January 25, 2008

1/25: It's Good To Be On Top

Most conservative bloggers found last night's MSNBC GOP debate a yawner. The general consensus is that Mitt Romney and John McCain gave excellent performances that solidified their strong positions in FL, while Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee didn't do enough to distinguish themselves. Conservative bloggers gave particularly positive reviews to Romney, who they felt benefited from the debate's focus on economic policy.

Conservative bloggers are directing a lot of their fire today at McCain, who had the misfortune of being endorsed by one of conservatives' favorite punching bags, The New York Times. NRO's Jim Geraghty writes:

"I'm really curious -- do the editors of the New York Times know how much damage they did John McCain by endorsing him?...McCain would be well served by declaring, 'Those surrender-now defeatists on the editorial board can take their endorsement and cram it.'"

Across the political spectrum, liberal bloggers continue to analyze Bill Clinton's role in Hillary Clinton's campaign, and more generally, the Clintons' attacks on Barack Obama. As we observed yesterday, some bloggers are turned off by the Clintons' attacks, while others don't have a problem with them. With the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby tracking poll showing Obama's lead shrinking in SC, could the Dem race be over a lot sooner than many people thought?

GOP FIELD: Boca Raton Love Fest

Townhall's Matt Lewis: "It appears to me the primary outcome of tonight's debate is that Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee have failed to do what they needed to do to catch up to the two front-runners in Florida...it now seems that we are really looking at a two-man race between John McCain and Mitt Romney."

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "If McCain's goal was to make no errors, defend his tax cutting record and appeal more magnanimous and jovial than he is often made out to be, he succeeded. By the same token, if Romney wanted to appear competent, confident and economically astute, he passed with flying colors. As engaging and delightful as Rudy can be, I don't think he shook up the race. In that sense Romney and McCain were winners. As for Huckabee, somewhere between the inheritance joke and the highway project I was reassured that he won't be president."

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "Isn't it odd that the Democratic candidates, who disagree about virtually nothing, attack each other without mercy; meanwhile, the leading Republican candidates, who disagree about such key issues as abortion, immigration, tax policy, and engagement with Iran, have nothing but warm things to say about one another? Even during the segment when the candidates got to ask questions of the opponent of their choice, we saw mostly softballs. Romney asked Giuliani what he thinks about China; McCain gave Huckabee a chance to pitch a national sales tax. I guess each candidate must be reasonably comfortable with his standing because no one attempted anything that would shake things up. Perhaps, at the margin, Romney wanted to prop up Rudy as a competitor of McCain's, while McCain wanted to help Huck at Mitt's expense."

DEBATE ROMNEY: Prime Minister, Back To Finish My Business Up

Captain's Quarters' Ed Morrissey: "The winner of the debate was Mitt Romney. He looked presidential, poised, and factually prepared. In a debate that spent the first two-thirds with everyone doing well, Romney not only broke out on his own in the last stanza, he successfully parried some strange attacks from Tim Russert as well."

Matt Lewis: "If one had to assign a winner tonight, Mitt Romney would probably get the nod. Unlike prior debates where Romney was ganged-up on, Romney didn't come under attack tonight -- in fact, nobody really came under attack tonight. The topics also seem to have benefitted Romney more than the other candidates. The debate focused more on the economy than it did on any other topic, and I think he is more adept at talking about this topic than is his primary opponent, John McCain. He also did a good job of going after the Clintons -- something that McCain should have actually done more of."

RedState's Alexham: "There weren't many fireworks between our candidates last night, but one did stand out in a big way: Mitt Romney. He was good. Very good. Indeed, for the first time I thought to myself: 'You know, this guy is pretty damn impressive [...]' And his line about Bill Clinton 'in the White House with nothing to do' was nothing short of priceless."

NRO's Jim Geraghty: "If you were an apolitical Floridian, and you just tuned in tonight, I think you were probably impressed by Romney. It was his most unflappable performance in a while, and a large chunk of the time was on the economy, probably his best issue. He parried Russert's questions on his finances and his faith well. He stepped on a few opportunities for some good one-liners, but that was never his strong suit."

