A few more takes on the Republican debate from Republican Internet writers:
—Glenn Reynolds:
Okay, I’m not liveblogging, but all this piling-on toward Fred Thompson is as likely to build him up as to tear him down. Stephen Green comments: “First question: Is Fred Thompson smarter than you guys? Answer: If he’s having a postshow cocktail in Leno’s greenroom, he is.” Similar thoughts here: “They’re spending a tenth of the debate, debating Fred Thompson. Who says that Fred can’t dominate a debate which he doesn’t attend?”
I wouldn’t presume to declare a winner, but my guy Rudy had a very good night, benefitted from his command of the details and gave a heartfelt answer in defending his performance as Mayor during and despite the ugly eruption of his personal life. But the debate covered a lot more ground than just that, for all the participants. I personally thought Hunter and Huckabee both auditioned well for the VP job, although I know some people found some of Huckabee’s answers on the war off-putting.
….Finally, I have to think that Fred [Thompson] was a loser with the people who watched this – unavoidably, perhaps, but we need to get him out there and see what he’s made of in these things. Fred needs less tell and more show. The only candidate who really gave a full preview of his line of attack against Fred was Rudy, who lumped him in with Hillary, Obama and Edwards in lacking executive experience (a distinction that drew a smile from Romney). If nothing else, Rudy’s willingness to throw a punch at a guy who wasn’t even on the stage was vintage Giuliani.
–Stephen Green aka Vodka Pundit did another one of his famous “live blogging” posts of the debate.
–A detailed post by Ed Morrissey. Here are two small parts of it:
The New Hampshire debate has finally ended, and once again, nothing will really resonate past the next couple of days. Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani had a pretty good night. Both of them sounded sharp and handled the tough questioning by Fox. Giuliani gets the edge here in that he really had no bad moments in the debate; he took a couple of potential problem questions and worked them to his advantage, including one about his personal life.
…I’m sorry, but I have to address this absurd notion that Rudy Giuliani talks about New York City too much. Shouldn’t a presidential candidate run on his record? When asked about tax cuts, he replied by noting the taxes he cut in NYC. When asked about each topic, he referred back to the one bloc of solid evidence for each — how he handled the issue as mayor. If some voters find that off-putting, then they’re not terribly serious about vetting candidates in an honest manner and instead want to be force-fed sound bites as pablum.
I watched the Republican debate via Fox News.com and took advantage of the ability to watch it with the so-called People Meter which gave a running response from two focus group’s reactions to the candidates as they spoke by graphically presenting a mean number. There were two lines, one for moderates, one for conservatives.
Putting the candidates aside for a moment, what I saw was that when the message was win in Iraq, it didn’t matter which candidate was saying it – the numbers for both conservatives and moderates went through the roof. And the stronger the talk, the higher the mean number. The only other issues that came close were immigration and taxes – the more talk there was of lower taxes, the higher the meter went. And moderates, as well as conservatives, wanted straight, tough talk on illegal immigration, as well.
He says Giuliani and McCain didn’t do well on Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s People Meter but Romney did but he has some rough edges.
—Tigerhawk also did live blogging but concludes:
OK, one last bit: Frank Luntz’s New Hampshire focus group thought McCain won. I agree, it was a good night for him. According to Luntz’s group, Rudy was the big loser — too much prattling on about his record in New York. Yep, but I still like him.
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.