, and thus are raised with the superficiality of perception that television encourages. (See the late Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death and The Disappearance of Childhood, for a deeper understanding of how TV affects our perceptions.) We cannot wish this phenomenon away; it is our new reality; and yet it important, if we wish to criticize the ways in which media influence our political discourse, to see this superficiality and the related role of “the performing self” as clearly as possible.

Grant this: The people who manipulate the media know what they’re doing. David Axelrod and George Stephanopoulos are experts at the manipulation of political perception. If some of us have learned to spot their handiwork (see my March 6 American Spectator column, “Political Puppet Show”) this does not mean we are entirely immune to manipulation. Republicans also engage in media manipulation and if you were shocked when Rick Santorum said Fox News had shown a pro-Romney bias, you should ask yourself why you hadn’t noticed it earlier.

This bias began to manifest itself clearly in February, after Newt Gingrich lost the Florida (Jan. 31) and Nevada (Feb. 4), and Santorum experienced a second surge with his triple victories Feb. 7 in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. How many times did reporters and commentators on Fox News repeat the Romney campaign’s spin that these were “non-binding” contests? Technically true, but blatantly misleading, the repetition of this spin clearly served to dimish the importance of Santorum’s victories and, I suspect, reflected a deeper bias among some people at Fox: Gingrich was their preferred “Not Mitt” alternative, because Newt is good on TV.

Being good on TV is, of course, a basic qualification for presidential candidates in the modern era, but Gingrich’s excellence in debate and his amazing ability to deliver crisp sound-bites with such apparent spontaneity is quite nearly his only qualification as a candidate.

When Gingrich’s campaign imploded on the launch pad last June, I hoped we would be spared the painful experience of watching Newt demonstrate his incapacity for the larger tasks of organizing a national campaign. When the derailment of the Cain Train in November sparked a “second look at Newt” push by conservative pundits, I was astonished.

Really? The GOP is going to nominate Mr. Third Marriage, the guy whose current wife was the congressional staffer with whom he was having an extramarital affair during the Lewinsky scandal?

Whatever else Gingrich has said or done in his career, that episode permanently marred his biography and even if he were somehow to win the Republican nomination, that biographical datum alone would suffice to doom Newt in November. Say what you will about his ability to debate the issues, Americans wouldn’t elect Newt Gingrich president even if his Democratic opponent were Al Sharpton.

No matter how stupid Dave Weigel thinks GOP primary voters are, the overwhelming majority of Republicans are at least wise enough to understand Newt’s ultimate un-electability.

Nevertheless, Gingrich has always had a vocal squad of cheerleaders among those who think that “issues” are all that matters in politics, for whom the thought of Newt debating Obama is a favorite fantasy.

But it is a fantasy, and it was never anything more than that: Gingrich never had a shot at becoming the Republican nominee, because his biography is so clearly un-presidential. The “narrative arc” is wrong.

Besides, who believes “issues” were all that matters in politics? I think I’m pretty solid on the issues, so why am I not running for president?

Once you’ve stopped laughing at the absurd notion of me campaigning for president, ask yourself why anyone ever took Newt Gingrich’s campaign more seriously. He was a Congressman from Georgia who spent four years as Speaker of the House before being rejected by his own GOP majority. And maybe you should think about this question: Why, during the past 13 years, did Newt never run for senator or governor or any other statewide office in Georgia?

OK, now to my point: Think back to January, to the debates in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. Think back to all of Newt’s speeches and media appearances in January when he said that there was nothing more important than preventing Mitt Romney from winning the Republican nomination. Think about the several times when Newt said that the only way — the only way — to stop Mitt was for all conservatives (including Santorum) to “coalesce” behind Newt Gingrich.

Obviously that didn’t happen and now, after having lost even in such of his supposed Deep South strongholds as Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, after having finished fourth in 10 states in the past six weeks, with his campaign clearly teetering on the brink of complete collapse — now, I say, at this crucial point in the 2012 primary campaign, Newt publishes a column at Red State savaging Rick Santorum and once more insisting that he, Newt Gingrich, is the “only . . . candidate in this race who can offer the change our country desperately needs.”

