A Weekly Standard Magazine Take on the Debate in SC
Just when I thought that the Weekly Standard and its writers had completely fallen off the reality wagon, Dean Barnett blogs an insightful piece in summarizing the GOP debate last night in South Carolina. Here is Barnett’s rating of the candidates in the debate as well as some salient points about each of their performances:
6) Ron Paul: Paul has become the Washington Generals of politicians, assuming the Generals had thousands of zealots who showed up every time they played the Globetrotters and cheered like lunatics whenever the Generals hoisted up a shot, regardless of whether or not it went in. Paul’s sole function at these things is for the other candidates to point out his relentless silliness and score points at his expense.
5) Mitt Romney: The stakes were highest for Romney. …So it was an odd night for Romney to go invisible and say hardly anything original or inspiring. This was Romney’s most lackluster debate performance of the entire campaign, and it came at a time when he could least afford it.
4) Rudy Giuliani: Giuliani has made himself utterly irrelevant.
3) John McCain: Tonight was like a microcosm of the senator’s career. McCain is sometimes an inspiring and courageous leader. At other times, he seems to take a strange pleasure in being his own worst enemy.
2) Fred Thompson: If he keeps this up, Thompson will wrest the title of most frustrating candidacy from Mitt Romney. When he asserted himself tonight, Fred was brilliant. But he doesn’t assert himself nearly enough, especially for a guy with his standing in the polls.
1) Mike Huckabee: Huckabee deftly parried Thompson’s aggressive and spirited attacks early in the debate. It was a battle on terrain that was unfriendly to Huckabee, and Thompson attacked with skill. And yet Huckabee got out of the exchange unscathed.
The exchange with Thompson came early in the debate, and Huckabee was just getting warmed up. For the first time in this campaign, Huckabee looked like a credible commander in chief when the conversation turned to those Iranian speedboats. His normal joviality vanished, replaced by an appropriate gravity.
Then he got even better. He seized on a characteristic piece of Ron Paul idiocy to give a spirited speech defending America’s commitment to Israel. Again, he looked credible as a commander in chief. But this was also an extremely shrewd piece of politicking. Conservative foreign policy types obviously loved it as did pro-Israel people. But Huckabee’s core audience of conservative Christians, a much larger segment of the society than either of the other two groups, adored it also.
Mike Huckabee’s an exceptional politician whose package of skills is often sold short. He’s a lot more than an affable dispenser of one-liners who only knows how to play to the home crowd. For people who might be inclined to dismiss Huckabee, compare his response to Thompson’s adroit offensive with McCain’s blundering into the climate warming thicket. These two are the likely finalists, and one of them is much better at politics than the other.
Here’s what I said on November 28, the night of the YouTube debate, the night that catapulted Huckabee to his huge lead in Iowa: “Was this a seismic night? I’ll give that one a big yes. Tonight heralded the arrival of Mike Huckabee as a force in this race. Not a spoiler, not a wildcard, but a force.”
Although fewer people watched last evening’s festivities, tonight was even bigger for Huckabee. For the first time, it was not only possible but easy to imagine Huckabee as the leader of 300 million people. He combined this newfound authority with his old standbys of off-the-charts likability and a deft way of tapping into aspirational politics.
In the race for the Republican nomination, Mike Huckabee is going to be tough to beat.
Since Iowa, Mike Huckabee has been a force to reckon with and he continues to show why so many folks are embracing his candidacy as a refreshing change from the status quo. There is little doubt that Huckabee turned in a strong performance last night and I am particularly happy to see some in the establishment conservative media beginning to take note. I was disappointed in Fred’s misrepresentation of Mike’s record and it is probably going to have the same results for Fred as it did for Mitt in Iowa.
On a slightly different note, if you are a Huckabee supporter will you consider donating to Mike’s campaign? You can do so by clicking here (this is a secure link at the official Huckabee campaign website).
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Fred Thompson is probably my third pick for President, but he most certainly did NOT impress me last night, despite what the Fox News “Focus Groups” and others might say.
Four things:
1.) Fred ranted about all the things that supposedly make Mike Huckabee a liberal. He’d heard Huck’s explanations on most of the issues already, but he went ahead through the laundry list anyway, KNOWING that Huck would only have 30 seconds of rebuttal time, in which he could only address one or two of the accusations.
Some may call Thompson “fiery” for doing that. I call that tactic dishonest, at worst, and unfair, at best.
Anyways, Huckabee pretty much shut down the effectiveness of that attack with a variation on the classic (if a bit immature) “Scoreboard” retort.
2.) Fred used what I call “emotionally-charged word association.” He used these phrases about Huckabee: “liberal on economic policies,” “liberal on foreign policy,” “Blame America First,” and, I think, “model of the Democratic party.”
Later, he clarified that he didn’t think Huckabee was someone who blames America first, but that one Huckabee statement was “in the tradition of blame America first.” However, he’d already accomplished the association in the minds of voters.
He called Huckabee liberal economically for raising taxes, but what true fiscal liberal presses 94 tax cuts through a fiscally liberal legislature?
He called Huckabee liberal on foreign policy, but what foreign policy liberal supports the surge in Iraq, wants victory in Iraq, and wants a much stronger military?
3.) Fred rehashed his whole “Gitmo-Habeas Corpus” speal, but, according to Huckabee, the court has decided that’s not true.
4.) Apparently, Fred doesn’t know the difference between giving money to Pakistan to track down terrorists and giving money to Pakistan to do a military build-up.
As a Huckabee supporter who has wanted Thompson to be a back-up plan, I was really disappointed last night.
Kingdom Advancer:
I agree with your synopsis. Fred definitely knew that he could use the entire minute and a half to smear Huckabee and that the Governor would then only have 30 seconds to respond to a 90 second attack. Also, you are quite correct when you say that negative word association was another Thompson trick. There is no doubt that Romney severely hurt himself in Iowa by negatively and falsely attacking Gov. Huckabee’s record. I hope the fine folks in SC treat Thompson in much the same fashion as the Iowa voters did Mitt.
“Fred definitely knew that he could use the entire minute and a half to smear Huckabee and that the Governor would then only have 30 seconds to respond to a 90 second attack.”
And, as I said before, you know it had to make him angry when Huckabee just shrugged it all off. I think that will serve Huckabee well, as opposed to Romney, who decided to take the victim-mentality–”Can we talk about issues, please?” (as if his record is irrelevant when he talks about Huckabee’s incessantly). I think that hurt him in New Hampshire.