Sunday, January 06, 2008

Romney & McCain in Fine Form   [Rich Lowry]

Romney. Politics is a game of adjustments, and Romney adjusted to the debate from last night, realizing that he'd be under constant attack tonight and he'd better gird himself and go on offense. He spoke forcefully and put the case for himself as the reformist businessman in the best possible light. I think he basically dominated the first hour, and fell off a tad after that, but otherwise was truly excellent. His best performance yet, in very high pressure circumstances. His answers on taxes, job creation, and immigration were top notch. My quibbles: he still is going to have to have a convincing gut-level response to the insincerity/flip-flop charges at some point; he should ditch the (attempted) hair joke; and he can seem over-eager at times. But if he somehow wins NH, tonight will be a big reason why.

McCain. He toned down his scorn for Romney, which was smart, although you could still see it in his body language. He effectively rebutted Romney's charge that he's been an ineffective reformer, and highlighted his support for the surge and his foreign policy experience (and experience in general) pretty powerfully. That argument hasn't worked for Hillary in the Democratic primary, but McCain isn't running against Barack Obama. He has to be basically dishonest and/or non-responsive on immigration and taxes, but it’s hard for him to do otherwise given the politics in a GOP primary. He closed strongly with a direct appeal to New Hampshire. Overall: confident and sure-footed.

Huckabee. Always a good talker, but felt a little whiny in his confrontations with Romney and was very evasive at times. Romney hit him with two of the questions with which he is most uncomfortable (on his tax record and immigration plan). His foreign policy answer was weak. Overall: didn’t quite measure up to the other big guys.

Thompson. Enjoyable, grumpy, conservative, and smart. But very low energy. If these substantive sitting-down debates were all there were to campaigning, Fred would be in much, much better shape.

Giuliani. He seems very marginal at the moment. The political world has changed from six months ago, but it feels as though he doesn’t quite realize it, or know how to adjust to it.    

01/06 10:55 PMShare