Really? Fourth in Minnesota, fourth in Maine, fourth in Michigan, fourth in Washington State, fourth in Alaska, fourth in North Dakota, fourth in Vermont, fourth in Massachusetts, fourth in Idaho, fourth in Wyoming — if Newt Gingrich is so obviously “the change our country desperately needs,” why have so many Republican primary voters failed to see this?

Could it be that Newt Gingrich is deluded by his own narcissism?

Could it be that Newt was less than sincere in telling conservatives that stopping Mitt Romney was his top priority?

Could it be that Newt, knowing his own campaign is now hopelessly doomed, used this opportunity to damage Santorum’s chances as the last remaining viable alternative to Romney?

He could support Dede Scozzafava, but not Rick Santorum.

Newt is very good at seeming, but not so good at being what he seems. And he evidently thinks we’re too stupid to notice the difference.

No, Newt: We’re not that stupid. Unlike you, we have not lost all belief in “the reality of the external world.”

 

 

UPDATE: Speaking of narcissism, readers will forgive me for tooting my own horn about predicting Gingrich’s bankruptcy.

On Feb. 21, after the January campaign finance reports were published, I warned that Gingrich’s spending was “unsustainable.” Last Tuesday, March 13, I posted two important questions:

Question 1: How much did Newt raise in February? Question 2: What was his campaign’s cash-on-hand and total debt as of March 1?

Even then, I suspected that Gingrich would badly trail Santorum in February fundraising, and that he would have more debt than cash-on-hand when the FEC reports came in. That warning was repeated in various other posts over the past week until finally yesterday, I bluntly titled a post: “Is Newt’s Campaign Bankrupt?”

Excuse me for pointing our my own prescience, but you might notice that (a) no other conservative blogger warned you about Newt’s impending bankruptcy, and (b) the same bloggers who failed to predict this outcome will also fail to give me credit for having successfully done so.

Why is this? What benefit do others seek to gain by depriving me of credit when I so clearly deserve credit? Is it just my hurt feelings that causes me to notice this, or does this point to some problem more significant than my bruised ego?

 


Erick Erickson, Santorum Consultant?

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JOHNSTOWN, Ohio
In the preceding post, I described Erick Erickson as hating Rick Santorum “with the heat of ten thousand suns,” which evidently prompted commenters to call my attention to Erickson’s post-debate analysis at Red State:

It was the last debate. Newt Gingrich won it.
He was the only candidate who repeatedly steered the questions toward Barack Obama. He was the only candidate who dared point out that the media barely touched Obama’s infanticide support as an Illinois State Senator. He returned to the role of elder statesman.
The crowd leaned to Mitt Romney. It was probably inevitable. Mesa, AZ is the second largest concentration of Mormons in America and the State Republican Party handled getting the seats filled. It threw Rick Santorum off his game. The crowd booed Santorum taking on Romneycare’s individual mandate.
Santorum did not shine. He came in, it seemed, prepared to be beaten up. He was off his game. In the second half of the debate he did better. But the beginning was stumbling, bumbling, angry, and in the weeds. One thing he did very, very well is steer the contraception issue to families.
If Santorum can consistently steer this issue back to stable families, he has an issue that will win over independent voters. Note to the Santorum campaign: you will actually win the debate even in the general election if you focus your social values critique on the integrity of the American nuclear family.

To quote P.J. O’Rourke: “What the f–k? What the f–king f–k, huh?”

Certainly I cannot be the only conservative who recalls how Erickson spent the final week before the Iowa caucuses furiously attacking Santorum in what was, so far as I could figure, a final desperate attempt to salvage hope for a Rick Perry comeback. And yet now Erickson deems it his prerogative to offer strategic “messaging” advice to the Santorum campaign?

This is not to say that Erickson’s advice is wrong, of course. But this kind of sadistic “frenemies” stuff — Erickson relentlessly pounding on Santorum for months and then expecting Santorum to heed his advice — just boggles my mind. Why does Erickson, who has made it abundantly clear that he would rather have Romney than Santorum as the GOP nominee, make this show of pretending to want to help Santorum?

