even in the deal for 911 Victory mosque.
“Bain Capital, has cut checks totaling $90,000 to Romney’s operation. “
Posted on 12/10/2011 10:39:55 PM PST by smoothsailing
December 10, 2011
Marc A. Thiessen
The first big loser tonight was national security. Once again, there was almost no discussion of the critical issues the candidates would face as commander in chief — and there probably would have been no discussion at all, had Gingrich not declared the Palestinians a made-up people. The only candidate to make a substantive foreign-policy point was Rick Perry, when he criticized Obama for allowing Iran to recover our lost drone. Nothing on China, Iran, Iraq, Europe. Pathetic.
The second big loser tonight was Mitt Romney. This was his weakest performance yet. He got into a fight with Rick Perry for no reason. He brought up Gardasil again. Gardasil? His offer of a $10,000 bet backfired badly. Who bets $10,000? Not only did he use the line, he doubled down when his campaign sent out an email attacking Perry for not taking the bet. So it was not just a bad off-the-cuff comment, it was a planned attack. Yikes. That gaffe will haunt him for a long time to come. But more important, why is he fighting with Perry? Newt’s the one who has passed him in the polls. And Romney failed to draw blood from Newt — the person he needs to bring down if he is to win the nomination.
Newt was the winner for the same reasons Romney won the earlier debates: No one knocked him off his perch. He did very well. His line about how Romney would have been a career politician if he had not lost to Ted Kennedy was priceless. He parried the infidelity question with a humble answer about how he’s needed forgiveness. And he turned his gaffe on the Palestinians into a debate win. Romney tried to go after him by saying it was irresponsible and that Romney would be more cautious, declaring “I’m not a bomb thrower.” Newt deftly replied: “I’m a Reaganite,” citing Reagan’s declaration that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire.” The message GOP voters took away was: Newt is a bold conservative like Reagan, Romney is a cautious moderate. That’s a win for Newt.
The other surprise was Rick Perry, who had his best debate yet. Indeed, Perry may well have been the best candidate on the stage. He’s positioned himself to get a second look if Gingrich self-destructs, and the 75 percent of the GOP electorate that refuses to support Romney goes looking for another champion.
What is more pressing to our national security than the looming danger of Islam?
It takes b*lls to openly discuss this problem and that is too much to ask of any of our candidates.
Can you imagine the uproar in the Middle East, objections from CAIR and protests from the ACLU?
But, I say this:
From now on, regarding the 2012 GOP candidates, we use for all their FIRST NAMES; or we use for all their LAST NAMES.
What is it with this "Newt" business, while the others are assigned subliminally less endearing, family names?? Is "Gingrich" that hard to pronounced.
What is this? Do we hear of Gingrich vs. Rick? Or Gingrich vs. Mitt? Or Gingrich vs. Ron? Did we hear "Herman vs. Gingrich" in their debate??
It's downright WEIRD.
Gingrich did well tonight. He’s excellent on the issues. He’s still a terrible candidate, but he’s a good debater. Ron Paul was excellent tonight too. Romney was fine. The $10,000 thing was simply a figure of speech to my mind, and while Newt definitely zinged him on the Kennedy thing, Romney’s turnaround on being an NFL star was hilarious. Perry was an irrelevancy as always, I don’t know what Thiessen’s thinking. How low is the standard for Perry? Santorum and Bachmann just ate up time. I thought it was a particularly poor night for her with the win-win-win crap.
National Security wasn’t on the agenda, tonight.
Stephanapoulas trying to get his long-sought revenge on Newt Gingrich was.
You’ll note how Steffy tried to shut down Bachmann when she began telling inconvenient truths about the Pali’s?
That’s not a bad summary.
I found it to be one of worst debates so far.
Boring and unimformative.
Since I don’t know any one of them personally, it would be presumptive to use their first names. Thus I refer to them by their last names.
LOL. Politics is a sport. (Actually a blood sport). As in soccer, the names one is addressed with are those that have been popularized, sometimes nicksnames and sometimes proper last names. Gingrich became Newt, and Obama remained Obama though his detractors, oddly enough are those most likely to call him “Barry” for Barack. The logic? Good question. Do you think, “Newt” consulted someone to get a more endearing name? I wouldn’t put it past politicians!!!
BUMP!
“Bain Capital, has cut checks totaling $90,000 to Romney’s operation. “
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