My analysis of the Republican debate--Part One

Well, as promised, here is my analysis of the Republican debate from Thursday night. MSNBC has got the full coverage of the GOP debate, as well as the video. The transcript for the Republican debate can be found here. The candidates for the Republican debate are:

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.
Former Gov. James Gilmore, R-Va.
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, R-N.Y.C.
Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R- Ark.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas
Former Gov. Mitt Romney, R- Mass
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Col.
Former Gov. Tommy Thompson, R-Wis.

So let's get into the debate here.

Mitt Romney: I will have to admit, Romney appeared the most presidential here in this debate. He was calm, sophisticated, and answered his questions rather smoothly. That doesn't mean I'm going to vote for Romney. Romney was very smooth in evading direct answers to the questions here. For one example, when moderator Chris Matthews asked Romney as to whether the president should listen to the public opinion polls showing that 55 percent of Americans believe that the war in Iraq was lost, Romney completely turns the question around by claiming that the American public doesn't want a president who simply listens to the polls, providing President Reagan as the example of a president who leads by strength, and not by the polls. What I find rather ironic here about Romney's answer is that I don't think Reagan's job performance had ever dropped as low as the 30-35 percent approval rating that George W. Bush is stuck at. Romney also totally refused to answer the question about what he most dislikes about America, claiming that he totally loves America, and the American optimism, and thank God for Ronald Reagan. Mitt Romney looked good on TV in answering his questions--he was not as bumbling as Rudy Giuliani, or as belligerent as John McCain, the two other front-runners. You've got to look good on TV if you want to become president. And Mitt Romney looked good on TV.

But there is a big liability with Romney, and that is his Mormon religion. I'm not saying that Romney should not become president because he is a Mormon here. But I will say that Romney's Mormon faith is still a major concern with the evangelicals and the Religious Right. Remember, George W. Bush was the strong evangelical president that the Religious Right has been seeking for almost three decades. The Religious Right is perhaps one, or even better yet, two Supreme Court justices away from overturning Roe v. Wade. They know that if they can get one of their own into the White House in 2008, they could achieve their goal of overturning abortion. The problem with the evangelicals here is that the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the nation's largest Protestant group, considers Mormonism as a cult. If Romney is to win the presidency, he is going to have to court the Southern Baptists and other evangelicals within the Deep South and Bible Belt. But the evangelicals are not overtly thrilled by this current crop of presidential candidates. They want another Republican president like George W. Bush, who listened and pushed their religious and social agenda on the country. It is one of the reasons the candidates are pushing the social issues of abortion, evolution, family values, faith, and even wrapping themselves up in Reagan's Morning in America in this debate--they are all furiously courting the evangelical vote here. I will also say that it is rather ironic that both former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich poll ahead of Mitt Romney in the various political polls. So there is a sizable chunk of the Republican electorate that still does not like the current crop of candidates, and this is going to be a problem for Romney.

Rudy Giuliani: Looking at Rudy Giuliani's performance in the GOP debates, the one thing that struck me was that Giuliani seemed like a bumbler and somewhat befuddled as to why he was there. He was not a particularly strong or forceful speaker in this debate. There was almost no emotion within his answers--McCain, Brownback, Huckabee, Romney, and Hunter provided more emotion and spirit within their answers than Giuliani. He never really looked into the TV camera when he responded to the questions. That may be because of where Giuliani's podium position was in comparison to Matthew's podium, and the position of the TV cameras at the debate. But the other candidates seemed to look around the stage, at the studio audience, and into the TV cameras and the American audience watching them. It was an interesting comparison in watching the debate style between senators and governors here, and our 9/11-rock-star-mayor. In a comparison to the debating styles between Giuliani and McCain, McCain seemed to do better than Giuliani.

Giuliani also had a huge problem with the abortion issue here. We've got a Republican Party where the social issues are controlled by the Religious Right. The Religious Right want the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe verses Wade, and ultimately make abortion illegal. The next 2008 GOP president will have that chance to achieve the Religious Right's dream here. When Matthews asked the simple yes-or-no question of the repeal of Roe v. Wade would be good for the country, nine of the candidates agreed with the statement. Giuliani thought it would be okay to repeal Roe v. Wade, but then backtracks in saying that the courts will have to make the decision. There is a subtle hint here that Giuliani doesn't really care about abortion one way or the other--it is not the president's decision here. Giuliani then backtracks again, saying that he hates abortions, he supports the Hyde Amendment, and that the states should make their own decision on abortion. Finally Matthews gets a somewhat straight answer from Giuliani regarding his personal views on abortion, where Giuliani claims that abortion is "is an issue of conscience, I would respect a woman's right to make a different choice." Giuliani is trying to play both sides here. He is trying to convey to the Religious Right that he hates abortions, supports the ban on partial-birth abortions, and would think it is "okay" for the repeal of Roe v. Wade. But at the same time, Giuliani is also trying to tell the moderates that he respects the woman's right to choose, even though he himself hates abortions. This is not a nuanced position here--this is a total contradiction. What makes it an even more contradiction is that Giuliani is trying to position himself as a somewhat pro-choice presidential candidate in a Republican Party that wants to outlaw abortions, and will probably achieve that goal of outlawing abortions if they capture the White House in 2008.