Alternate explanatory theories come to mind, but I need to get on the road to Michigan, and don’t have time to delve into it now. Let the commenters attempt to explain this weirdness.

UPDATE: Bill Quick offers his own assessment of the debate, acknowledging his pro-Gingrich bias and, hey, NTTAWWT. It was a good night for Newt, but the problem is that Newt is now down so low that a comeback appears impossible for him. (Was I the only one who noticed that Gingrich refrained from attacking Mitt last night? Is anyone else even slightly curious about that oddity?)

Santorum supporter Ed Morrissey summarizes his reaction:

Unfortunately Santorum seemed almost overprepared for the fight. Instead of providing a brief response and refocusing attention on current issues like the economy, Santorum kept explaining, and explaining, and explaining, and added an apology or two along the way. There is an axiom in politics: Explaining is not winning. Save the explanations for your web page, not for debates. Santorum came across as measured, honest, and open, but ended up sounding defensive almost all night long. . . .
Does this debate move the needle for anyone? I doubt it. Gingrich had a very good debate but not a real gamechanger, and his position in the polling has dropped so low nearly everywhere that he’d practically need the other three men on stage to declare themselves Kennedy Democrats in order to get out of that hole. Santorum may have rattled the confidence of some new supporters and give undecideds less reason to join his column, but it wasn’t a terrible performance such as Rick Perry’s debates in September and October, and Santorum did have some good moments as well.

That generally comports with my own view. My problem in judging a debate performance is that I know I’m not neutral. Why the hell would I even watch a debate if I didn’t care who won?

Because I know I’m not neutral, I don’t trust my own subjective impressions of the event, but neither am I willing to outsource my thinking to the media. Neither the New York Times nor Fox News nor Erick Erickson is going to tell me what to think and, while I acknowledge the ability or major media institutions to influence political outcomes — i.e., by telling other people what to think — I try to keep in mind the distinction between (a) what actually happened and (b) what the major media say happened.

Perceptions have a way of becoming realities in politics, and there are times when the stimuli and and the reactions become conflated: We begin judging events by the reactions of others, rather than judging events as independent phenomena in their own right.

Nobody is paying me to tell people What It Really Means, nor am I being paid to tell politicians how to run their campaigns. In fact, I’m being paid precious little to tell anybody anything at all.

There are times when I feel like I’m just unloading my twisted brain onto the blogosphere for the amusement of the readership — maybe I should write a book, Monetize Your Insanity: Psychosis for Fun & Profit — and as long as y’all keep hitting the tip jar to keep the show on the road, that’s OK with me: “A Road Man for the Lords of Karma.”

UPDATE II: Linked at Memeorandum in connection with Byron York’s Washington Examiner column, “In Arizona, GOP debates end on low point.” Byron’s good people. I expect to see him in Michigan between now and Tuesday.

 




 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Have the Deciders Decided? Examining the Post-Debate Examinations

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JOHNSTOWN, Ohio
This morning, I woke up and switched on Fox & Friends and watched them bring on Mitt Romney’s proxy Chris Christie to lead the 8 a.m. hour. Steve Doocy’s first question to Christie — this is from memory, but close enough to an exact quote that I’ll put it inside quotation marks — was: “All the conservative blogs say Mitt Romney won and Rick Santorum had a bad night.”

Really? Of course I’m prejudiced by my pro-Santorum sentiments, but this seemed an odd way to start the morning’s schedule at Fox News, as if they were delivering the Official Message.

My general impression of last night’s debate was that Newt Gingrich had the best performance, and that Santorum escaped without any major harm. That was important, because this was the debate where Santorum could expect to be required to answer for everything “controversial” he has ever said, and he never really got cornered.

But if you watched CNN before the debate, you noticed that some of their commentators — particularly Ari Fleischer — were trying to raise expectations: Santorum needed to clearly win the debate, or else he would be judged the loser. And when it was over, Fleischer and others on CNN (including Erick Erickson, who hates Rick Santorum with the heat of ten thousand suns) were declaring Romney the winner on the basis of such calculations. (For some reason, CNN didn’t book Dana Loesch as a commentator on the Arizona debate.)

