What debate? (analysis: Romney, McCain given preferential treatment)

RenewAmerica.us ^ | May 7, 2007 | RenewAmerica staff

[Gelato]

Republican presidential debate facts
May 3, 2007

Data compiled by RenewAmerica staff

Minutes allowed to speak:

John McCain: 10:31   (tie)
Mitt Romney: 10:22   (tie)
Rudy Giuliani: 7:36
Sam Brownback: 7:19
Jim Gilmore: 6:25
Ron Paul: 5:55
Tom Tancredo: 5:41
Mike Huckabee: 5:25
Duncan Hunter: 4:52
Tommy Thompson: 4:34

Number of times allowed to speak:

John McCain: 21
Mitt Romney: 19
Rudy Giuliani: 19
Sam Brownback: 16
Tom Tancredo: 15
Jim Gilmore: 14
Mike Huckabee: 14
Ron Paul: 13
Duncan Hunter: 12
Tommy Thompson: 11

[ClearCase_guy]

A terrible format. Hope they don't use it again. But if they do, they should handle it like a chess clock. You are allotted an amount of time. Perhaps 8 minutes total. While you talk, your clock runs. If you answer one question for 8 minutes, that's your time, and your microphone gets unplugged. If you choose to give 30 second responses, you can field 16 questions.

That would be fair to everyone and make each candidate responsible for their own use of air-time. But since it involves fairness and personal responsibility, the leftist media probably wouldn't consider this method.

[Gelato]

Reposted from yesterday, with corrected facts.

In the interest of fairness, I contacted RenewAmerica last night and asked them to check their facts, after FReepers pointed out some discrepancies in the numbers. Here's the corrected version.

[P-40]

If you choose to give 30 second responses, you can field 16 questions.

But then the candidates wouldn't be able to give those long, rambling statements that sound important but don't really say anything. :)

[JohnnyZ]

Mitt Romney: Chrissy Matthews' preferred candidate.

Can you say: "man-crush"?

[Gelato]

Interesting idea. I like that.

[WalterSkinner]

5 1/2 minutes

[napscoordinator]

jealousy and cry baby alert!!!!

[Gelato]

That’s with the moderator. I checked it myself. LOL

[EternalVigilance]

More like “conservatives, watch out for Democrat Media bias Alert.”

[Grunthor]

“Anointed the winner by virtual media consensus was former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.”

Fair or not, he was given a lot of time to screw up. He didn’t. He’s the winner. I do believe he’d get whipped head to head with a real conservative, but the ptb aren’t going to allow that to happen.

[EternalVigilance]

Of course, virtually nothing he had to say bore any resemblance to his record as Governor of Taxachusetts.

[Grunthor]

“Of course, virtually nothing he had to say bore any resemblance to his record as Governor of Taxachusetts”

From what I can tell, you are largely correct.

[napscoordinator]

Thank God at least us here know all about that.

[George W. Bush]

Can you say: "man-crush"?

So did Mitt get to second-base or third-base with schoolgirl Chrissy?

It was kind of embarrassing. OTOH, Romney does have a quality of being genuinely likable. It comes across the tube in a way that reminded me of the Gipper himself.

I'm not saying he is Reagan or the heir of Reagan or even that he's a conservative. I'm saying that he is a person it's easy to like. I think Xlinton had that same quality to connect with a lot of people, especially women.

Never fear. In the next debate, Chrissy will overcompensate by pulling a knife on Romney. Somehow, I'm thinking Romney would even handle that well. He is a calm smooth CEO type.

[TheBethsterNH]

They were alotted a certain amount of time to respond but some apparently did not plan adequately and use all of their time.

[redgirlinabluestate]

Hasn't this been posted 3 or 4 times before?

Anyway, in all fairness, many didn't have much to say or were stumbling or stammering (Tancredo/Rudy/Thompson). It's not Mitt's fault.

In my view, Hunter and Romney came off sounding the best. On one hand, Mitt's answers were longer, more detailed and interesting enough that he didn't get cut off by Matthews because the way Mitt spoke made one want to hear the answer.

On the other hand, Hunter may have gotten less time, yet he also answered very well, but in a shorter, more succinct way. His answer about what America does right and wrong, didn't take much time. But, it was excellent!

So this whole argument regarding time is kind of silly and sounds like sour grapes.

It's not how much time you get; it's what you do with it that counts.

[PhilCollins]

I thought of another stupid question. Matthews asked Tommy Thompson whether an employer should be able to fire an employee because the employee is gay. Congress has passed anti-discrimination laws. If an employer wanted to fire someone, for that reason, the employer could be sued for millions of dollars, unless all anti-discrination laws are repealed, which will never happen.

[Gelato]

Granted, Hunter did well with succinct answers.

Romney required more time after he failed to give direct answers to simple questions. It took two follow-ups before Mitt admitted he doesn’t oppose embryonic stem cell research.