RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch

The debate was moderated by the Des Moines Register’s editor, Carolyn Washburn, and sponsored by the DMR and Iowa Public Television.

PBS: Watch video of this afternoon’s Republican presidential debate, starting at 8 pm ET.

Full Debate Transcript

I found some live-blogging out there:

AMERICAblog
Libby Spencer / The Newshoggers:
Michelle Malkin
Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic
NY Times’ The Caucus Blog

Alan Keyes is demonstrating why he has not been a welcome participant on the debate stage this year. He bullies the moderator into calling on him and then growls out a long statement, after which no one applauds.

MSNBC First Read

Of course, the loser was the Iowa Republican party; Alan Keyes ruined this debate.

Des Moines Register
Chris Cillizza’s ‘The Fix’

…it seems very unlikely that any minds were changed by what they saw today…not many Iowans likely saw the debate

ABC Political Radar
PoliticalWire - Reactions
CQ Politics - “mosts and bests”
TNR

Remember, the DMR and IPTV will host the Democratic candidates tomorrow.

BONUS: Guessing Who Gets the Endorsement of the Des Moines Register

You can watch it on CNN.com.

LIVE-BLOGGING:

CNN Political Ticker

Caucus Blog of the New York Times

MSNBC First Read

Michelle Malkin

AMERICAblog:

Okay, it’s finally over. I’d say this was Mike Huckabee’s night. He gave great answers, held his own against the big dogs. Romney looked pathetic and often uncertain. He’s clearly not good when he’s not scripted. McCain had some moments, but overall just doesn’t have it. Rudy was just too much of a smarty pants. This was a raucous gathering and they’re all getting ugly with each other. Have at it.

Pam’s House Blend

Shakesville

Fred File

ABC Political Radar

Wrapping thoughts…. You could make an argument for lots of different winners: Romney, Giuliani, and McCain all had strong moments. But the biggest night belonged to Mike Huckabee. At a moment when many voters are just tuning in, and hearing about this Huckabee guy, he turned in a really strong performance, showing flashes of humor, and defusing tough questions. I thought going in that he would have a rough evening, but he really soared.

Post-Debate First-Thoughts from Chris Cillizza of The Fix

Our quick read: Giuliani and Romney largely cancelled one another out; each had strong moments but also stumbled at times. Huckabee was clearly on his game tonight although he disappeared a bit in the second half of the debate when the focus turned from domestic policy to foreign policy. McCain, on the other hand, shone on foreign policy matters — from his strident defense of the war in Iraq to his personal abhorrence of water boarding — but struggled to find common ground with the base on immigration.

New York Times: G.O.P. Rivals Exchange Jabs in Testy Debate

SLDN (Servicemembers Legal Defense Network) Press Release about retired (and now openly gay) General Keith Kerr’s ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ question. BTW, I don’t CARE that Gen. Kerr may have campaigned for John Kerry in 2004 and may be campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2008 - it’s totally irrelevant to his question.

Andrew Sullivan comments on the candidates’ answers to Gen. Kerr’s DADT question.

NPR: A Look at How the Candidates Handled the Debate

UPDATED 1:20 am MST: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3855133 ABC has uploaded the ad to its site. It’s a bit washed out, but it is all there.

Tom Tancredo’s campaign ad is designed to be “shocking,”and it has legs, though the candidate might not….

We in his home state, Colorado, are not supposed to see Representative Tom Tancredo’s ad. Neither are you. Unless you live in Iowa.

But Representative Tancredo is hoping his ‘shock’ ad will generate free publicity, so you might see it anyway. He’s hoping that media will carry it for free as ‘news.’ They likely will, actually have already, but perhaps not the way Rep. Tancredo imagined.

Terry Jessup from KCNC CBS4 affiliate in Denver reported on his conversation with Tancredo today.

Congressman Tancredo, “… told me he has to do well in Iowa or money will dry up and he’ll have to drop out of presidential race. He says the controversial new ad will definitely get him noticed.”

The ad comes at a time when Representative Tancredo’s numbers are flagging and his donations are way down. The ad is meant to provoke and inspire lots of media coverage so that the ad will infiltrate people’s living rooms over and over again… and then hopefully money will roll in again. The ad was designed to make big ad buys.

He may get bloggers, but some think he might also, without meaning to, get YouTube. From distant thunder I hear, there are parodies of his ad already in the works.

Think of the AppleHillary ad. Think of the original ad from which Tancredo’s ad appears to draw its oeuvre…1964 Lyndon Johnson anti-Goldwater ad (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKs-bTL-pRg) showing a child counting daisy petals, then stop-motion zooming into her eye… where a mushroom cloud forms. Lyndon’s voice-over implying, Elmer Gantry style, that all of God’s children are going to die if Goldwater, ‘nuclear war monger,’ is elected.

Add ‘Eau de SNL’ to all this, and there may be a YouTube Festival revolving around scary ads… although have you seen the content in horror and disaster films teenagers not only sit through in cinema without blanching once, but also laugh over?

Tancredo goes on to say the ad is meant to make people uncomfortable… the ad shows the imaginary blowing up of a family shopping center by a terrorist. Tancredo says: “There is nothing, absolutely nothing that says this can’t happen in the United States.”

Tancredo commented about his ad depicting a seeming young person in a hoodie with backpack blowing families to Kingdom Come: “I thought it (the final ad) was a little tame. When I explained what I wanted, um and they came back with this after two or three different iterations of it, um I finally accepted it, but ( Tancredo laughs here) what I had in mind, was um a little more dramatic than this.”

Tancredo’s ad opens with him standing in a light-toned, patterned-fabric suit, next to large American flag on left screen. There’s a wall of Reader’s Digest looking “Great Books Club” hardbacks in red. green and dark yellow in the bookcase behind him. Representative Tancredo says: “Hi, I’m Tom Tancredo, and I approve this message… because someone needs to say it.”

Then an announcer comes on: a fellow sounding a lot like the man who used to do all the spooky movie preview ads, one who could just be saying, “I think I’ll go do the dishes”– and make it sound like Rodan, clawing for blood of the firstborn, has just landed again. The opening carries the sound of a heart beating hard in the background. This under-sound sort of goes into an arrhythmia in the middle of the ad, and then quits halfway through the word ‘politicians,’ near the end, an odd symbolic place to stop.

The announcer says (verbatim transcript I took down from TV ad):

“There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who’ve come to take our jobs. Islamic terrorists are now free to roam US soil. Jihadists who are fraught with hate, free to do here as they’ve done in London, in Spain, and Russia

“… the price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill.” 

Aside from 2 serious errors in the root logic of the ad, one of which infers that if our Southern and Northern Borders were closed tight like a vacuum-sealed coffee jar, it would prevent terrorism… it wouldn’t. The 9-11 terrorists were all here legally, had come right through government daylight channels.

The second wobbly inference in the ad, that others come illegally to take ‘our jobs’… it’s hard to imagine that the souls who scale the fence are also carrying a DayTimer and know how to run Vista (We can hardly run Vista ourselves, come on)….

but, setting aside those underlying assumptions in the ad…
The visual is a seeming young male, ‘Hoodie man,’ with backpack. Pan shopping center. Pan leg of child running in shopping center. And etc. Finally, legs of Hoodie man shown as he leaves his back pack on the floor. Bloodied child being carried. (Picture of actual child from Russia) Then, Read the rest of this entry »