In general, it seemed to me that coverage of last night’s debate was over-hyped, that political junkies were underestimating the degree to which regular people have become jaded after 20 debates.  Here’s the lead of the New York Times article:

Mitt Romney challenged Rick Santorum’s credentials as a fiscal conservative in a fiercely combative debate on Wednesday, trying to redefine Mr. Santorum as part of the problem in Washington and regain his footing in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination.
With the Arizona and Michigan primaries only six days away, followed quickly by a dozen more contests, Mr. Romney arrived here at a critical moment of his candidacy armed with a detailed indictment of Mr. Santorum’s record in Congress. Mr. Romney sought to dismantle his rival’s claim to be the authentic conservative in the race. . . .

“Fiercely combative“? Were they watching the same debate I saw? And does this description of Romney’s political goal in the lead suggest that the reporters were in Romney’s corner?

Trying to avoid such spin can be difficult, and sometimes the spin becomes a story unto itself. At any rate, here’s my own take on it:

The debate was into the second hour, and Mitt Romney had just played the Arlen Specter card against Rick Santorum, blaming Santorum’s 2004 endorsement of his fellow Pennsylvanian for the passage of Obamacare in 2010. Santorum responded by playing the Dukakis card against Romney.
“Yes governor, you balanced the budget for four years,” Santorum told Romney during the Arizona debate televised by CNN. “You have a constitutional requirement to balance the budget for four years. No great shakes. I’m all for — I’d like to see it federally. But don’t go around bragging about something you have to do. Michael Dukakis balanced the budget for 10 years. Does that make him qualified to be president of the United States? I don’t think so.”
As highlights go, it wasn’t spectacular, but Wednesday’s debate — the 20th nationally televised meeting of Republican candidates during this long campaign — was generally lacking in highlights. There were no dramatic gaffes or stumbles, and few memorable zingers. While the commentators on CNN afterwards offered their own “what did it mean” analyses, it is unlikely that the debate changed many minds. . . .

Please read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

UPDATE: Just now watched Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard being interviewed on Fox News, discussing among other things another media-generated meme, the “brokered convention” scenario. Ironically, it was a Weekly Standard article in defense of Santorum’s record on fiscal issues that got a big shout-out from Santorum last night. Yet Hayes goes on Fox peddling the “Santorum under fire” meme?

Meanwhile, here is pro-Gingrich blogger William Jacobson’s takeaway from the Arizona debate:

No question Newt won, but no single huge moment that is likely to shift the polls dramatically (or fundamentally). Just a consistent strong performance, that’s the pretty uniform assessment from relatively neutral people I’m following on Twitter. Really bad night for Santorum, off message, harsh, just strange performance, a missed opportunity. Good night for Romney, no gaffes, mostly strong. Ron Paul was Ron Paul.

Permit me to suggest that Jacobson’s pro-Newt sentiments color his perceptions in much the way that my pro-Santorum sentiments color my own. Was Santorum “harsh”? I didn’t see that. What I saw (and anyone may check the video on this) was that Santorum smiled a lot.

It was Santorum’s wife Karen who gave him that bit of “debate coaching,” by the way. Rick’s got a nice smile and, a few months ago, his wife told him he needs to smile more often. So the idea that the smiling Santorum came off as “harsh” in last night’s debate is something I doubt the average voter perceived. But we’ll only have to wait until next Tuesday — or Super Tuesday, a week after that — to find out what average voters think.

UPDATE II: Beyond the question of who actually “won” the debate, or who wins next Tuesday’s primaries, or even who ultimately wins the GOP nomination, I am intrigued by the way such perceptions are shaped. Look at this headline:

Romney and Paul successfully call
Santorum’s conservatism into question

Is that some right-wing blogger? No, it’s Aaron Blake of the Washington Post. Who deputized Blake to determine whether the attacks on Santorum’s conservatism were successful? By what standard does a liberal journalist judge these things?

The way in which Blake speaks with the journalistic authority of a powerful media institution makes the difference between, “Let me tell you what I think,” and “Let me tell you what to think.”