DEBATE MCCAIN: Finishing Strong

Ed Morrissey: "John McCain did a good job as well. He showed flashes of humor and charm, as well as toughness and determination. He did well on the war questions, but his repetitive pillorying of Donald Rumsfeld has gotten old, a crutch that he uses far too often. He falsely claimed that a majority of Republicans worry about global warming, which shows him to be a little out of touch with the base in a very obvious way."

AmSpec Blog's Wlady: "I must say that McCain was in top form; to my mind, his best performance so far (though I haven't seen them all); fully alert and in easy command of much detail, and of course quite funny."

Michelle Malkin: "McCain managed not to snarl or curse at anyone. He won because he got away without having to answer a single question about immigration."

DEBATE GIULIANI: Too Little, Too Late

Ed Morrissey: "Rudy Giuliani needed a big win in this debate and didn't get it. However, he did do a fine job, showing a little more personal engagement in this event. He looked very cool and confident and probably gave the most robust answers to the questions asked. He only had one weak moment, when asked to justify his Florida strategy, but recovered quickly. Unfortunately, he had no game-changing moments, and he sorely needs one."

Michelle Malkin: "Rudy lost because he failed to demonstrate the magnetic, head-turning charisma of a front-runner. He had the hang-dog, laid-back presence of a guy on his way out."

Townhall's Mary Katharine Ham: "Rudy didn't do what he needed to do to distinguish himself."

Matt Lewis: "Rudy Giuliani perhaps had the most to lose -- and did. He absolutely had to score a knockout tonight; he didn't come close. I'm surprised that Rudy would allow this debate to start and finish without taking a gamble and forcing some drama. His back is literally against the wall, but he acted as if he acted as if it was still September of '07."

Paul Mirengoff had a slightly different take: "Was there a winner? If so, I'd say it was Giuliani, at least for those who sat through the entire 90 minutes. Near the end, Rudy managed to (1) get in a few shots at Castro, (2) hit back at over-the-top criticism from the New York Times, and (3) receive a testimonial from John McCain (himself usually the source of praise from other candidates). However, I doubt that Rudy had a good enough night to turn things around, assuming he's in the kind of trouble some say he is."

DEBATE HUCKABEE: A Non-Factor

Ed Morrissey: "Mike Huckabee didn't do badly, but he didn't do well, either. His joke about the Romney inheritance fell flat, and he was mostly a non-factor throughout the debate. At the end, his natural connection to the audience came through, but on a question that really has much less draw (religion) than the pundits credit."

AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "[Huckabee] was pretty invisible tonight, other than a few one-liners and his wet kiss to Keynesian economics."

MCCAIN: The Worst Kind Of Endorsement To Have

For conservative bloggers, the New York Times' endorsement of McCain only confirms their distrust of the AZ senator:

Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "The Times' editorial board -- the most reliably anti-conservative, anti-defense, anti-life, anti-originalism, anti-growth opinion machine in the major U.S. media -- loves John McCain and expects that if he is the nominee the Arizona maverick will govern in ways acceptable to them, especially on global warming and immigration. They know their man. Does the GOP?"

Michelle Malkin: "John McCain: Endorsed by the classified secrets-disclosing, troop-smearing, war-sabotaging, botched military reporting, abortion propaganda-perpetuating, unethical reporter-protecting, stock-plunging New York Times."

RedState's Erick Erickson: "Senator McCain sees himself as the soliders' best friend in Congress. He tells us he worked tirelessly to repudiate the Rumsfeld legacy and win the war. He tells us he can lead us and keep us safe. The major national newspaper that has done more than any other to undermine all of that then endorses him. Senator McCain should publicly repudiate the endorsement of the New York Times, lest one think he actually appreciates the endorsement of the jihadists' best American friend."

