Mystery Debate Theater 2008

The Republicans, Episode 8

The Beachwood Mystery Debate Team did not meet at Beachwood HQ for the New Hampshire double-header on Saturday night.
Earlier in the day.
Steve: There are two debates tonight, but I just don’t think I have the strength or time to cope with it. I’ve got a lot of other things to do.
Tim: Me too.
Debate starts.
Steve: This sucks. There’s no way I can not watch this. I’m really getting a lot done and I’d prefer to have some dumb sci-fi flick on in the background, you know?
Tim: I know! Son of Svengoolie is having Son of Frankenstein tonight!

Subsequent e-mails confirm that each is watching both debates in full. On Sunday we discuss our geekdom – but also our surprise that these debates were so good. The format of having the candidates sit and actually exchange thoughts and arguments with each other worked beautifully. In fact, the debates have been the best part of this campaign.
We separately took a few notes and then I went back through the transcript and added some thoughts. So let’s call this an episode of Virtual Mystery Debate Theater 2008: The Republicans. As always, this has been edited for space, clarity and sanity.
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MODERATOR CHARLIE GIBSON: If you are the nominee, will you run on the Bush foreign policy record or will you run away from it? And Governor Huckabee, let me start with you because it was you who wrote that the Bush foreign policy reflects an arrogant bunker mentality.
STEVE: Did I say arrogant? I meant incompetent.
HUCKABEE: I was speaking to the fact that there were times when we gave the world the impression that we were going to ignore what they thought or what they felt, and we were going to do whatever it is we wanted to do.
GIBSON: Senator Thompson.
STEVE: Wake up.
THOMPSON: I don’t think our foreign policy has been arrogant. Presidents are not perfect. Policies are not perfect. But the bottom line is we are in a global war with radical Islam.
STEVE: And that’s not perfect either!
THOMPSON: They declared war on us a long, long time ago. We took note really for the first time on September 11 of 2001.
GIBSON: Mayor Giuliani, would you run on the president’s foreign policy record or away from it?
GIULIANI: The president set a whole different mindset. It was let’s anticipate, let’s see if we can prevent another attack. That led to Afghanistan. It led to Iraq. It’s led to the Patriot Act. It’s led to electronic surveillance. It’s led to changing our intelligence services. All that is very, very good.
STEVE: A) In an alternate universe. B) For my campaign.
GIBSON: For years our foreign policy has been based on the idea that we form alliances, international consensus; retaliate if we’re attacked. But in 2002 the president said we have a right to a preemptive attack, that we can attack if this country feels threatened. And on that basis – WMD – we went into Iraq. We have cited the threat of a nuclear Iran to leave the military option on the table. Do you agree with the doctrine?
STEVE: And should other countries feel free to attack us if they feel threatened?
MCCAIN: I agree with the doctrine. I think the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical Islamic extremists.
STEVE: No matter what happens in the next 92 years!
PAUL: Well, I certainly agreed with [Bush’s] foreign policy that he ran on and that we as Republicans won in the year 2000 – you know, the humble foreign policy, no nation-building, don’t be the policeman of the world. And we were strongly critical of the policy of the Clinton administration, that did the opposite. And we fell short. Of course, the excuse is that 9/11 changed everything, but the Bush doctrine of preemptive war is not a minor change. This is huge. This is the first time we as a nation accept as our policy that we start the wars. I don’t understand this. And that all options are on the table to go after Iran? This is not necessary. These are third-world nations. They’re not capable.
But I think it’s the misunderstanding or the disagreements that we’ve had in this debate along the campaign trail is the nature of the threat. I’m as concerned about the nature of the threat of terrorism as anybody, if not more so. But they don’t attack us because we’re free and prosperous. And there are radicals in all elements in all religions that will result to violence. But if we don’t understand that the reaction is because we invade their countries, we occupy their countries, we have bases in their country, and that we haven’t done it just since 9/11, but we have done that a long time.
I mean, it was the Air Force base in Saudi Arabia before 9/11 that was given as the excuse. If we don’t understand that, we can’t win this war against terrorism.
ROMNEY: Well, unfortunately, Ron, you need a thorough understanding of what radical jihad is, what the movement is, what its intent is, where it flows from, and the fact is it is trying to bring down, not just us, but it is trying to bring down all moderate Islamic governments, Western governments around the world, as we just saw in Pakistan.
