Friday, May 4, 2007

Republican Debate: Who Won?

I missed the dang debate because I had to work late. No problems though, as the Blogosphere is out in force with insights and analysis.

Starting with Justin L at Blog4Brains:

Most of the candidates were for militarism/aggressive foreign policy, and definitely very afraid of being too harsh on Bush... I was very surprised and a little worried about how they tip-toed around the Bush administration, even going as far as hesitating about Karl Rove, as if they didn’t want to speak out against another fellow Republican even though they need to separate themselves from the current administration.


Politcal Realm also analyzes the debate. PR leads with:


Much like the Democratic debate last week, the candidates preferred to make safe statements and avoid confrontation, leaving no clear victor. As we suggested, Ronald Reagan's name was invoked early and often--at least nineteen times directly--typically in broad fashion. Chris Matthews did a better job than Brian Williams did to follow questions and keep the candidates on topic, though his Bill Clinton question at the end was out of place.


TomCat at Politics Plus riffs:

If there was a winner, I would say that Mitt Romney appeared most Presidential in his bearing. If there was a loser, I would say that Rudy Giuliani appeared indecisive and weak. John McCain presented himself well but I think by hitching his star to Bush's war for oil and conquest, he defeated himself before he began.


From Reconstitution:

So I watched the Republican debate last night and was, of course, sadly disappointed by the bunch on stage. Apparently, I was not alone. According to the MSNBC interactive, this is how they did:

With 18,518 voting:

Brownback 49% negative, 41% neutral, 10% positive.
Gilmore 45% negative, 47% neutral, 8% positive.
Giuliani 46% negative, 33% neutral, 21% positive.
Huckabee 39% negative, 45% neutral, 16% positive.
Hunter 46% negative, 45% neutral, 9% positive.
McCain 47% negative, 35% neutral, 18% positive.
Paul 27% negative, 32% neutral, 41% positive.
Romney 37% negative, 31% neutral, 32% positive.
Tancredo 48% negative, 41% neutral, 11% positive.
Thompson 48% negative, 42% neutral, 10% positive.



Wow, that's downright fugly. I'm starting to think I'm glad I missed it.

9 comments:

Real_PHV_Mentarch said...

Heh ;-)

I must admit I am very partial to what Atrios wrote here, here and here. Straight to the point he goes, as always ... ;-)

TomCat said...

Hi Ron. Thanks for the hat-tip. :-)

I did pick up a couple valuable bits of information.

► It saves trees to share your barf bag with a friend.
► You can rinse and re-use the same barf bag six or more times.

Larry said...

I didn't have the stomach or the mindset to watch a screen full of liars and the closet Republican host.

Ron said...

I'm still flabergasted that three serious contenders for POTUS don't believe in evolution.

Political Realm said...

Tommy Thompson tried to qualify his remarks about firing a worker because of his sexuality by saying he didn't understand or hear the question correctly.
Not so smooth from him.

CHUQ said...

I watched--It was a snooze. McCain looked like a pissed off doberman, Romney was over-practiced, Guiliani appeared to be uncomfortable. Paul did not care what he said or who it may have upset. I liked that. And the rest were looking like what they are--also rans.

Miss Politics said...

The whole world is praying that Bush is ousted.

It rathers sucks though that you only have the Democrats to fall back on, from what I can tell they are not much better.

CHUQ said...

You notice that the ones that do not believe in evolution are the three least evolved.

BTW, Fred Thompson won the debate. Why? He was not there.

Anonymous said...

I heard that it was a "timidity-fest".