CBN's David Brody sums up the practical impact of the endorsement: "McCain being endorsed by The New York Times is like Hillary being endorsed by The Sean Hannity Radio Show. All this endorsement does is give McCain's opponents more ammunition to make the case that he's not a conservative on ALL the issues."

On a more positive note for McCain, RedState's Hunter Baker endorses him: "Why am I supporting the guy who has been a maverick in the Senate and who is actively opposed by people I admire? I'll tell you why. John McCain is the right president for an America still fighting the war on terror...John McCain is pro-life enough, pro-small government enough, and a foe of pork. Add in his acceptability on those issues with his obvious quality as a leader for a nation waging war on terror, and you've got the best candidate in the field. (And by the way, it doesn't hurt that the press just spent the last seven years making McCain out to be Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.) I'm voting McCain."

Meanwhile, Right Wing News' John Hawkins sees good news and bad news for McCain: "Romney is currently being helped by the fact that a large chunk of the Fredheads seem to be gravitating over to him and by the relentless assault that the conservative media is aiming at McCain. On the other hand, ominously, if Rudy loses Florida, he's done and you have to think that the lion's share of his supporters will start to move over to McCain."

DEM FIELD: Edwards & Clinton Surging In SC?

MyDD's Todd Beeton sees major movement in SC: "The latest Reuters/CSPAN/Zogby tracking poll shows a still tightening race with John Edwards moving to within 4 points of Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, an upward trend we've seen play out consistently since his stellar debate performance on Monday night...But while the Edwards surge is impressive, hidden within these three-day rolling averages may be the real story once the votes are counted Saturday night: a potential New Hampshire-like late surge of voters coming home to Clinton."

Open Left's Chris Bowers doesn't think the winner of SC will derive much momentum from the victory: "The entire notion of momentum is predicated on the idea that a small, but not insignificant, number of voters in Super Tuesday states will factor the South Carolina results into their decision making process. That just didn't seem to happen after Nevada, probably because there just isn't as much build-up to, and post-election coverage of, states that follow Iowa and New Hampshire...The best way to receive momentum is to make sure that a lot of people watch you win. Given the comparatively smaller build-up to the South Carolina caucuses, and given that not many people will be watching South Carolina returns late on a Saturday evening, I just don't think that there is much momentum to be had here. There will probably be more than last week, since there won't be any Republican results to share the headlines, but it still probably won't amount to much."

MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "The Obama campaign has done a remarkably poor job playing the expectations game, spinning the media (or at least allowing the media to get spun) into believing that Obama was a surefire winner in New Hampshire and Nevada, making relatively narrow losses (and even a seeming win in the delegate count out of Nevada) look like much more significant losses. And it looks like they're doing it again in South Carolina, offering their candidate somewhat of a lose-lose situation (or decreasing his potential upside) by talking about a victory before it has even occurred...Why the Obama campaign is helping the Clinton campaign lower expectations in South Carolina -- particularly after that strategy proved to be an abject failure in the wake of the last two nominating contests -- is beyond me. And it's not as if the Clinton team isn't already working overtime to lower expectations for Clinton so that if she loses it isn't a big deal but if she wins it is. Hillary Clinton has spent a good deal of time outside of the Palmetto state this week, a key facet of the campaign's efforts to lower expectations in the state (even as Bill Clinton has campaigned ferociously in her place)...were I part of the Obama leadership team, I'd be saying the following (which I, even as a relatively detached observer believe): South Carolina is not over."

CLINTON: It's All About The "W"

Yesterday we quoted Ezra Klein's defense of HRC's bare-knuckled campaign tactics:

"The sort of attacks [HRC]'s levying -- misrepresenting Obama's payroll tax plan, or exaggerating his comments about [Ronald] Reagan -- are pretty much par for the course...And the overarching theme of [Paul] Waldman's column -- that Clinton is 'running like a Republican' -- almost pushes me to her side on the issue. The winner of the Democratic primary, after all, will have to run against a Republican."

