Legal Commentary

Beldar reacts to tonight's Reagan Library GOP debate

By Beldar

Untainted by other punditry or blogs, my immediate reactions to tonight's GOP debate:

• Tonight's debate was far more illuminating than most previous ones, precisely because there were only four candidates three candidates and one clown on stage. (Now if they could only lose the clown .... Let's hear it for the return to the Gold Standard! But seriously ... what's Ron Paul's position on whether America should join the League of Nations?)

• John McCain is a grumpy, grumpy old man. He is mean. And he rambles.

• McCain's nasty and deceitful distortion of Romney's supposed endorsement of a "secret timetable" for an Iraq withdrawal managed to put Romney in the unfamiliar (but welcome and sympathetic) position of someone badly sinned against. The harder McCain struggled to repeat the charge and defend it, the more petty and disingenuous he seemed.

• Every bit of ground that McCain tried to make up in his Florida victory speech (and before and since, including tonight) by stressing his intention to appoint clones of Roberts and Alito was undone by saying he's "proud" of Sandra Day O'Connor. I'm sure he felt obliged to say that as a matter of personal loyalty and friendship to his fellow Arizonan. But it confirms that he still has no clue ? or simply doesn't care (and I tend to think it's exactly that) ? just how much he is mistrusted on the issue of judicial appointments by conservatives for whom that is an important issue.

• Mitt Romney is improving dramatically as a debater, and tonight he was better, by far, than I've ever seen him. He is at his least appealing to me when he's trying to use his one-liners (e.g., "Washington is broken"). When he lets his MBA-wonkiness loose, he's at his most impressive, even if he's not necessarily generating any warm fuzzies. His best moment tonight was when he took umbrage at McCain's argument that "Anyone can hire [mere] managers." Romney's right to insist that managers can indeed also be leaders.

• I became gloomy tonight trying to imagine John McCain debating Barack Obama in the general election. If McCain does become the GOP nominee, he should refuse all face-to-face debates, and just let Obama call him a coward. That charge might not stick badly anyway, but whatever damage is inflicted by McCain's refusal to debate would be less than the damage that would be inflicted in the debates ? regardless of substance. The contrast in age, energy, hopefulness, optimism, and articulateness would be devastating ? vastly more damaging than Nixon's sweat and five-o'clock shadow, which probably cost him more votes than were the margin of his loss in the 1960 election against Kennedy.

• Huckabee was mostly ignored by the moderators, which he resented, but I didn't much mind. He was only a slightly more serious participant than the clown. He's not thinking in terms of a second spot on a McCain ticket, or else he wouldn't have seconded Romney's argument about why governors make better presidents than senators.

I am not a McCain supporter for purposes of these primaries, and my view may be heavily colored by that. I'd be especially interested in your reactions, in the comments to this post, if you, too, watched the debate.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on January 30, 2008 (boomark / email).