Perhaps you don’t care. Perhaps you say, “Well, I hate Santorum anyway, so I don’t care if MSM reporters are promoting prejudicial opinions against him.” But as a phenomenon unto itself — the media exercising influence as “deciders” in a Republican primary — this is fascinating to watch, from the “meta” point of view.


CNN ARIZONA DEBATE

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10:05 p.m. ET: It’s over. I actually nodded off for a few minutes there. The important thing, I think, is that Santorum was in the cross-hairs all night, and didn’t really sustain any serious damage.

9:27 p.m. ET: Newt Gingrich talks Iran and Ahmadinejad.

9:25 p.m. ET: Santorum reminds us that we have civilian control of the military for a reason. He escapes damage on a question that was specifically aimed at him.

9:23 p.m. ET: Remember when “Your mother wears combat boots” was a put-down? I’m just sayin’ …

9:18 p.m. ET: Another commerical break.

9:12 p.m. ET: Newt talks about border control.

9:10 p.m. ET: Mitt is an E-Verify evangelical.

9:08 p.m. ET: Newt talks fences and illegal immigration.

9:04 p.m. ET: Santorum: “RomneyCare!” Romnney: “Arlen Specter!” That was good, wasn’t it?

8:58 p.m. ET: When Ron Paul accuses Santorum of voting for Planned Parenthood funding. Santorum explains that this was actually a vote for the appropriations bill for the entire Department of Health and Human Services.

8:56 p.m. ET: Newt Gingrich sounds an awful lot like Ron Paul on this “government coercion” stuff. So how come when Ron Paul says it, he’s treated like a radical extremist?

8:54 p.m. ET: Mitt Romney sounds an awful lot like Rick Santorum on this “family values” stuff. So how come when Santorum says it, he’s treated like a radical extremist?

8:50 p.m. ET: Rick Santorum name-checks Charles Murray and talks about out-of-wedlock births.

8:48 p.m. ET: Mitt defends the right of conscience against Barack Obama.

8:46 p.m. ET: CNN asks about contraception and gets booed. Newt takes on the elite media and gets cheered.

8:45 p.m. ET: We’re back from commercial, during which here in Ohio we saw another Rick Santorum commercial.

8:40 p.m. ET: Santorum defends himself, and then Newt slams UAW. So if you’re UAW . . . vote Santorum!

8:38 p.m. ET: Mitt slams the UAW.

8:36 p.m. ET: Rick rips Mitt on bailouts. Mitt begins his response, “First, let’s look at the facts.” Which means he’s about to lie.

8:32 p.m. ET: Newt just made Mitt look like an idiot.

8:28 p.m. ET: Mitt admits that he sought earmarks for the Salt Lake City Olympics, which he compares to the “Bridge to Nowhere.”

8:27 p.m. ET: Rick Santorum defends earmarking.

8:24 p.m. ET: Newt Gingrich takes a question and turns it into a lecture.

8:22 p.m. ET: Mitt Romney defends his claim to be a “severe conservative.”

8:20 p.m. ET: Santorum mentions this Weekly Standard article that defends his record as a fiscal conservative.

8:17 p.m. ET: John King lobs a softball to Ron Paul, inviting him to repeat his attack-ad arguments against Santorum.

8:16 p.m. ET: We’re a quarter-hour into the debate before Newt gets a chance to speak. He wants to balance the budget by opening federal lands to oil exploration.

8:14 p.m. ET: Santorum comes right back at Romney, which means Romney gets a chance to rebut.

8:12 p.m. ET: On his first question, Santorum draws cheers for saying he wants to end ObamaCare. Then it’s Mitt Romney’s turn, and he opens with attack-ad chatter against Santorum.

8:06 p.m. ET: National anthem sang by Arizona State University symphonic chorale. Classical, not all Whitney Houston-like.

8:04 p.m. ET: Moderator John King introduces the candidates. I heard a rumor today that the Romney campaign was trying to pack the audience with their supporters.

** PREVIOUSLY (7:31 p.m. ET) **

JOHNSTOWN, Ohio
My brother-in-law just brought me a Blue Moon Summer Honey Wheat, and I’m ready to live-blog tonight’s CNN Arizona debate, which Howard Kurtz previews:

When Santorum takes the stage Wednesday night, the glare of the spotlight will be unusually harsh.

