Talk Elections

Making this prematurely.

Huntsman's best performance yet, in my opinion.

Winners: Gingrich, Perry, Huntsman

Losers: Romney, Cain

I did.

Newt

If he keeps this up Iowa and South Carolina is his. New Hampshire just has a crush on Mitt even though he wasn't their Governor. Pathetic

I can't believe I'm going to say it.

Rick Perry.  WTF.

Then Newt, Santorum, Bachmann, Huntsman, Paul, Mitt, and Cain in that order.

Gingrich, with Huntsman in second. Romney was mediocre, and as a frontrunner, that is terrible.

Newt!

Zomgz teh endzz of Romneez campaign!!11one!one

1.Huntsman
2. Newt
3. Perry

Huntsman was great and certainly the one who sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

Paul was great if you lean towards civil liberties and non-intervention, but for hawks he sounded like a crazy man.

Gingrich was good but I wonder if he damaged himself with his reasonable stance on immigration and not advocating rounding up 11 million people.

Romney as usual talked out of both sides of his mouth. This may have been his worst debate yet.

Perry had best debate yet.

Bachmann continues the crazy, Santorum was OK and  Cain was clearly out of his depth.

Gingrich is a good debater, and so that won't be his undoing.

Gingrich could have made a slam dunk if his immigration statement was as pleasing to America as it was to the crowd in the room. It's about time we try hard and seriously to win the Latino vote. LOL CNN is saying it will hurt him even after the room cheered for Newt. Gotta love reporters spinning thinks with serious faces. If he stays where he is or moves up after the debate, he just created a huge opportunity in the general election.

Huntsman did well, I don't think he came out on top as some of you, but he did do better than previous debates.

Cain is a failure. He knows nothing of national security.

Ron Paul will never go up or down ever unless he changes his values.

Bachmann is a fool so we can forget her. Wake me up when she doesn't spend her entire time attacking another GOP candidate. She's the pestering little 4 year old sister trying to play with her brother's 17 and 18 year old friends.

Santorum did well but his speech was sometimes slurred.

Romney...eek. He was messing up facts even. "$4.5 billion a year in Afghanistan"...mmm no, we spend a whole lot more than that kid.

Perry I still think is pretty dumb, but it was a whole lot better than oops. He talks so slow while collecting his thoughts.

Even CNN is saying that Paul won.

Romney was a failure, probably the end to his campaign,

Romney/Gingrich

Gold: Newt
Silver: Paul
Bronze: Huntsman

As much as I'd like that, Romney would need to be charged for corruption or treason or something to end his campaign before Jan.

Romney will be just fine.

Ah, the Romney fan. Your tears are delicious.

Gingrich: Strong and solid performance, but his immigration ideas might come back to hurt him in this primary. A-
Huntsman: His best performance yet. B+
Perry: Fairly solid, haven't seen him do this will yet. B
Paul: His best debate so far as well, finally toned down the "rambling old man" talk a bit. B
Santorum: Pretty decent, but never really had the spotlight. C+
Bachmann: Meh. C-
Romney: Got flustered badly early on, but chilled down enough at the end to save himself from a total loss. C-
Cain: Incompetent as ever. Gets a bit of extra credit for "Blitz," though. F+

Compared to other debate stumbles, this is nothing. This was Romney's worst debate, but it won't hurt him too badly compared to Bachmann on vaccines, Cain's apples and oranges, and I forget the third one. EPA?

Ron Paul and Charlie Sheen.

Who knows.

For the first time, I think Newt won and Romney did poorly. Both of their answers really bugged me, Newts less so. Ron Paul was really on his game, but won't be winning any friends.

1. Paul A+: Right in substance, but not style. Needs to tone the rambling down. He was GREAT on the drug issue, he needs to perform like that on all questions.

2. Huntsman A+: Very much like Paul, but he was not rambling. He did not make anything memorable though, so he by default is probably second.

3. Perry B: Perry had his best debate, but was weak in his attacks. He should of jumped on Romney on issues like immigration.

4. Gingrich B: He is a very, very smart man, but is running to sell books and speeches. I think it is VERY stupid to release your covert action plans, which proves to me he is not serious.

