Last night’s debate also showed a huge gulf between the reporters who cover such events and Republican voters who follow campaigns. I hope it is not a shock to anyone that most journalists covering D.C. politics relate to Democratic world views much more than those held by Republicans. My peers do a great job of putting their biases in check (myself included, I hope) but many are tone deaf when figuring out why Republican primary voters would embrace a guy like Mitt Romney who is now pro-life, pro-family and pro-everything-that-evangelical-voters-could-want-him-to-be.
During the debate I was flooded by e-mails from Republican activists and voters who told me Romney was dominating the debate. Meanwhile, my friends from D.C., Manhattan and L.A. were calling him “creepy,” “fake” and “scary as hell.”
By that reaction alone, Mitt Romney carried the mantle of Reagan off the stage last night. Like Romney, the 40th president was derided as a jingoistic right-wing nut. The greatest Reagan moment for the former Massachusetts governor came when he was asked what he hated most about America.
You could almost hear the Gipper’s laughs rising from his grave outside the auditorium.
“Clueless,” he would chuckle. “After all these years and all those Republican victories, the press still doesn’t get it.”
But Mitt Romney did, and he delivered an answer that would have made most angst-ridden reporters (and Democratic candidates) wince. It was an unapologetically delivered sermon on American Exceptionalism. The sort of speech that made media elites roll their eyes at Ronald Reagan while American voters were electing him in landslide margins.
And while most media commentators missed Romney’s victory, they also underplayed John McCain’s stumbles. That’s probably because McCain still scares reporters less than the Sam Brownbacks of the world. Regardless, this first debate was not good for John McCain, a politician for whom I have great respect and admiration. Reporters gave his uneven performance a free pass. GOP voters may not be so forgiving.
I’m not saying that Romney is Reagan anymore than I’m predicting the collapse of John McCain’s campaign. But there were clear winners and losers in last night’s contest. Among those Red State Republicans (who will elect their party’s next nominee), Mitt Romney won while McCain and Giuliani failed to meet expectations.
That may not be how it looks in Georgetown or the Upper West Side, but that’s how it is playing in Kansas. And what’s the matter with Kansas? Not a damn thing.
I’m a Kansan and I’m most definitely not for Romney.
Fred! Will take Kansas
Red & Blue is crap and we all know it.
Calling the red states blue, and the blue states red is simply more evidence that the media is determined to regularly redefine words, ideas, connotations, and just about everything else.
I am honestly confounded and frustrated by the fact that the next President of our Nation is going to come somehow out of this motley crew.
The only one that I have any respect for at all is Romney, and that man sold his soul to the Devil some while ago.
Too bad for me that moving to the South Pacific is simply not an option.
I suppose that I’ll have to work harder in order to give myself more options.
That’s the best analysis of the debate so far.
“Mitt Romney carried the mantle of Reagan off the stage last night. Like Romney, the 40th president was derided as a jingoistic right-wing nut.
The greatest Reagan moment for the former Massachusetts governor came when he was asked what he hated most about America. You could almost hear the Gipper’s laughs rising from his grave outside the auditorium.”
He nailed it.
I really liked his comments about cloning/stem-cell research. I hope a lot of Americans were listening.
Romney cannot be trusted. Any Republican who wins election in a state that has not had one single county vote Republican in a Presidential election since 1988 is no Republican.
Romney is nothing more than a prevaricating actor (the reason he looked so polished during the debate was because he rehearsed his fake answers through the whole thing) that wouldn’t even be a realistic choice if it wasn’t for the media deliberately hyping him up. Romney’s candidacy is a ploy by the media to plant their own candidate as the Republican nominee so that if it comes to between Clinton or Obama and the Republican, they win either way. Romney is no more deserving of hype than any other governor like Huckabee or Gilmore, but he gets top billing while the latter two get has-been status.
And they say there’s no liberal agenda in the press.
I think the biggest difference between the Democrat and Republican debates has gone largely unreported. In the Republican debate, all of the candidates recognized the reality that we are at war. At the Democrat debate, half of their candidates denied the War On Terror’s existence and of those who said they do recognize it, two of them agreed only after seeing Hillary and Obama raise their hands. Talk about being out of touch with reality. That is the biggest lesson I took from the two debates.
Joe Scarborough, former Republican CongressCritter from Florida, should have hosted the debate. He would have been more fair than Matthews or Politico.com, both big liberals. The quality of questions was antagonistic and/or just plain stupid.
Now we know at least there are some big differences between the parties. I see that as giving voters a choice not as a way to divide one against the other. Do you want your president to be for partial birth abortion oor not? For sticking with the plan of the military surge or no? Now the voter can choose.
Even though people don’t like to admit it, the more attractive candidate has the best chance of winning in the general.