My thoughts on the second GOP debate(s)

CNN hosted two Republican debates at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library last night.  Like the Fox News debate held in Cleveland last month this was meant to be considered one debate broken up into two rounds, but when you have a completely different set of people on the stage for each round it effectively becomes two debates.

I guess you could say that Bobby Jindal won the 6 PM debate, but the whole thing felt like a waste of time to me.  Jindal tried to strike a balance between speaking to the base much in the same way that Ted Cruz does while still being willing to denounce Donald Trump, Rick Santorum's foreign policy chops were overshadowed by his sanctimony and his naked appeals to economically illiterate Trump voters, Lindsey Graham stuck to his usual shtick of trying to be some strange General Patton/Andy Griffith hybrid, and George Pataki was just sort of there (I honestly can't remember a single word he said).

Every candidate in the 8 PM debate had at least one good moment but Carly Fiorina was the candidate that really stood out as the winner.  She's someone who not only does her homework but is very good at thinking on her feet, and it showed last night.  No matter what question was asked she always seemed to find a way to turn her answer into a blistering attack, but she never once resorted to the sort of third-grade insults used by Trump.

Marco Rubio did well for himself too, but not quite as well as he did in the Fox debate, I think.  He knows his stuff, and he's very good at explaining things without it sounding like he's giving a speech, but last night he just didn't get in the kind of broadsides that we saw from Fiorina.  (I also could've done without his lame water bottle joke, but that's a minor complaint.)

I don't know if he'll be punished in the polls for it or not but Donald Trump's performance in last night's debate was pretty terrible, even for him.  Sure, he did have a few moments where he seemed almost human, but mostly he stuck to non sequiturs and random insults, or blatant lies about his previous random insults; and for some strange reason he still seems utterly determined to remain as uninformed on matters of foreign policy as he possibly can.

For the most part Ben Carson seemed much more comfortable giving more specific answers in this debate than he did at the Fox debate, but he still seems out of his depth on foreign policy and at times even dangerously naive.  At one point he seemed to suggest that President Bush should have used "the bully pulpit" to do some unspecified thing instead of invading Afghanistan after 9/11--not the kind of answer serious people want to hear from a potential Commander in Chief.

Chris Christie came off as a serious guy for most of the night, as he did in the Fox debate, but at other times he seemed like he was trying too hard to act like he was the only adult in the room and I found it a bit off-putting.  If you want to be seen as Mr. Serious you can't be overbearing about it.  I do have a lot of problems with him as a candidate but I haven't written him off yet.

We know who John Kasich is now so he no longer has the benefit of low expectation, and he no longer has his adoring fans from Ohio in the audience to cheer him on.  He pretty much fell flat last night.  I find Kasich a bit tedious at this point, frankly.  He kept interrupting everyone else on the stage but never seemed to have much of anything to say.  Also, his explanation of why he wants to keep the Iran deal in place was so dumb that it made my head hurt.

I like that Scott Walker pushed back a little bit on how all the questions were about Trump, but ultimately it didn't change anything.  The dumb questions just kept coming and coming.  I like Walker, but his campaign has been an absolute mess so far and he's just too subdued in these debates.

Rand Paul was much less aggressive here than he was in the Fox debate; he had a chance to get into a big fight with Trump while defending Carly Fiorina but he gave up and just rolled his eyes instead.  Other than that minor skirmish, the only things I can even remember hearing from him last night was more of the usual anti-war stuff and pro-marijuana stuff.

Ted Cruz still sounds way too rehearsed to me, and way too focused on speaking only to the base.  I don't know why he has a reputation for being such a great debater.   And of course he didn't say one bad word about Trump, as usual.  He seems to think that if he keeps playing footsie with Trump that he'll just somehow magically end up with all of Trump's supporters.

Jeb Bush was just as uninspiring in this debate as he was in the Fox debate.  Well, he did have one good line where he defended his brother by saying that he kept us safe, but that was it.  I just don't think Jeb has it in him to show us that he's anything other than Mr. Establishment.  He doesn't even really have the perception that he's the default not-Trump guy going for him anymore.

Huckabee was Huckabee.  He had a few good lines but mostly he was just there taking up space.  I still can't believe he gave up a television show for this.

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My thoughts on the first GOP debate(s)

Well, it looks like it's debate season again.  Fox News hosted two Republican debates in Cleveland, Ohio last night.  Technically, it was supposed to be considered one debate, but it was broken up into two parts, with the second-tier candidates debating at 5 PM and the main debate happening at 9 PM.