5. Santorum D: He openly admitted to racial profiling, which is politically toxic in a general election. He was not as aggressive as usual.

6. Bachmann F: She is awful. She has no reason to be running, she pretends to be a "Liberty loving Republican" but she is just trying to be the successor to the dying neocon (see Rumsfield, and Cheney) faction of the party.

7. Cain F: He does not know what he is talking about.

8. Romney F: He was overaggressive, and is dead wrong on foreign policy issues. He tried to make a joke early on, which was humiliating, and he was really angry throughout the night...

A conservative estimate on an immigration strategy like Newt's probably is worth 2-3% loss in support today in a GOP primary and practically all of that can be won back in not much time. It could likely result in no change.

Acceptance towards a real(not BS) comprehensive plan on immigration is rising with conservative voters. But for the most part its just showing up in people not willing to answer what happens after you have "secured the border" and "effectively stopped illegal immigration".

Well Cain's answer to secure the border is to "Secure the border" and everything will be saved. I'd like to know HOW people, to all the candidates. All they say is a fence, and that will magically ward off millions.

Anybody that seriously looked at the issue said the only way you can really do it is some form of E-verify.

Great coverage by The Gurdian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/22/republican-presidential-nomination-2012-republicans

None of these grades are by jmfcst or Naso and, therefore, irrelevant.

don't you mean jmfcst and Naso's dad?

I tuned in late and only saw the immigration part onward.  From the parts I saw, thought Newt won with Huntsman in second.

Everyone else was either ballistic (Paul) or pandering (Perry, Romney, Bachmann)

Naso is the ambassador to forum for his dad.  Huntsman 2nd, eh?

that's not saying a lot with this field

Naso represents someone beyond himself?!  Don't SCARE me like that!!!11!1

;)  /jk

Outside of the immigration question, Next won the debate.  That being said, his answer will hurt him, the question is figuring out how much.  My guess is much less than Perry (and possibly much less) because, oddly enough, Perry had more Republican support at that point, and combined it with an utterly amazing ability to not communicate at the same time (a double-whammy of sorts).  I might as well mention that, on all the issues out there, jmfcst is least reliable as a Republican bellwether on this issue being that he's from Texas.  The Republican base in Texas is in a different world on this one than most other Republican bases (see, e.g., Iowa)

Let me also add the various attempts Romney makes at pandering are beyond bad, and are starting to make me really think that the anti-Romneys might even take a gander at Ron Paul if Newt flames out.  Seriously.  I have never seen anyone as unbelievable as Romney is on this, and I've seen quite a lot.  No wonder he's stuck with the same numbers as always.

As for the others, Cain is once again completely outmatched by normal questioning.  Perry did ok, but tired out before the end (as always).  Ron Paul was Ron Paul.  Bachmann is very good at attacking others in her own way, but brings nothing new to the table.  Huntsman is, of course, an asshole, but performed better in this debate than before.  Santorum, well, who cares...

I think you would be surprised to hear that a decent number on the most conservative sites are coming out in agreement with Newt's answer because it puts such a far out "statute of limitations" that it can't be construed as a magnet. Nobody will come because people who've been here for 20 years are staying and people who've been here for a few years are getting the boot.

So there is some disagreement. But ultimately its still pretty quiet. Conservatives are currently in the middle of a respectful and thought out debate on the topic right now!

yep, and quite obvious.  And most of all, not well thought out since a lot of his answers seem to come straight out of a cheap vastly oversimplified simulation program, which leaves his flank constantly exposed to reality, both logistically and politically - his answers aren't just unworkable, they are also impossible from a political standpoint.

His view of the GOP is vastly oversimplified, as if he had been outside of the GOP all his life...

