Ryan Streeter
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Perhaps the only thing on which all viewers with Twitter feeds seem to agree is that John King needed his microphone turned off during candidate answers. All of his verbal ticks and interruptions will be the stuff of SNL sketches this weekend and blog references for a few years.
As far as the candidates go, Mitt Romney came into this debate needing only to protect his frontrunner status. And he did that tonight. He was decisive, fair-minded, and clear enough. He was presidential, not defensive or overly-hyped as some of the others were. He handled the RomneyCare question with poise and gave an answer that was as principled and rationale as one could hope for given his previously weak defense of the issue. He was aided in the second half by having Newt Gingrich follow him twice in a row with much wordier, complicated answers. He flubbed his foreign policy answer – perhaps the only point at which Pawlenty out-did him – but managed to hold his ground overall.
He was aided in large part by the other candidates. They all seemed to lose the debate in one major respect: they forgot that a major task for the evening was to put Romney on his heels. Most were concerned with making their pre-written talking points, sometimes agreeing with each other, but no one put on the gloves and took some swings at the man who has rushed out ahead of the pack in the polls.
Herman Cain, who got a big bump after the last debate, came off much weaker tonight by giving very general answers to questions and lacking specificity on policy. Newt Gingrich had a decent first half, but somehow seemed to lose his way after his NASA remarks. Bachmann came off as well-informed and poised, though her use of the debate as her announcement platform was a bit gimmicky.
Pawlenty may have lost the most tonight, though. Despite running a better rollout than any of the other candidates, he has been flagging in the polls and needed to reach through the TV screen, grab Joe Q Public by the collar, and get him on the Pawlenty team. Rather, he seemed to play second fiddle to Romney by a long distance. John King threw him a slow pitch on “Obamneycare,” and Pawlenty refused to take a swing in the form of a principled critique of Romney. Instead, he was too nice, tried to pin the whole thing on Obama, and ended up looking cowardly. If he has a critique of RomneyCare, he should have given it.
It's too bad for him that he didn't. Romney, considered a fatally flawed candidate by many insiders and too out of touch by many grassroots voters, came out looking like a nominee tonight. The others could have changed that, but failed to do so.
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