CNN: Satan’s Cable News Network!

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin’s in Rick’s corner:

Look for the liberal CNN debate “moderators” tonight to force their frame around Santorum.
And look for Santorum to cheerfully cast off their narrow-minded narrative and do the same thing he’s done successfully to challenge Mitt Romney’s front-runner status:
Offer no apology for his social conservatism, while sticking to his core fiscal conservative attacks on the Obama White House . . .

Read the rest. I should perhaps explain why I’m in Ohio instead of Arizona. I got credentialed for the debate, and had hoped to fly out, but transportation plans fell through. So I decided instead to drive to Michigan, and stopped here at my wife’s sister’s house for the night, where the debate blogging will begin at 8 p.m.

UPDATE II: Steve Eggleston has details of today’s Wisconsin poll showing Santorum ahead of Mitt Romney by 16 points.

BTW, in the past 15 minutes here in Ohio, I’ve seen two Rick Santorum ads on CNN.

UPDATE III: Barbara Espinosa is at the debate in Mesa. This is the 20th nationally televised Republican debate and may very well be the last this year.

GOP Debate, Arguably, Still Going Strong

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by Smitty

I met young Ben Shapiro at the blogger awards event Friday morning at CPAC. Crowder was making a running joke on the topic of condoms and a social conservative Presidential candidate. After two or three tries that fell flat, I looked at Shapiro and said “He’s going to keep inflating that joke until it pops.”

Is the last pre-Super Tuesday GOP debate on 01 March in some way similar to a Steven Crowder condom joke? I contend that the topic of the debate informs the question. Sample debate topics for which total collapse of the debate itself is appropriate:

  • The economy.
  • Every good thing President Obama ever did.
  • U.S. credibility in Southwest Asia.
  • The Constitutional basis for Progressivism.
  • What the Left knows about free market capitalism.
  • Courageous bureaucratic acts.

So, no hint as to what the candidates were to have discussed at the onset of March Madness. However, given the relative lack of substantive policy debate in the preceding events, it’s hard to argue that a collapse on 01 March is any worse than what came before.

In fact, it is arguably more honest that that candidates not bother wasting our time, again, rather than stand there for 1-2 hours saying nothing to each other in the most caustic political terms available.

Good news, bad news: who can say?

Santorum Praised by Rush Limbaugh, Endorsed by Florida State Sen. Plakon

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Wearing my Florida shirt at the CNN Jacksonville debate,
Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012 (Photo by Dave Weigel)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.
On his radio program today, Rush Limbaugh singled out Rick Santorum for his understanding that “ObamaCare is ballgame,” as Rush put it. Limbaugh referred to Santorum’s strong performance in Thursday’s CNN debate, going after Mitt Romney’s own record on health care:

SANTORUM: What Governor Romney just said is that government-run top-down medicine is working pretty well in Massachusetts and he supports it. Now, think about what that means —
ROMNEY: That’s not what I said.
SANTORUM: — going up against Barack Obama, who you are going to claim, well, top-down government-run medicine on the federal level doesn’t work and we should repeal it. And he’s going to say, wait a minute, Governor. You just said that top-down government-run medicine in Massachusetts works well.
Folks, we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom. Whether the United States government or even a state government — you have Amendment 1 (ph) here offered by Scott Pleitgen (ph), who, by the way, endorsed me today, and it’s going to be on your ballot as to whether there should be a government mandate here in Florida.
According to Governor Romney, that’s OK. If the state does it, that’s OK. If the state wants to enforce it, that’s OK. Those are not the clear contrasts we need if we’re going to defeat Barack Obama. . . .
SANTORUM: Does everybody in Massachusetts have a requirement to buy health care?
ROMNEY: Everyone has a requirement to either buy it or pay the state for the cost of providing them free care. Because the idea of people getting something for free when they could afford to care for themselves is something that we decided in our state was not a good idea. . . .
SANTORUM: Just so I understand this, in Massachusetts , everybody is mandated as a condition of breathing in Massachusetts , to buy health insurance, and if you don’t, and if you don’t, you have to pay a fine.
What has happened in Massachusetts is that people are now paying the fine because health insurance is so expensive. And you have a pre-existing condition clause in yours, just like Barack Obama.
So what is happening in Massachusetts, the people that Governor Romney said he wanted to go after, the people that were free-riding, free ridership has gone up five-fold in Massachusetts. Five times the rate it was before. Why? Because…
ROMNEY: That’s total, complete…
SANTORUM: I’ll be happy to give you the study. Five times the rate it has gone up. Why? Because people are ready to pay a cheaper fine and then be able to sign up to insurance, which are now guaranteed under “Romney-care,” than pay high cost insurance, which is what has happened as a result of “Romney-care.”
ROMNEY: First of all, it’s not worth getting angry about.

