Post Debate Thoughts
Mark Steyn sums up the Republican candidate conundrum of choosing between bad and worse:
Just because McCain can poke Mitt in the eye is no indication he'll be as effective with Putin, a remarkable number of whose enemies wind up splattered on the sidewalk outside their apartment house after opting for a strangely uniform manner of fatal auto-defenestration.
Although, oddly enough, after tonight's debate, I'm tempted to join them.
**********
Rush Limbaugh has decided not to concede.
******
Hugh Hewitt writes:
John McCain won over few if any conservatives tonight, and his display of bad temper and his rambling filibuster of his wrongful "timetables" attack on Romney from last weekend may even have lost him some moderates. In the spin room heads were shaking. McCain was at his worst in the second half of the debate, and those who watched had to ask themselves how this sort of performance would play against a youthful, upbeat Obama with a MSM ready not to protect McCain but tear into him as aging and confused --even obviously deceptive-- about his facts.
**********
I really wanted to see two things tonight. I wanted to see Romney take the fight to McCain and earn the front runner spot. That didn’t happen. Romney came off well but I doubt the fundamentals changed. The other thing I wanted to see was some sign that McCain was ready to be a leader and be a less irritating figure than he has been up to now. That didn’t happen either. His “I led for patriotism, not for profit” line is a slap in the face to business. A slap in the face to business, and from the presumptive nominee of the pro-business party? Who does he think he is? And where does he think his own money came from? It came from his wife’s father, who presumably led for profit, not for patriotism.
His dishonest attack on Romney’s war stance, captured above, just signals that he’s the same old McCain.
I’m now in the position of having come around to like Romney. He’s decent, smart and fair and I think he would make a fine president. And I dislike McCain all over again. He’s a smarmy beltway insider who just lied to everyone who was watching while he smeared a good man, flipped on his own awful legislation and belittled free enterprise. This man wants to lead the party of Reagan?
**********
Kiss of death for Romney?
In a major boost for John McCain, Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney signaled Wednesday he's not ready to commit to a costly campaign in the states holding primaries and caucuses next week.
Several officials said that on the heels of a defeat in Tuesday's Florida primary, Romney's campaign was not attempting to purchase television advertising time in any of the states on the Super Tuesday calendar.
Comments