The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias agrees with Klein: "Paul Waldman says Hillary Clinton is going after Barack Obama just like a Republican would -- without a lot of honesty or conscience. Frankly, I don't have a big problem with that. As Ezra Klein says, 'The winner of the Democratic primary, after all, will have to run against a Republican.' Indeed, the thing that's given me the most doubts about Obama thus far has been the campaign's tendency to whine ineffectually about Clinton campaign gambits. Dishonest attacks are part of the game and the only way for a candidate to protect himself against them is to turn them into jujitsu."

Obsidian Wings' hilzoy disagrees: "I think it's beyond argument that the Clinton campaign has lied about Obama's positions and record...I will, of course, support her over any of the Republicans in the race...But the idea that I should find her willingness to lie about her opponents to be a plus is pretty baffling to me. Maybe the idea is this: as Ezra says, the winner of the Democratic primary will have to run against a Republican. Republicans use revolting smear tactics. Therefore, we have to be willing to use them too. If we aren't, we'll get nailed. This sounds like it makes sense, but it doesn't...The fact that the Republicans will, in all likelihood, turn some weapon on us does not mean that we need to be willing to turn that weapon on them if we want to win. What we need is to be able to defend against that weapon, and (preferably) turn the fact that the other side uses it to our advantage. That's a different matter entirely."

In a later post, hilzoy elaborates: "Lying in an election is basically a way of saying: we know how you ought to vote, and if we can't get you to vote that way by presenting you with facts and arguments, or even with truthful but emotionally shaded appeals, then we will get you to vote our way by telling you things that are not true. It's hard to see what could be more profoundly disrespectful of people's right to decide for themselves whom to vote for...But it also undermines democracy by placing intolerable burdens on citizens...when candidates tell the kinds of lies that the Clintons have been telling, they place citizens in a position in which the only way to know what is going on is to become political junkies. Being merely informed is not enough: you have to be the sort of person who actually remembers the article from 2004 that Bill Clinton was referring to when he said that Obama had changed his position on the war, and so forth."

CLINTON II: The Two-Headed Monster

Liberal bloggers continue to analyze Bill Clinton's role in HRC's campaign:

The Nation's Ari Melber sees a pattern in Bill's outbursts: "Bill Clinton has a negative outburst a few days before each state race in the Democratic primary. There was 'roll the dice' before Iowa, and 'fairy tale' in New Hampshire. A few days before Nevada voted, he aggressively confronted a reporter on camera, and just pulled the same stunt on a CNN reporter in South Carolina. Each time, the media fixates on the spectacle, dutifully debating whether he is too angry or too misleading. But as Clinton knows, it doesn't even matter what people say, as long as they are talking about him and his latest attacks on Barack Obama. Like clockwork, these supposed outbursts give airtime to attacks while pulling attention away from Obama in the crucial, closing days of each primary."

Meanwhile, ex-Clinton Labor Sec. Robert Reich slams his old boss: "I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton's ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife's campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it's not fair -- indeed, it's demeaning -- for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such as Obama's anti-war position is a 'fairy tale') or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it."

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) thinks that the ex-President may be damaging his reputation. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports:

"[Clyburn] would not, as a member of the Obama campaign has, go so far as to compare Clinton's actions to that of Lee Atwater, the famed Republican dirty trickster. But he did allow the idea that the former president had sullied his image within Democratic circles.

'I think that may be true,' said Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. 'I mean, he is speaking out this way, taking hits on Obama. A lot of times these things happen. What you say may hurt the other guy but it also may hurt you.'"

OBAMA: Winning The Spin War, Losing The Primary?