Perry- B+ Yes he was the winner in my opinion. He made an amazing recovery from his past missteps and should hopefully take support away from Gingrich in the coming days.
Huntsman- B This was his debate issue wise tonight. He did come off as a little too intellectual for the taste of the Tea Party tonight, and is still coming off mousy. Besides that, He was more confident tonight.
Romney- B- A little weaker than past debates, but still was the most articulate and presidential on the stage.
Gingrich- C Yeah I'm not seeing all the amazingness the Gingrich hacks are talking about. He came off as looking creepy, and a jerk when he interrupted Romney and Huntsman's exchange by saying "How about letting the rest of us speak?" The immigration issue is going to hurt any chance of more poll gains after tonight, and at most he will stay polling around where he is right now before deflating around the time of the next debate.
Bachmann- C She's picking up some steam again, so she's in my analysis. She sounded less crazy, and wasn't afraid to call out Gingrich when others on stage were.
Santorum- C Meh. He sounded the most sane after Romney and Huntsman, but couldn't get himself noticed that much.
Paul- D- Just horrible. He clearly has a niche of support for his views, but he stumbled when he was called out on them by the neo-cons on stage. Since the rest of the field is so bad though, he still has a great shot at winning Iowa.
Cain- F- FAIL. Seriously you're going to use the argument that Iran is too mountainous in your argument not to support Israel bombing it? I suppose if it were as flat as Kansas it would be ok then?

Gingrich
Paul
Huntsman
Bachmann

Tonight's debate just re-affirms how out of touch the GOP candidates are with anything foreign policy related. How the tables have turned.

I would have never expected the Democrat  to have that advantage. Well, Dubya talked the talk and walked the stagger.

That was Santorum...

Mitt Romney wins, as usual. When you combine intelligence, whether or not they appear "presidential", and their debating style, Mitt Romney will win almost every time.

None of them. Even Ron Paul, who I'm most sympathetic to, did quite poorly. They were all pretty uniformly awful, differing only in degree.

I thought it was an excellent debate.  And I thought they all performed wonderfully.  This area, foreign policy, is where they really do differ, and it is the one area in which Obama is well regarded.  So in that regard it is perhaps more important, and more interesting, than the other debates.

I voted for Ron Paul in the poll, but I'm probably biased in his favor to begin with, but they all did well.  The only one who came off as less informed was Herman Cain. 

Objectively, if I were to predict their performances as a "typical" Iowa primary voter, with "typical Midwestern values" I'd rank them as follows:

Perry (especially for those voters who haven't followed his blundering history)
Bachmann (She was one stone cold bitch last night.  Well-informed and commanding)
Huntsman (moderated and sober and just scrappy enough but not quite testy)
Gingrich (for reasons I still don't understand, Iowans don't like illegals.  Otherwise he was excellent)
Santorum (Like Gingrich, he'd have also ranked higher, but his whining won't go over well here)
Romney (Probably his worst performance ever; hopefully for him folks didn't just start watching tonight)
Paul (he will seem ideological and decrepit to most Iowans, but his cult will love him even more after last night)
Cain (somebody ought to put him out of his misery)

OBAMA OUTSOURCED INTERROGATION TO THE ACLU!

Yeah... you've got to be kidding?!

Huntsman - someone who actually knows the detail of what he's talking about... therefore he's screwed in this primary before it starts

Romney - trying a little too much to sound like the tough-guy... plus now I watch thinking... "I wonder when he was for/against this" - actually talked up the US involvement in the Suharto installation in Indonesia... sure they got economic development, but they also got a 30-year dictatorship

Paul - knew what he was talking about, but had ridiculous solutions...Ron, the answer to world poverty is not free-markets...K

Santorum - was compassionate on foreign aid... albeit the dangerous Bush programs which would only given funding to HIV prevention programs that wouldn't advocate condom use...

Gingrich - Like many people who think they're smart, they say a lot, usually argue for the "bigger picture" and direct their answer to talking points - but realistic on Immigration

Bachmann - Not as brain-dead as normal - but seemed upset the rapture might be delayed if Israel isn't backed-up

Perry - see Bachmann... but less impressive than that

Cain - "mountainous region"... that's enough

I am really puzzled how people can say this with a straight face.

Romney was garbage last night, he was overaggressive and his pandering was so obvious.

At the time of CIR, Newt used the example of someone who was 19, and had been here for three years. That isn't very far out at all.

But she didn't really play that record last night, did she?  It's as though someone on her team replayed for her the quote from the previous debate where she referred to Israel's "indefensible" 1967 borders.  Borders which, I might add, Israel defended pretty damn well.  

