Republican Debate Redux

The Opinionator

The wide-open nature of the campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination is reinforced by the disparate reactions among conservative journalists and bloggers to last night’s debate.

National Review Online goes head over heels for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. “Only one man in this debate so far has really helped himself: Mike Huckabee,” Peter Robinson writes at The Corner. Robinson calls Huckabee “articulate and determined” and adds, “This guy is coming across as likeable, smart, and maybe even up to the job.” (Robinson writes of the front-runner, “Giuliani is proving fascinating, but not in an altogether reassuring way.”)

Pundits slagged Huckabee’s once-promising chances when he raised only $500,000 for his campaign during the first three months of the year. N.R.O.’s John Podhoretz wonders if the debate can turn the Huckabee campaign around: “It’s hard to know whether a debate watched only by a few million people can really launch someone, but I’d say halfway through that he is far and away the most likable and eloquent candidate on that stage.” Jim Geraghty gives Huckabee a thumbs-up, too, without overstating his impact. Huckabee “might be the guy jumping up to the middle tier,” Geraghty writes at his National Review blog.

The New York Sun’s Ryan Sager has a blurb-like verdict for the “big three” candidates in the field: “Winner: Mitt Romney. Loser, by a mile: Rudy Giuliani. Treading water: John McCain.”

Ross Douthat, at his new blog for The Atlantic, also calls Romney the winner, if only “by default.” Douthat adds:

McCain didn’t hurt himself but didn’t really help himself either, and every time I hear him talk I’m reminded of what a surprisingly weak public speaker he is. I was more impressed by Giuliani than Ryan Sager was, but that isn’t saying much; he seemed more Presidential than most of the other folks on stage, but he didn’t make much of a case for himself as a conservative. Among the also-rans, [Duncan] Hunter and Huckabee did best. It’s too bad being one of the best governors of the last twenty years doesn’t make Tommy Thompson a more plausible would-be President. If you read [Ron] Paul’s remarks in a transcript, he sounds reasonable; if you watched him, he sounds like your nutty uncle.

“Captain Ed” Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters agrees that Romney won, while “Jim Gilmore and Mike Huckabee may have made some strides in breaking out of the third tier.” Morrissey’s loser: Former Health and Human Services Secretary and Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson. Morrissey puts Thompson in his dead pool, suggesting that he will be the first candidate to bow out of the race: “He had a disastrous night.”

Robert George liked former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore even more than Morrissey. George calls Gilmore the winner. “He came across as informed and polished, but not slick (as Mitt Romney did),” the New York Post editorial writer says on his personal blog, Ragged Thots.

Daniel Larison, a Ph.D student in Byzantine history at the University of Chicago, can’t stand Romney. “For those who have not seen a lot of him, Romney probably seemed to put on a good show, but no one can really buy what this guy is selling. His entire persona annoys me at this point,” Larison writes in one post at his blog, Eunomia. In another post, Larison writes, “Yes, Romney is smooth and, to the untrained eye, almost human. In the superficial world of television debates, he will always ‘do well’ in some sense, because he is a master of appearance over substance.” He continues:

I will be willing to grant that Romney gained the most from last night’s debate, even though he did not necessarily perform as well as some of the others, because he made no obvious mistakes (except for being a treacly and obnoxious politician who reinvents his views when it is convenient) while his two major rivals came away looking unimpressive (Giuliani) or like a crotchety old man who hasn’t had his dinner yet (McCain).

O.K., Romney “comes across as overpolished and a bit ‘like a well-cast actor in a movie of the week about a guy running for president,’ as Jonah [Goldberg] put it,” Ross Douthat concedes at The Atlantic. “But in a field where most of his opponents look like badly-cast actors, that actually may give him a leg up.”

Of Giuliani, Robert George writes:

Some New Yorkers might have rolled their eyes in noting his response to the question about if he had any “regrets” with regard to his relations with blacks: He pointed in a rather halting manner to his reduction of crime and welfare. One can argue that crime and welfare culture have a proportionally greater affect on the black community. But, he seemed to shy away from saying that. The question goes directly to the perception of his creating a climate that led to police shootings of unarmed black men. It’s not an easy question to answer, but it’s something he should have figured out how to answer by now.

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg thinks McCain wounded Giuliani during the debate. “[T]he narrative for Giuliani was that he was going to be ‘a tough S.O.B. — for you.’ In other words he was gonna go medieval on al Qaeda the way he had on the squeegee men and turnstile-jumpers,” Goldberg writes at The Corner. He adds, “The McCain camp seems to have understood this better than Giuliani going into last night’s debate. [McCain’s] feisty, at times awkward, junkyard dog routine was intended to send the signal that if you want someone to fight the war on terror the Chicago Way, he’s your man.”

But Rich Lowry, Goldberg’s editor, thinks McCain may have come on too strong. McCain was “the Zell Miller of the night,” Lowry writes. Fortunately for all involved, McCain did not, during the post-debate analysis on MSNBC, challenge Chris Matthews to a duel.