THOMPSON: I served on the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. I was the floor manager for the Republicans on the homeland security bill. So I have a bit of a different vantage point than some of my colleagues on this.
The question had to do with preemption. Preemption didn’t just appear one day as a good idea. After the Cold War, we had one big enemy and one big weapon against us. When we kind of took a holiday from history in the ’90s and let our military slide and our intelligence capabilities slide, the world was changing. We now have multiple enemies. We now have terrorists and various groups, al-Qaeda, rogue nations in different stages of developing nuclear weapons. We must be prepared for the different kind of weaponry that we’re facing. We could be attacked with a biological weapon and not even know it for a long period of time.
STEVE: Maybe we already have been. Maybe that’s why Fred Thompson is so sluggish.
GIULIANI: Ron’s analysis is really seriously flawed. The idea that the attack took place because of American foreign policy is precisely the reason I handed back a $10 million check to a Saudi prince, who gave me that money at Ground Zero for the Twin Towers fund and then put out a press release saying America should change its foreign policy.
STEVE: And then I put out a press release!
GIULIANI: It seems to me if you don’t face this squarely, to have an Islamic terrorist threat against us, it’s an existential threat, it has nothing to do with our foreign policy; it has to do with their ideas, their theories, the things that they have done, the way they’ve perverted their religion into a hatred of us. And what’s at stake are the things that are best about us – our freedom of religion, our freedom for women, our right to vote, our free economic system.
PAUL: Let me try to explain so you can understand this better. Try to visualize how we would react if they did that to us. If a country, say China, came that great distance across the ocean, and they say, “We want you to live like us, we want you to have our economic system, we want bases on your land, we want to protect our oil,” even if we do that with good intentions, even if the Chinese did that with good intentions, we would all be together and we’d be furious.
ROMNEY: Ron. Ron, you’re reading – you’re reading their propaganda.
STEVE: Read ours instead!
PAUL: What would you do?
ROMNEY: I’d read their – I’d read their – I’d read their writings.
STEVE: Their non-propaganda writings!
ROMNEY: I’d read what they write to one another, and that’s why when someone like Sayyid Qutb lays out the philosophy of radical jihadism and says we want to kill kill Anwar Sadat – when there’s the assassination of Anwar Sadat, it has nothing to do with us.
STEVE: And nothing to do with this discussion! Anwar Sadat?
ROMNEY: Why did they kill Madame Bhutto? It has nothing to do with us.
STEVE: Outside of our support for her so she would hunt them down.
THOMPSON: Who had we invaded before 9/11?
STEVE: Iraq?
PAUL: We were occupying. We had an air base in Saudi Arabia. We have propped up how many governments have we propped up?
HUCKABEE: First of all, Governor Romney, you yourself on 60 Minutes said that we had left Iraq in a mess.
ROMNEY: Charlie, I get to – I get to respond to that.
STEVE: Me too! Me too!
ROMNEY: Don’t try and characterize my position.
HUCKABEE: Which one?
STEVE: Hey, he’s stealing our material!
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PAUL: There’s always a radical element in almost all religions. The question that you aren’t willing to ask is, why is it that they attack America? I mean, they don’t attack the Canadians. They don’t attack the Swiss. If it were merely because they want to go into Europe, why do they . . .
ROMNEY: Is it such a puzzle, is it such a mystery as to why they attack America?
GIULIANI: They attacked Israelis, they attacked Bali . . .
ROMNEY: They’re not going after Luxembourg.
ROMNEY: We’re the strongest nation in the world.
STEVE: Except for Iraq. We’re 10 and 2!
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GIULIANI: Ron. Ron, it is simply not true. Islamic terrorists killed over 500 Americans before September 11, 2001, going back to the late 1960s. They have also killed people recently in Bali, in London. They have launched attacks in Germany. Where did the attack on the Munich Olympics take place? In the United States? Or did it take place in Germany?
STEVE: A) That was the little-known Munich branch of Al-Qaeda. B) We should have pre-emptively invaded Germany.
GIULIANI: I have great respect for the Islamic religion.
STEVE: Except for the Islamic part.
GIULIANI: I have great respect for the Arab world, for the Middle East. I think we should be closer to them.
PAUL: Why do we support their dictators, then? Why do we prop up all their dictators?
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GIBSON: What are [your core] principles and are they constant?
