Debates ideally help move voters to make up their minds but the verdict on the Iowa GOP debate is: the race there remains a free-for-all with Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee continuing to come “out of nowhere” — and seemingly having The Big Mo.
Centrist columnist Walter Shapiro, writing in Salon notes:
Little more than three weeks before the caucuses even a nothing-burger of a debate becomes eventful. Nothing occurred to dethrone the up-from-nowhere Iowa front-runner Mike Huckabee, who is suddenly appearing on more magazine covers (Newsweek, this coming Sunday’s New York Times Magazine) than Nicole Kidman. As veteran Republican consultant Charlie Black, now working for John McCain, put it after the debate, “The biggest thing that happened is that nobody laid a glove on Huckabee.” Even the former Baptist preacher and Arkansas governor seemed surprised by the mild-in-the-streets debate, saying on CNN, “I was kind of anticipating there would be blood on the floor — most of it mine. And fortunately, I came out without a Band-Aid.”
Why was the debate so tame?
Part of it is that instead of having a moderator who steered debate into controversial areas that are on the tip of GOP voters’ tongues, the moderator this time, Shapiro notes, removed two issues that are perhaps a teeny-weenie bit important to many Republican voters (and other Americans):
The self-made candidate from Hope, Ark., did not need a cut man in his corner partly because debate moderator Carolyn Washburn, the editor of the Register, decreed from the outset that there would no questions on immigration (the subject of a new attack ad by Mitt Romney) nor Iraq (a topic that might have underscored Huckabee’s kiddy-pool grasp of foreign policy).
And then there was the other new twist in the debate: the return of a candidate widely-perceived to have as much a chance of making an even-partially-decent showing in the vote as Rush Limbaugh announcing that he will become the new President of MoveOn.org.
Yes, he’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack:
Any possibility of sustained questioning was also undermined by the camera-hogging presence onstage of Alan Keyes, a Republican perennial candidate whose latest accomplishment was losing the 2004 Illinois Senate race to Barack Obama by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.
So an “organic” debate, rising from issues bubbling up from the party’s base due to flames fanned by talk show hosts, pundits and (yes) bloggers, was constrained by the moderator’s ground rules and Keyes’ love of the camera and his own voice.
As Shapiro notes, Huckabee’s biggest danger was from self-inflicted wounds, either new comments that could get him in trouble or older ones made in a different context that take on a sharper edge today.
Meanwhile, the debate was notable for the presence of a might-have-been: actor and former Senator Fred Thompson seemed to finally be getting his political stride…yet another sign that Thompson’s earlier Hamlet imitation in getting into the race didn’t help.
If he had jumped in earlier when there was a clamor, he could have capitalized on the groundswell and also gotten the earlier experience in the earlier debates to move himself out in front. In retrospect, by the time he entered it was too late. Shapiro notes:
Thompson’s breakthrough came when Washburn attempted a moderator’s time-saving gimmick by asking for a show of hands of the candidates who believe that global climate change is real and man-made. Like a political Howard Beale who is mad as hell at cheap debate tricks, Thompson said firmly, “You want a show of hands. I’m not giving it to you.” What seemed to provoke Thompson was not global warming, but the frustration of being constantly required to reduce complex questions to yes-no answers and 30-second sound bites.
The Romney campaign has been arguing for the last two weeks that Huckabee’s rise to the top of the Iowa polls has been partly due to Thompson so woefully underperforming as a candidate. Under this Romney-centric calculus, if Thompson were to make a late surge, it would probably come at the expense of Huckabee. Similarly, Rudy Giuliani — who is battling Romney for supremacy in New Hampshire — cannot help being overjoyed that Huckabee may body slam his nemesis in Iowa. John McCain, who had a flat debate performance Wednesday, could still win the nomination John Kerry-style as the last man standing.
So right now, Huckabee is the one to watch but there are others waiting in the wings. If future debates are similarly constrained in subject matter by moderators who filter out the hot button issues, it could work to his advantage.
And then there is the presence of Alan Keyes…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.