In fact, all of them, Perry included, seemed to have been sat down in front of cameras and made to listen to the asinine and inaccurate statements they'd made in past debates.

Not that there were no inaccuracies.  (I counted at least 14!)  But imho they all, except Cain, had commanding performances.  Bachmann included.

I didn't see commanding in any of them... even Huntsman, who I saw as the outstanding performer, looked 'informed and comfortable' - nobody was anywhere close to commanding.

Ah, I've slept since then, and would have trouble debating you, point-for-point, each of their performances.  We could look up the transcripts, of course, and I suspect in the thread someone will, but not I.  I drifted off during the replay, after having watched most of it two times, with the idea that this was a more interesting debate than any other I've watched.  And Michelle Bachmann, at least to me, came off as fairly well informed, and didn't make any false statements that I could remember at the time I drifted off to sleep.  And that was especially reassuring because the great disappointment, for whom I voted for in the last general election and the one you have unabashedly depicted in your signature, seems to be especially effective in the area of foreign policy, despite his ineffectuality in domestic policy.

But as I said before, my heart still belongs to the Doctor.  So none of it really matters to this "likely Iowa caucus voter."  :)

Allen West is my Congressman down here, and I like him alot, but he is the most pro Israel member of the House; he refers to Israel as his "spiritual homeland", and we should not be at all involved in their affairs, but if I were Israeli, I wouldn't want the 1967 borders. At one point, the width of the country is 9 miles...It makes a tight squeeze. But I agree with you for the most part.

And if I were Mexican, I wouldn't want the 2011 borders.  I'd prefer the 1824 borders.

But I'm not Mexican.  And I'm not Israeli.

I'm a yankee.  And, as such, I prefer that my tax dollars got to my son's school and the local parks.  Not to Netanyahu's bombs and bullets which he points toward Palestinians in retribution for the pebbles and stones and sticks that they throw at his troops.  

I don't disagree with the Paul position on Israel, up to a point. But then he just reverts to type and inserts either "it's none of xxx's business" or "xxxx should get out of the way"... and his foreign aid response told me the guy is nothing but an Ideological brick.

There was a moment, I admit, when he squandered the opportunity to answer Gingerich's criticism of his isolationist policy.  In that moment he appeared brickish.  I'd have done it better, no doubt.  Then again, I'd be the best president ever.  Washington included.  ;)

You probably have touched on a nerve.  Not that I'd ever want to be president.  Or that you would.  Or that either of us would do any better than these eight clowns, or Obama, or Bush, or Clinton, etc., etc., but the fact that we're really attracting such mediocre characters to the debate that even in the heat they can come up with no better answers than any of us can is telling.  In that light I judge them.  Kinda like I judge Socrates (who liked to show up at parties with 12-year-old boys on his arm) in the light of his own times, and Jefferson (who had a yen for semi-dark milk chocolate flavored Sally in his own times), as being, respectively, a decent philosopher and a decent statesman.  I think it's okay to judge people by the standards of their milieu.  I'm not defending the milieu in which we find ourselves, politically.  Certainly I'd agree that it stinks.  But, given it, these guys were pretty damn good.  In a world where 12% of Americans can point to Iraq on a globe even as 53% of them supported its invasion by our troups, these guys are commanding. 

This is my problem with Paul and most of the GOPers... there's a little nugget of reason in there... but they take it to an extreme.

Sure, the US would be better off being "less-interventionist"... but that doesn't mean being isolationist.

But most GOP candidates aren't less interventionist!  Are they?!  They seem to be more so than the general public.  Am I confused?  One of us seems to be.

Sorry, I made a general statement in the first paragraph, but didn't clarify I was only referring to Paul in the second paragraph.

I agree 100%, I dont want to fund Israel at all, I meant that it was not right for President Obama to be dictating what borders they have. I think Israel should do what they want, but when they are attacked in retribution, they should remember that they picked that war with Iran. I should of clarified.

Polnut, we have found the kernel.  

I suspect that most Paul supporters are willing to go out on that limb.  After all, all we have ever known--I'm 44 and all I have ever known, and most Paul supporters on this forum are even more warped than I by virtue of their having even less wisdom--is a world in which the USA must police the world.