MCCAIN: The principles and philosophy that I hold I’ve held since I raised my hand at age 17 – as a midshipman in the United States Naval Academy – to uphold this nation’s honor, to serve it, call Americans to sacrifice and serve for their nation and defend the greatest nation in the history of the world.
My principles and my philosophy are those embodied in those words that we believe that all of us are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.
STEVE: Except for non-Americans.
ROMNEY: I believe it’s essential for America to stand for principles of an eternal nature. I think at the heart of our strength is the family.
STEVE: That’s why I’ve proposed the Mitt Romney Single People Deportation Act.
ROMNEY: I don’t think there’s anything more important to the future of America than the work that’s going on within the four walls of the American home.
STEVE: Nor as much misery.
GIULIANI: What do I stand for? I laid out 12 commitments to the American people.
STEVE: Geez, God did it in ten. Can’t we just use those?
GIULIANI: The most important – keeping this country on offense in the Islamic terrorist war against us . . . end illegal immigration, solve health care through private options, reduce taxes, reduce the size of government on the civilian side, expand the military, appoint strict constructionist judges.
GIBSON: With all due respect, many of your fellows here on this stage have said you’ve had to moderate an awful lot of your views to get within the mainstream of the Republican Party and that you don’t believe now what you believed when you were mayor.
Governor Huckabee, you’ve been accused of having been a tax-and- spend governor when you were in Arkansas and changing your beliefs now.
Governor Romney, I don’t have to go into how many times they’ve called you a flip-flopper in terms of issues and what you believed as governor of Massachusetts.
Congressman Paul, respect to you, I don’t know that you’ve changed much except your party because you were a Libertarian when you first ran for president.
Senator Thompson has been accused of running on a more conservative record for president than when he was in the Senate.
And Senator McCain, you’ve been accused of moderating your views on the Bush tax policies in order to get into the mainstream of the party and on immigration to moderate your views.
STEVE: Hey, he’s stealing our material!
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THOMPSON: It’s most important that a president of the United States understand that our principles – our first principles are based on the Constitution of the United States, understanding the nature of our government, the checks and the balances, the separation of powers that our founding fathers set up a long time ago.
STEVE: And so I pledge to read the Constitution if elected. Now, if anybody needs me, I’ll be in my trailer.
PAUL: Sure we profess to believe in the Constitution, but why have we gone to war since World War II without a declaration of war? Why do we have a monetary system that is not designed by the Constitution? Why do we have a welfare state running out of control not designed by the Constitution? You can’t pay lip service to the Constitution without obeying it.
STEVE: Unless you’re the president.
RON: We in foreign policy ought to have a golden rule: We ought to treat others as we would want others to treat us, and we don’t treat others so fairly. We treat them like we’re the bully, that we’re the policeman of the world, and we’re going to tell them to behave. If they don’t listen to us, we bomb them. If they listen to us, we give them more money. And it’s bankrupting this country because we don’t live up to our principles. The principles are embedded in our Constitution.
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GIBSON: We’re the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t insure all of our citizens. If we can afford a trillion-dollar war in Iraq, why can’t we afford medical insurance for everybody?
ROMNEY: [In Massachusetts], we put in place a plan that gets every citizen in our state health insurance, and it didn’t cost us new money. And it didn’t require us to raise taxes.
What we found was it was less expensive or no more expensive to help individuals who had been uninsured buy their own private policy than it had been for us to give out free care at the hospital. And since we’ve put our plan in place last April, we’ve now had 300,000 people who were uninsured sign up for this insurance.
PAUL: Charlie, you really answered the question because you said how can we afford a trillion-dollar war and we can’t afford health care? Well, that’s the reason. The resources are going overseas. We’re fighting a trillion-dollar war, and we shouldn’t be doing it. Those resources should be spent back here at home.
Don’t print any more money. We don’t need any more money.
THOMPSON: So if we would stop printing so much money, we could get out of the war and provide health care to everybody?
PAUL: If we get out of the war, we wouldn’t have to print the money.
STEVE: Can God print so much money He can’t lift it?
THOMPSON: Let me break it down a little bit. We’ve got the best health care in the world. It costs more than it should. We can either go one of two ways. We can let the government take it over, and that’ll lower costs, like they do in other countries. We will also sacrifice care, which nobody wants to do. Or we can make the markets work more efficiently.
