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Anyone watch this last night? A couple of observations:
1. The candidates were asked to create a "YouTube-style" campaign video to be shown during the debate. All of the candidates, with the exception of Guiliani, completely mailed this in. His was quirky and clever, including a self-deprecating claim that he was responsible for the decreased snowfall in NYC during his tenure as mayor. The rest of them were just traditional campaign videos that had a progress bar running beneath them.
2. I understand why Mike Huckabee is gaining in the polls amongst conservatives. Trying to be totally objective, I thought he had the best debate performance. That's not to say that I would vote for him, but from the outside looking in, he seemed thoughtful, knowledgeable, caring and conservative. He had a few zingers, too.
3. I thought Romney was terrible. Some of his responses were good, and some were bad, but the ones that were bad were really, really bad. His non-answer on waterboarding was a clear dodge and would have pleased no one, regardless of whether or not they approve of the practice. From my standpoint, I thought McCain made him look ridiculous on that point, but I can't imagine that Romney supporters felt good about his clear waffling. Other responses looked over-rehearsed.
4. There has been much talk about the fact that one of the questioners -- a retired Brig. general who is openly gay -- is a Clinton supporter. There have also been stories about some of the other questioners being Edwards or Obama supporters. Check those out here. The suggestion is that this is somehow CNN's fault. OK, perhaps they shouldn't have actually brought someone there, in person, to ask a question without making sure that they weren't linked to a particular campaign, but Anderson Cooper was explicit at the outset of the debate that questions were going to be asked by people from all over the spectrum, and he specifically indicated that some questions would be coming from Democrats. Why is a question less worthy of being asked because it comes from someone on the other side of the spectrum? Tempest in a teapot, IMO.
5. Why are Tancredo and Hunter still allowed to attend these things? We're at the point where it's just a waste of time that could be given to legitimate candidates.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
1. The candidates were asked to create a "YouTube-style" campaign video to be shown during the debate. All of the candidates, with the exception of Guiliani, completely mailed this in. His was quirky and clever, including a self-deprecating claim that he was responsible for the decreased snowfall in NYC during his tenure as mayor. The rest of them were just traditional campaign videos that had a progress bar running beneath them.
2. I understand why Mike Huckabee is gaining in the polls amongst conservatives. Trying to be totally objective, I thought he had the best debate performance. That's not to say that I would vote for him, but from the outside looking in, he seemed thoughtful, knowledgeable, caring and conservative. He had a few zingers, too.
3. I thought Romney was terrible. Some of his responses were good, and some were bad, but the ones that were bad were really, really bad. His non-answer on waterboarding was a clear dodge and would have pleased no one, regardless of whether or not they approve of the practice. From my standpoint, I thought McCain made him look ridiculous on that point, but I can't imagine that Romney supporters felt good about his clear waffling. Other responses looked over-rehearsed.
4. There has been much talk about the fact that one of the questioners -- a retired Brig. general who is openly gay -- is a Clinton supporter. There have also been stories about some of the other questioners being Edwards or Obama supporters. Check those out here. The suggestion is that this is somehow CNN's fault. OK, perhaps they shouldn't have actually brought someone there, in person, to ask a question without making sure that they weren't linked to a particular campaign, but Anderson Cooper was explicit at the outset of the debate that questions were going to be asked by people from all over the spectrum, and he specifically indicated that some questions would be coming from Democrats. Why is a question less worthy of being asked because it comes from someone on the other side of the spectrum? Tempest in a teapot, IMO.
5. Why are Tancredo and Hunter still allowed to attend these things? We're at the point where it's just a waste of time that could be given to legitimate candidates.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
Definitely, but these YouTube debates are actually a lot more interesting than the garden-variety debates. I was curious to see how the republican field would handle the looser, more free-wheeling format...
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