We haven't any more the resources, nor the moral authority, to do so.  The world has changed since 1945.  And not always for the worse!  India is certainly better off without the yoke of British oppression.  On the other hand, SudAfrika has certainly fallen by almost every objective measure since its abandomment of Apartheid.  So there, you have one example in which political correctness led to greater economic mobililty, and one example in which political correctness led to less.  

But that's a little afield, I admit.  We were discussing foreign policy vis-a-vis last night's debate.  I say that we give Peace a chance.  In my lifetime, and I assume yours, we've never really done that, have we?  In fact, we haven't really done so in our history.  I'm willing to give it a go.  It's a radically liberal position, I realize, and one that doesn't currently find a home in either of the two major parties.  But, since it also divorces government from the mundane duties of providing housing, clothing, shelter, etc., for each citizen, finds slightly greater acceptance in the GOP than in the DNC, which is a clearinghouse for the nanny-state proclivities of the dispossessed and the holier-than-thou moralists.  

I have no illusions of grandeur.  I've talked to Paul at length, as I have mentioned on this forum before.  He and I agree on maybe 65% of the issues.  (I'm far to his left, as a practical matter, but on foreign policy we're in about as much agreement as two humans can be.)  And all he's suggesting is that we return to our principles in this regard.  All we have beget, with our current policy, is a nation in which we no longer trust our neighbors, a nation in which we must take off our shoes before we even board a plane, a nation in which we actually accept torture as a legitimate means of procuring information, and a nation in which, to quote Gingrich from last night, "our children will be in greater danger..."

I might be paraphrasing, but it caught me offguard.  If you really believe that, Mister Speaker, then don't you think it might be time to ask ourselves "What for?"  I don't see my child's future being brightened by killing five thousand Americans and fifty thousand Iraqis.  So if all you have to offer is "greater danger" for him, then oughtn't we rethink our priorities?

I don't know what I'll do it comes down to Gingerich versus Obama, a Republican that I never liked and I don't like now, versus a Democrat that I supported last time based on his apparently false promises of a post-partisan spirit of co-operation but who has been so intransigent and ineffectual domestically, but I'll tell you this, don't count me as automatic just because I wear a blue shield.

I do know that I don't buy into the notion that just because we have the highest aggregate GDP, and the highest per-capita GDP of all the really large nations, that we have the moral obligation to spend our hard-earned produce and the blood of our sons and daughters remaking the world in our image.  It's a false god.  And I, for one, am glad that at least one candidate in one of the two major parties has the courage and strength of conviction to finally say it.

Out of curiosity, where did you meet him? At rallies? When I go to political events I usually get about 15 seconds of conversation with the candidate.

Steps were/are made so that 9/11 never has a sequel. It does not take an economist to figure out what would happen to the global economy if a major terrorist attack on par with 9/11 were to take place right now. Perhaps there is a smarter, simpler way to prevent the unthinkable, but the Obama and Bush Administrations have done a decent job on this front.

The last time America strongly pursued isolationism, the world ended up with Hitler and Stalin, and Hawaii ended up being bombarded despite our neutrality (so much for being left alone if we just mind our own business). It is something to think about the next time Ron Paul gives one of his diatribes...

I met him twice.  Once at a rally, and there I only got about 15 seconds.  The second time at the January 2008 Black Hawk County caucus.  I spent a good twenty minutes in a one-on-one conversation with him.  I asked him about fiscal policy, monetary policy, and, of course, who he really supports among those who had a shot of winning the nomination.  On the latter question, he impressed me by steadfastly arguing that his own views ought to be preferable to a cross-section of republicans and that he in no way considered himself a second-tier candidate.

I posted pictures at the time.  I'd even bought a new outfit just for that caucus.  Double-breasted olive-green irridescent taffeta jacket.  Burnt-orange silk shirt.  Purple tie.  Very David Letterman.  Or maybe equal parts Letterman and Kramer from Seinfeld.  Anyway, it was fun because I was asking him all these serious questions, and the cult following that surrounded him parted for me, as the Red Sea parted for Moses, when I walked through.  I suppose that I must have sounded like I knew what I was talking about.  (And neckties never hurt.  They add gravity and make one seem important.)