There are a lot of components to that. Part of that is not just giving a tax break to the individual – that’s part of it, but it’s also putting them in a position to get the best prices for the care they’re getting. We do that in every other aspect of our life. That’s what keeps prices as low as they are. I mean, if the consumer had no concept of what the product was costing and did no shopping for it, when you could get an MRI here for one price or over here for half the price, you don’t even know that to make the choice, that wouldn’t work at all.
STEVE: That’ll work as soon as they start selling MRIs at Wal-Mart.
THOMPSON: We’re probably never – if you lower costs, more people who want insurance we’ll be able to afford it. We’re probably never going to achieve total coverage. A good number of the people who are uninsured can afford to choose not to do so.
STEVE: Oh, I get it. This is the bizarro debate, where it’s the rich who don’t have health insurance and Fred Thompson is running for president.
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GIBSON: Governor Romney, you’ve backed away from mandates on a national basis.
ROMNEY: No, no, I like mandates. If somebody can afford insurance and decides not to buy it and then they get sick, they ought to pay their own way as opposed to expect the government to pay their way, and that’s an American principle. That’s a principle of personal responsibility. So I said this: If you can afford to buy insurance, then buy it. You don’t have to if you don’t want to buy it, but then you’ve got to put enough money aside that you can pay your own way, because what we’re not going to do is say, as we saw more and more people. We said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way. Don’t be free riders and pass on the cost of your health care to everybody else.
STEVE: Romney is to the left of Obama on health insurance?
ROMNEY: If somebody is making, let’s say, $100,000 a year and doesn’t have health insurance; and they show up at the hospital and they need a thousand-dollar repair of some kind for something that’s gone wrong; and they say, look, I’m not insured, I’m not going to pay; do you think they should pay or not?
If someone can afford a policy and they choose not to buy it, should they be responsible for paying for their own care, or should they be able to go to the hospital and say, you know what, I’m not insured, you ought to pay for it? What we found was one quarter of the uninsured in my state were making $75,000 a year or more, and my view is they should either buy insurance or they should pay their own way with a health savings account or some other savings account.
GIBSON: We have an expression in television: we get into the weeds. We’re in the weeds now on this.
STEVE: Yeah, c’mon now Romney! This is a TV show, not a policy discussion.
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GIBSON: In your national plan, would you mandate people to get insurance?
ROMNEY: I would not mandate at the federal level that every state do what we do, but what I would say at the federal level is we’ll keep giving you these special payments we make if you adopt plans that get everybody insured.
In Governor Schwarzenegger’s state, he’s got a different plan to get people insured. I wouldn’t tell him he has to do it my way, but I’d say each state needs to get busy on the job of getting all our citizens insured. It does not cost more money.
STEVE: That’s the right answer, I think, and the one area where Romney seems to know what he’s talking about. You either have to have a single-payer, universal system, or you mandate states to come up with their own plans which must meet minimal standards.
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GIBSON: For the second 45 minutes of this debate I’m going be joined by Scott Spradling, who is political director of our station, WMUR, here in Manchester, New Hampshire.
SPRADLING: Governor [Romney], you want to explain your ad?
ROMNEY: Yeah, absolutely, which is what he describes is technically true, which is his plan does not provide amnesty, because he charges people $5,000 to be able to stay.
MCCAIN: That’s not true. That’s not complete, the response to it, and Governor Romney, it was explained to you, and you said it was reasonable and not amnesty. That’s just – you can look it up.
GIULIANI: You know, Ronald Reagan –
ROMNEY: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me have a chance –
SPRADLING: Go ahead.
GIULIANI: One point –
ROMNEY: Rudy, Rudy, let me have a chance to finish, okay? You’ll get your chance.
STEVE: But 9/11!
ROMNEY: I saw your plan along with Senator Cornyn’s plan and the Bush plan. I said they were all reasonable. And I said I would study them and decide which one to endorse, and I endorsed none of them, as you know, Senator.
Number two, your plan, I said, is not technically amnesty, because it provides for a penalty for people to be able to stay –
MCCAIN: It provides for more than a penalty.
ROMNEY: Okay, would you describe what else it has besides a penalty?
STEVE [channeling Andrew]: Frequent flier points, a gift card at Bed, Bath & Beyond . . .
MCCAIN: Learn English, back of the line behind everybody else. Pretty much what Rudy just described.