Another problem that I have with Giuliani is that he really has no plan for dealing with either the war in Iraq, or the war on terror. McCain supports the Bush troop surge, and will probably escalate the war if he becomes president. And I will admit that Mitt Romney doesn't really have a plan regarding the war in Iraq, with the exception of maintaining the Bush status quo for the moment. But Giuliani is staking his presidential claim on the fact that he was the mayor of New York on September 11th terrorist attacks, and that his experience as mayor during the World Trade Center terrorist attacks makes him qualified to run for president of the United States. And yet, the most important issue that the 2008 presidential candidate will have to grapple with is the Iraq war. Giuliani has no clue as to how to resolve the war in Iraq. Even more, Giuliani also supports the U.S. going to war with Iran, just as the other candidates were advocating (with the possible exception of Ron Paul). For a former mayor of New York City, who was on the job during the 9/11 attacks and is using his position as mayor during the 9/11 attacks as justification for his election as president, I find Giuliani's contradiction here both interesting and rather disturbing. Why should I vote for Giuliani as president if the only justification he has is that he was the mayor of New York during September 11th terror attacks? There are GOP congressmen here who are probably more knowledgeable about defense and terrorism than Giuliani is--McCain, Hunter, Brownback, Tancredo, and Paul have all had to deal with issues of defense and terrorism within Congress. What makes Giuliani's experience as mayor of New York during the 9/11 attacks of greater value than that of the GOP senators and House reps who are also running? Giuliani never answered that question.

John McCain: John McCain has a bit of a problem. His campaign is ensnared in a number of embarrassing scandals, with McCain singing his "Bomb Iran" song, his claim that Americans can walk safely through Baghdad, and then trying to support his claim by taking a leisurely stroll through a Baghdad marketplace with about half the U.S. Army protecting him. And let's not forget the shake-up in the McCain campaign, where McCain fired his finance director, after the McCain campaign came in a lackluster third place on the fundraising figures, behind both Romney and Giuliani. The McCain Straight Talk Express has been badly misfiring. So John McCain had to put in a strong performance in this debate.

My question here is does belligerence equate to a strong performance?

The first question that moderator Chris Matthews posed to McCain was what would McCain need, as commander in chief, in order to win the Iraq war? McCain's answer was that he needed the support of the American people in order to show them some success in Iraq, and that the U.S. was winning the war in Iraq. McCain was reiterating the same, tired, old, Bush administration argument that the U.S. was winning the war in Iraq, but with the rather strange twist in claiming that he needed the American people's support for him to continue the war in Iraq, even though the American people have shown that they do not support President Bush's war in Iraq, and want a withdrawal timetable. In a strange sense, McCain is demanding that the American people support his policies on Iraq, which have essentially been the same as the Bush administration policies. Of course, McCain takes some potshots at the Democrats, saying that the Democrats want to lose the war, and if we withdrawal from Iraq, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the terrorists will attack the U.S. at home. McCain was the first to admit that there mistakes made in the war on Iraq, but he doesn't specifically fault the Bush administration with making those mistakes. Listening to McCain's comments on Iraq, it struck me that the same words could come out of President Bush's mouth, and there would be no difference.

But McCain's comments on Iran were far different. From YouTube:



McCain is practically advocating a war with Iran--even though we are currently stuck in a losing war in Iraq. McCain claims that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, building nukes, exporting IEDs, jihadists, and suicide bombers to Iraq, and encouraging Hezbollah to attack Israel. McCain brings up the big fear of an Islamic nation, such as Iran, possessing nuclear weapons. McCain feels that an Iranian nuclear bomb can not be tolerated. Excuse me Senator, but I do know of another Islamic nation that also possesses nuclear weapons--that nation is called Pakistan? Now we know that Pakistan is ruled by a military dictatorship under General Pervez Musharraf, and that Pakistan is an ally in the Great War on Terror, but there is still the danger that Musharraf could be overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists, thus bringing the Pakistani nukes into those fundamentalists, and possibly in the hands of terror organizations. Did you know this Senator?

McCain's whole debate was about the Iraq war, or the war on terrorism. Even the issues of tax cuts, pork spending, the ID card, McCain tried to link them back to the Iraq war, and then link the Iraq war with 9/11 and the Great War on Terror. Of course, McCain couldn't think of any Democrat that he said he would appoint to a cabinet post, aside for Joe Lieberman--and Matthews specifically excluded Lieberman on this question. So McCain's answers to the debate questions had a stale quality of war, war, war, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, and a couple of September 11ths.

This is my analysis of the top three front runners. I'll get into the rest of the GOP candidates in my next posting.