TPM's Greg Sargent thinks Obama is winning the spin war over who's the greater victim: "One of the central struggles between the Obama and Hillary campaigns right now is this: Which of the two can successfully persuade voters that he or she is the fair-fighter being victimized by the other's out-of-control aggression? Which of the two can persuade voters that his or her opponent is using a steady stream of vicious, old-style attack politics to prevent history from being made? Right now -- if media coverage, pundit opinion, and insider chatter among Dems is any guide -- it's hard not to conclude that Obama is winning this particular spin war handily. At risk of overgeneralizing, much media coverage and commentary right now appears to be hewing closer to the Obama campaign's chosen narrative, which is roughly that the Clinton machine is using every gutter tactic at its disposal to halt the triumph of new politics and the making of history."

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan doesn't think this helps Obama: "I think the spin war itself is a distraction from Obama's core message -- of unifying change -- and distracting from that is central to the Clintons' strategy. It seems to me that Obama needs to focus back on the case for his own candidacy, in particular, providing explicit concrete policy detail in his public presentation."

David Corn also doesn't think the anti-Clinton backlash will matter: "There's not that much time between now and Supersaturated Tuesday on February 5. It's hard to see a full-scale Democratic rebellion against the Clintons emerging. Meanwhile, all this sniping is keeping Obama pinned down. That is, it's working for the Clintons. Their calculation is obvious: the heat is worth the gain."

Meanwhile, in his interview with The Huffington Post's Stein, Rep. Clyburn denies that Obama is the "black" candidate:

"'There are more white people supporting Obama than there are black,' [Clyburn] said, with a charge of emotion. 'Now that's a fact. Just look at the numbers. Look at New Hampshire. How many white votes and how many black votes did he get in New Hampshire? How many white votes and how many black votes did he get in Iowa? Now add that to the black votes in South Carolina. There are more white people supporting Obama than there are black people. Now that's a fact.'

The populations of both Iowa, where Obama won, and New Hampshire, where he finished a close second, are both overwhelming white. Moreover, Clyburn added:

'Look at endorsements here in South Carolina...John Matthews, Robert Ford, Darrell Jackson, three black state senators. They are supporting Hillary Clinton. I haven't seen a single black state senator come out for Obama. So is she the black candidate?'"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: How To Improve The Debates

NRO's Jonah Goldberg posts the following email from a reader:

"Dear Jonah,
One reader asked last night, 'can we ever, please, PLEASE get just ONE debate moderated by actual CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS???' This reader asks: Why doesn't NRO host a debate? That would be a sight to behold."

Matthew Yglesias likes this suggestion:

"That sounds like a good idea to me. Especially given the enormous quantity of debates that both fields are enduring this cycle, why can't we have more experimentation with the formats? In particular, it really does seem likely to me that a panel of smart conservative ideologues would produce a debate that's more useful to Republican primary voters than would Tim Russert or Wolf Blitzer being a pain in the ass. And, of course, vice versa as well. Katrina vanden Heuvel and Harold Meyerson know the questions actual Democrats would like to see the Democratic candidates answer. If that experiment worked well, you might even consider mixing things up -- let Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru grill the Democrats and see what happens. Certainly it's not as if the CNN and MSNBC teams have covered themselves in so much glory this cycle that I'm sitting here thinking if only Russert could moderate seventy debates next year instead of only fifty!"

LEST WE FORGET: Sneaky, Sneaky

McSweeney's' Neil Reynolds lists "The Oldest Tricks In The Book":

• Tap neighbor on left shoulder. When he turns to look, club his wife and drag her to your cave.
• Kill mammoth. Crawl into mammoth carcass. When saber-toothed tiger comes to feast, explode from mammoth with spear.
• Trek to volcano with bundle of sticks. Plunge sticks into molten rock. Retread your path by night, being careful to keep torch burning. Arrive at dwelling. Claim discovery of fire.
• Tell wife you go to hunt. Instead, sneak off and watch sunset.
• Trap child in deep recess of cave where he cannot escape. Perform elaborate shadow play on cave walls. Expose him to truth when he is old enough to hunt mammoth.
• Kill mammoth. Crawl into mammoth carcass. When neighbor comes to feast, explode from mammoth with cake.

Posted by Ian Faerstein at January 25, 2008 12:51 PM