Limbaugh said it is worth getting angry about, and many Republican voters who watched last night’s debate are probably reconsidering whether the media’s predetermined Mitt-vs.-Newt frontrunner narrative is overlooking the possibility that neither Romney nor Gingrich is the best choice to take on Obama. One Florida Republican who sees Rick Santorum as the best hope for conservatives is Florida state Sen. Scott Plakon, who endorsed Santorum Thursday:

Scott Plakon said: “Rick Santorum is a man who has consistently shown that he can be trusted to stand by his deeply held conservative principles regardless of the way the political winds blow and will be a steady, even hand in leading America towards prosperity and liberty again.
“He has consistently shown that he is willing to make decisions not for the next election cycle, but for the next generation. That is exactly the kind of leader and values we need to confront the failed policies and leadership of the Obama administration and to return America to the shining city on a hill that President Reagan spoke of.”

I caught up with Plakon in the “spin room” after last night’s debate and asked him about his switch from backing Herman Cain to supporting Santorum:

The latest Florida poll shows Romney pulling strongly ahead here. From my American Spectator column today:

Thursday’s debate, the 19th televised debate among Republican presidential candidates this year, certainly did not lack fireworks. And while many political junkies have become weary of watching these affairs, the event here on the campus of the University of North Florida may be as decisive as the South Carolina debates that were credited with helping Gingrich score a crucial win there Saturday. Polls this week in Florida show Romney pulling away, and the former Massachusetts governor had one of his best-ever debate performances Thursday, while Gingrich had one of his worst yet.
While arguments between the two Florida frontrunners got the biggest play, however, Thursday was also an impressive performance for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Polls show Santorum running a distant third in the Sunshine State, but he slammed both Gingrich and Romney for their previous stances on health care. . . .

Read the whole thing, although I confess it was written in a condition of complete exhaustion. CNN neglected to provide coffee in the filing center, and I also ran out of cigarettes before the debate ended. I managed to file my column by midnight, then came back to the hotel room, fell asleep about 2 a.m. and didn’t wake up until 10:30 a.m.

The Tampa Bay Times reports on Santorum’s plans for Florida and beyond:

After remarks at Florida State University  geared toward social conservatives, Santorum rolled out the endorsement  of state Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, a former top Herman Cain  supporter. Plakon told reporters he chose Santorum for his  conservatism, after Newt Gingrich’s recent “Obama style” ads turned  Plakon off.
“We’re not going anywhere. We’re staying in this  race for the long haul. I think we’re playing for the next states,”  Santorum told reporters afterward.
Still,  questions persisted because he’s not looking toward any celebration on  Election Night. He will be in Florida on Sunday and Monday for events,  including in Sarasota and Miami. No promises after that.
Said Santorum: “We’re just trying to figure out Monday from that  point  on what we’re going to do and if whether we’re going to stay here  on Election Day, when you really can’t campaign, maybe start going to   another state and start doing some campaigning. We want to use every   single day to campaign. And we’re sort of up in the air to exactly how  that works.”

Santorum’s plans are in flux, and so are mine. I’ve got a 1,500-word article due today for the March print edition of The American Spectator, and there’s an event tonight in Orlando where Romney is expected to get the endorsement of the governor of Puerto Rico. It’s about a three-hour drive, and the event starts at 8 p.m. Tempus fugits and deadline looms.