Debate Debriefing

Jan 20, 2012 by Greg Conterio

I always like to look through a cross-section of the conservative punditry after debates, speeches, and other noteworthy political events, just to get a sense of how other folks saw things.  It’s always an interesting exercise, but today I was struck by how closely Scott Johnson over at Powerlineblog.com matched-up with my own thoughts in A Baker’s Dozen Observations.

One point on which I differed with Johnson is on his perception of Gingrich’s hammering of debate moderator John King right out of the gate last night.  Consider this for a moment:  Marianne Gingrich’s interview, which was the substance of King’s opening question to Newt, does not cover any new ground.  Even the “open marriage” accusation, which was really just a media paraphrase of Marianne, had been dealt with previously.  The substance of the interview, and all the media attention surrounding it is the bitter ranting of an obviously vengeful former spouse, and a not especially sympathetic one at that.  Remember, Marianne is the one who had an affair with Newt when he was married to his first wife.  In other words, there is no substance here.  This is the sort of story you’d read in the supermarket tabloids about an ugly celebrity divorce, and one that happened more than ten years ago at that!  Divorces are ugly, painful events.  It’s one thing for ABC News to rip the scab off of this one, but I have to say, I share Newt’s astonishment that John King led-off the debate by bringing it up last night.  What possible gain was there, other than to attempt to smear a Republican candidate, a goal CNN is often accused of sharing with other major liberal news outlets?  People who already don’t like Newt will view his smack-down of King as self-serving, or even demagogic, as Scott Johnson says, but those folks aren’t likely to change their opinions anyway.  I think the rest of us saw it as a transparent attempt to slime another conservative candidate, and Gingrich did us all a service by putting King in his place.

Apart from that, I thought Johnson’s perceptions were remarkably like my own, including the edge of desperation I detected from Santorum.  I’m anxiously looking forward to Saturday’s South Carolina primary.

This leads me to a very interesting conversation I had with Christopher Cook yesterday.  It started off as a deceptively simple question: setting-aside my preferences, who did I really think is the most electable?  Realistically, the race is between Gingrich and Romney.  Paul may have tapped-into a vein of voter angst, but he’s never been a serious candidate, and unless by some miracle Santorum comes in first or second in South Carolina, I expect him to be out in a week or so.  (Last time I looked, he was running fourth in the polls.)  Honestly, I think either Gingrich or Romney would make a good president, and as I’ve said before, everyone on our side of the fence should be pretty enthusiastic about the possibility of replacing Obama with either one of them.  But they both have a boatload of baggage.

Romney of course has the specter of Romneycare which he still vigorously defends.  In an election in which a very central issue will be Obamacare, and the public’s intense dislike of it, it will be hard for Romney, whose signature accomplishment as governor was a plan that served as it’s model, to pose as a real alternative.  I think Romneycare alone is a very big reason why Mitt has had so much trouble really building support.  Then there is the Mormon issue.  There is no shortage of fundamentalist Christian-sorts who despise the Mormon church, and insist it’s a cult.  You can bet Obama’s surrogates and the media will be working overtime to use this as a wedge to separate Christian voters from Mitt.  There is also Bain Capital, which our Socialist president will relentlessly attack as an example of the excesses of capitalism.

Then there’s Gingrich, whose baggage is of a much more personal nature.  While there is not likely to be anything new popping out of his skeleton closet, you can count on his opponents continuing to focus as much attention on the old stuff as possible.  Two affairs, two very ugly divorces.  A lot of Newt’s public baggage is of a much more subjective, political nature.  For example, how many people know he was exonerated on the ethics charges that many still like to talk about today?  The perception still remains though.  More troubling is his famous egotism and bombastic streak.  I have always thought it’s blown out of proportion, but when he gets riled-up, sometimes you just don’t know what he’s going to say.

The truth is, I don’t know who is the most “electable.”  Actually, I think we spend too much time either wringing our hands over “electability” or using it as a cheap attack on a viable candidate we don’t happen to like.  “Sure, candidate “A” is nice and all, but they’re unelectable.”  How many times have we heard that over the past year?  Sure, in some cases it’s true.  (*cough*-Ron Paul.)  But for most of our other mainstream candidates, it’s nonsense.  I don’t think either Gingrich or Romney is “unelectable.”  They both have some serious baggage, but so does their opponent.  Unless something really dramatic happens, chances are excellent that either Romney or Gingrich will be facing Obama this fall, and I think it’s time to shift from looking at their negatives to focusing on their positives.

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Tags

• cnn
• debate moderator
• gingrich
• john king
• liberal news
• newt
• open marriage
• republican candidate
• Romney

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