All of the candidates were really on their game last night. Going from 8 candidates to 6 gave them more time to talk and made the environment more engaging. Each candidate had moments where they could claim this was their best debate ever. However, any night where Rick Perry uses the numbers “3” and “2” in the same sentence is too painful a reminder of his worst night ever. Also, Mitt Romney’s wagering of a $10,000 bet really made him look like a man of the people—Thurston Howell III kind of people! In Romney’s defense, it could have been worse. Romney could have challenged Perry to a foie gras eating contest.
Newt Gingrich “won” the debate last night in the sense that he had momentum going into the debate and he did nothing to hurt himself. Gingrich understands that the best defense in a debate is to attack your opponents even harder—and he did that well. Gingrich also came across less condescending and egotistical than usual last night (granted that’s a really low bar). Romney got some good licks into Gingrich, all of which will be overshadowed by the $10,000 bet sound bite.
My favorite moment was the family values sequence. Gingrich implied that he had been a horrible cad with the ladies, but with grandchildren and a year and a half till he’s 70, he doesn’t have the testosterone for that to be a “problem” anymore. (“Wink, wink, you won’t have to worry about me having enough energy to chase interns around the White House, even though I would have, as recently as a few years ago.”) And I think he convinced the audience he was sincere.
The big loser last night was the Tea Party as the race increasingly appears to be a choice between Romney and Gingrich. You couldn’t be any bigger Washington insider than Newt Gingrich unless you dug up the bones of Lyndon Baines Johnson. As Romney pointed out, Gingrich loves big government doing things like colonizing the moon. And Romney is the godfather of big government Obamacare. So the Tea Party is now out in the cold.
And yet polls show the vast majority of the Tea Party now finds Newt Gingrich acceptable. Why? It is because the Tea Party was never about lower taxes, smaller government, or being anti-Washington. All that stuff was a smoke screen. First and foremost, the Tea Party was and is about hating on Barack Obama. It’s about opposing the very idea of a Barack Obama being allowed to live in the White House. What’s really driving the Tea Party to embrace Gingrich is his ability to trash talk Obama. Gingrich is always gleefully willing to call Obama a “socialist,” “communist,” sick,” “pathetic,” or any other generic slur published from the Frank Luntz playbook from the early 90s.
Christmas may be nearly two weeks away for Republicans, but it’s already here for Democrats. As the Republicans look increasingly like they are going to nominate Gingrich, the GOP version of the Democrats nominating Al Sharpton for President, the Obama Administration thinks it sees a new way to get 4 million Americans back to work in 2012. Because that’s how many people will need to be hired just to file, sort and organize all of the negative opposition research available on Newt Gingrich.