GOP Debate Wrap
Filed under: President 2008, Republicans, Debates, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul
People will remember only two things from last evenings GOP debate in South Carolina: Governor Huckabee's reference to Congress spending more money than John Edwards in a beauty shop. And a well deserved, and played, slap down of Ron Paul delivered by Rudy Giuliani.In fact, here it is on YouTube already.
As for the rest of the debate, and the participants thereof, I agree completely with fellow 'Stump' blogger David Knowles that the format and the moderators were much better. No punches were pulled with the questions.
John McCain: Did better than last time, and seemed a little calmer. No "gates of hell" type references this time. But he did claim to have never supported amnesty, which has a lot of us scratching our heads, remembering an immigration bill with his name on it last year. And the other sponsor was Kennedy. A point other debaters didn't fail to bring up.
Mitt Romney: His slickness didn't come off as well this time. Probably because Rudy and John did better. Didn't hurt himself, but didn't help either. He's stuck near 10% and he needs to break out. I saw nothing here that will help him do that.
Rudy: Much, much better, approaching the type of confidence in these forums that he usually has but did not display in the last debate. Got the best line of the evening in the aforementioned smackdown. Still, when the dust settles, his answers on abortion amounted to I support it, but want to reduce it. Which amounts to the "safe, legal, and rare" rhetoric of all Democrats. Not good, Rudy still has a huge abortion problem that he did not have in March.
The rest: While most did not distinguish themselves very well. Ron Paul is extremely whiny and hard to listen to. Comes off as a hard core libertarian, which I like, but will give hard core libertarianism a bad name, which I don't like. Mike Huckabee got the Edwards line off well with a great response, good for a second tier candidate and everyone will connect that with him, which is PR gold.
But the poll on Instapundit indicates that most of us are waiting for Fred.