ROMNEY: Okay, great. So it has –
MCCAIN: So that we can address the issue –
ROMNEY: Fine, it lets you pay $5,000 –
MCCAIN: – and the fact is it’s it not amnesty. And for you to describe it as you do in the attack ads, my friend, you can spend your whole fortune on these attack ads, but it still won’t be true.
GIULIANI: May I make a –
ROMNEY: No, no, no, no. I get a chance to respond to this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I don’t describe your plan as amnesty in my ad. I don’t call it amnesty. What I say is – and you just described what most people would say is a form of amnesty. Yeah, they pay $5,000, their background is checked, they have to learn English. But your view is everybody who’s come here illegally, today, other than criminals, would be allowed when they speak English and [makes a] $5,000 payment and they get a background check, they’re allowed to stay forever.
MCCAIN: Look –
ROMNEY: That’s your plan, and that plan, in my view, is not appropriate. Those people should be invited to get in line outside the country with everybody else who wants to come here. But they should not be given a special right to stay here –
MCCAIN: There is no special right associated with my plan. I said they should not be in any way rewarded for illegal behavior.
ROMNEY: Are they sent home?
MCCAIN: They have to get in line –
ROMNEY: Are they sent home?
MCCAIN: – behind everybody else.
ROMNEY: Are they sent home?
MCCAIN: Some of them are, some of them are not, depending on their situation.
ROMNEY: The last bill you put forth –
MCCAIN: A woman has been here for eight years –
ROMNEY: I’m sorry, the last bill –
MCCAIN: – and has a son fighting in Iraq –
ROMNEY: Senator, the last bill you put forward –
MCCAIN: – I’m not interested in calling up her son and telling him I’m deporting his grandmother.
THOMPSON: Excuse me, didn’t you say Republicans were making a terrible mistake if they were separating themselves with President Bush on the illegal immigration issue?
ROMNEY: No. That was quoted in AP, it happened to be wrong.
GIULIANI: Well, could I – could I – may I make my point –
ROMNEY: That does happen from time to time. But let me –
MCCAIN: When you change positions on issues from time to time, you will get misquoted.
ROMNEY: Senator, is there a way to have this about issues and not about personal attacks? I hope so, because I think we have some differences on issues.
MCCAIN: I do.
ROMNEY: And let me tell you, the issue that’s at stake here is do the people who come here illegally, the 12 million, are they allowed to stay in this country the rest of their life? And the final bill you put forward in the United States Senate was they got a Z –
MCCAIN: The answer is that there was still negotiations and debating on that.
ROMNEY: May I complete?
MCCAIN: The answer is we were still negotiating. We were debating. I’m saying that some people have to go back to the country
ROMNEY: I’m sorry. There was a Z visa. The Z visa was given to everybody –
MCCAIN: And it was having – that some people have to go back. First, as Rudy said, we have to round up the 2 million who have committed crimes and deport them immediately.
ROMNEY: Let’s not divert.
MCCAIN: And that is not amnesty for anyone.
GIBSON: Well, I don’t want to divert. Let me come back to your plan. Is it practical to take 12 million people and send them out of the country?
ROMNEY: Is it practical? The answer is no. The answer is no. So here’s why my plan works. One, it says to those 12 million people they do not have the right, as they would under the final Senate plan, to receive a Z visa which was renewable indefinitely. That meant these people could stay in the country forever. That was what the plan did, and that’s why talk radio and the American people went nuts.
MCCAIN: That’s not the plan.
ROMNEY: Senator, you look up your Z visa. It is renewable indefinitely. Every illegal alien got to stay in the country forever, other than those that committed crimes.
GIULIANI: Charlie, if Ronald Reagan were here, who we all invoke, he would grab the microphone, say it’s my microphone, I paid for it. And Ronald Reagan did amnesty. He actually did amnesty.
ROMNEY: Yeah, yeah.
GIULIANI: I think he’d be in one of Mitt’s negative commercials.
None of us has a perfect record on immigration, because this is a very complicated problem. The thing that we have to do is we have to decide who has the best plan among all of us for fixing illegal immigration. You’ve got to stop it at the border, you’ve got to stop it cold at the border, and then you have to have a rational system. It is not amnesty if you charge – I did this more in my life than I did politics, meaning law enforcement.