I was disappointed that Rick Perry (who IMHO actually has the best record to run on) wasn't included in the primetime debate, but I thought the more easygoing pace of the less crowded 5 PM debate served him well; whether Perry can do well enough in a debate to stop the grumbling of people still sore at him for his lackluster 2012 debate performance remains to be seen.

The consensus seems to be that Carly Fiorina was the winner of the 5 PM debate; Perry practically endorsed her himself in the middle of his answer to a question about Iran.  Fiorina has a lot of great moments but my favorite was the shot she took at Trump--the kind of shot that Perry should've taken but didn't.  I only wish I could've seen the look on Trump's face when she did it.

Bobby Jindal may look good on paper to a lot of people, but I don't think he's a very good at talking about his record; he keeps switching back and forth between speaking too fast and trying not to sound like he's speaking too fast, and it sometimes makes it hard to follow what he's saying.

George Pataki, Rick Santorum, and Lindsey Graham all left me cold; none of these three really felt to me like they even belonged there.  I don't remember much of what Jim Gilmore said, but I don't remember actively disliking him or feeling like he was somehow out of place.

I'm not sure if there was a clear winner of the primetime debate, but the biggest loser was definitely Donald Trump.  Right off the bat he refused to pledge not to run as a third party candidate if someone else won the GOP nomination.  Later in the debate Trump hurt himself again by giving a strange answer to a question about single payer healthcare in which he praised the healthcare systems in Canada and Scotland, said some stuff about buying insurance across state lines here in the US, and seemed careful to not entirely rule out wanting single payer as part of a replacement for Obamacare.  All throughout the debate most of Trump's answers were really not much better than word salad, and often he would be given an extra thirty seconds to clarify his garbled answers.  (And of course after the debate was over he blamed Fox News for his pathetic performance because nothing is ever his fault.)

Marco Rubio seemed to make the best use of his time overall and had a very strong close; I tend to prefer executive experience in a candidate, but I have to admit he's very good at speaking without sounding like he's speechifying.  (There will always be those who write Rubio off as an amnesty shill, but even Donald Trump for all his ranting and raving about border security always manages to leave the door open to some sort of amnesty whenever directly asked about it.)

Jeb Bush went into this debate being known by most people as the Establishment guy or the default not-Trump pick, and I don't think he really did much to convince people that he was anything more than those things.  I didn't find him very inspiring and not much of anything he said really stuck with me after the debate was over.  There was an awkward moment where he declined to take credit for calling Trump an asshole, and then Trump called him a gentleman afterward, which probably made a few heads explode on both sides.

Ted Cruz has a reputation for being an excellent debater but he sounded a bit too rehearsed to me, and most of his answers felt like little speeches. He also has a tendency to sound like he's speaking only to the base even when he's trying not to, which could be a problem for him in the general election if he ever manages to win the nomination.

Rand Paul tried to stand out by getting into a few shouting matches but his shrill voice always makes him sound like he's desperately flailing even when he actually has the better argument.  I don't think he did himself any favors.

Ben Carson did a good job of using humor to try to connect with people, but he didn't really offer any substance along with that humor; his answers tended to meander all over the place without ever finding any specifics.  He's put more thought into his positions than Trump, I'll give him that, but that's not saying much.  Someone who's only running for president because he made Obama uncomfortable for a few minutes at a prayer breakfast really needs to do better than this.

Mike Huckabee is also very good at using humor but I don't think people will ever get over the fact that he's Mike Huckabee.  His record as governor is not a good one, so he only gets so much benefit from saying he has executive experience.  The show he had on Fox may give him a base of support but most people will always think of him as Rick Santorum with a bass guitar and a better sense of humor.

Chris Christie did well for himself.  He had a skirmish with Rand Paul that fans of Paul probably won't forgive him for, but for the most part Christie came across as a serious guy.  I'm still skeptical that someone from a blue state with his temperament and tendency to lash out at his own party can win the nomination.

Scott Walker didn't really stand out, but he didn't make any blunders either.  If he made a mistake at all it was in playing it too safe; it seemed like his answers were shorter than they needed to be at times.  He's really not known as a foreign policy guy but one of his best moments came when he quoted Ronald Reagan while talking about Vladimir Putin.

John Kasich got a lot of praise for doing better than people expected, but that was only because the audience was filled with Ohioans cheering him on and our expectations were so low.  Next time will be a lot harder for him to get that kind of praise, I think, and it will be tough for him to escape being thought of as a more genial version of Jon Huntsman.

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