If you charge fines, if you have impositions of conditions, it is not amnesty. Ronald Reagan gave amnesty saying they have to pay a fine, have to get on the back of the line, have a whole bunch of conditions –
ROMNEY: I thought you said that wasn’t amnesty.
GIULIANI: That is not amnesty.
ROMNEY: Okay. (Laughs.)
GIULIANI: That is not amnesty. If you have a fine, if you have conditions, if you have a whole bunch of steps that people have to go through, it is not amnesty. Ronald Reagan gave amnesty, straight-out amnesty.
THOMPSON: The question is: Are you rewarded for your illegal behavior in any way? If the answer is yes, it’s amnesty.
GIULIANI: But if you have to pay a penalty for it, it is not. For example –
THOMPSON: So you can still stay in the country.
GIULIANI: Pay money, have to follow conditions –
THOMPSON: But you can still stay in the country.
GIULIANI: Well, but you have to pay penalties.
THOMPSON: But you can still stay in the country.
GIULIANI: There are all different kinds of penalties.
SPRADLING: What would you do, Senator?
GIULIANI: Someone gets amnesty from a crime —
THOMPSON: You can have enforcement by attrition if you obey the law and you enforce the law that’s on the books today. If we started securing the border as we’re supposed to do – and we’re all in agreement that it must be done now. I mean, we arrest thousands over the years of people from countries that are state sponsors of terrorism. I mean, it’s essentially a national security issue as well as an issue of fairness, as well as a social issue with regard to what states and communities have to face nowadays and workers who are in competition with this.
If we enforce the borders so people couldn’t go back and forth, if we assisted employers with a system that we now have on the books, that 20-30,000 employers now are using, a verification system – so you could essentially punch a button, the Homeland Security folks will tell you whether or not this person is illegal on the front end and if we stop sanctuary cities, where we’re telling the local people that you can’t cooperate with the federal authorities, so stop inducing people to come here with employment and protection under sanctuary cities, as Mayor Giuliani did when he was mayor of New York, then we would have – we would have attrition of these numbers and start reversing them.
GIULIANI: Charlie?
PAUL: Our clock system – our clock system isn’t working.
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SPRADLING: Let’s say that Barack Obama is the nominee. Why not vote for Barack Obama? And not just because he’s a Democrat – you’re not allowed to say that.
ROMNEY: Well, we have very different views on a whole series of issues, and I could take you through one by one. One would be health care, for instance. He wants the government to take over health care, spend hundreds of billions of dollars of new money for health insurance for everyone.
STEVE: If only!
ROMNEY: That will break the bank.
STEVE: Especially if we stop printing money.
ROMNEY: And when we sit down and talk about change – Barack Obama and myself, in that final debate, as you’re positing – I can say, “Not only can I talk change with you, I’ve lived it. In the private sector for 25 years, I brought change to company after company. In the Olympics – it was in trouble– I brought change. In Massachusetts I brought change. I have done it.”
“I have changed things, and that experience is what America is looking for.”
SPRADLING: Senator Thompson, I’d like to get your take on that. You versus Senator Barack Obama: Why not him?
THOMPSON: Well, Senator Obama has adopted the position of every liberal interest group in this country, as best I can tell – all the major ones: the NEA and everyone who’s stepped forth with a position paper on these issues. His positions are very liberal positions. His first alternative to all problems, as best I can see, is not only the government but the federal government. He’s talking in generalities right now. As the time goes on, the process goes on, I think he’ll have to be more definitive, but it’s clear from what he’s said so far that he’s taking that position.
MCCAIN: I just wanted to say to Governor Romney, we disagree on a lot of issues, but I agree, you are the candidate of change.
STEVE: They are now officially doing Mystery Debate Theater themselves. Our job here is done.
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Beachwood Analysis
A terrible night for Romney. He did not handle the incoming fire well at all, looking defensive and whiny. Huckabee stayed above the fray, but he also seemed programmed and windy in a format that was about engagement. Thompson finally got his folksy act going and had his best appearance of the campaign. McCain was the adult in the room, seeming almost pained at times at the childishness around him. Giuliani is better in the debates than he is on paper. Once again, Ron Paul spoke more truth by far than any of them. But give him enough time and he’s exposed as the kind of guy who wants to stop printing money. The biggest winner was Charlie Gibson and the format. Who knew?
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Posted on January 7, 2008