I watched roughly the second half of the debate – the US Open final between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal was far too good to waste on GOP candidates. Overall, I think Rick Perry had a bad night. He seemed uncertain and halting on a lot of answers; he took obvious heat and didn’t defend well on his (correct) position on in-state tuition at Texas schools for certain illegal immigrants; and he got the worst of exchanges with Michele Bachmann over his mandating HPV vaccine for girls in Texas, and with Mitt Romney on Social Security. UPDATE: Also, the fact-checker guy on CNN just rated Rick Perry’s claim that the stimulus “created zero jobs” as “flat-out false,” and I suspect there’s more of that coming.
Bachmann, on the other hand, did quite well. She was forceful and clear (on the occasions when the got to speak – Wolf Blitzer seemed more interested in hearing from Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum than from her, which strikes me as odd).
Overall, I agree with the assessment that Think Progress tweeted earlier: the winners were Bachmann and Romney; the loser was Perry. But whether it was enough to affect the polling is hard to say. We’ll know soon.
JimC says
The 2008 field was funnier.
kirth says
The big losers were those Tea Party Express audience members, who, when Blitzer asked Ron Paul if an uninsured sick person should be allowed to die, shouted “YES!” before Paul could answer.
brudolf says
The loser should have been Perry, based on substance. But the audience wasn’t interested in substance. Perry won his biggest cheers when he delivered his most vacuous, nonsensical lines. Apparently the Tea Party is looking for a style more than particular policies, and the Texas ten-gallon-hat-full-of-b.s. style is what they like.
David says
that he won the “audience favorite” award. Did you hear them boo him on immigration, and cheer Bachmann when she went after him on the HPV vaccine? It was just a bad night all around for Perry.
kbusch says
Unlike subsequent Republican conventions whose prime time speakers have been as non-white and as moderate as possible, the 1992 Republican convention did not hide its theocrats under a bushel. And things did not turn out so well for them that year.
Perhaps ghoulish Republican audiences eager for sick people to die for their Galt god can have a similarly tonic effect on the voting public.
scout says
…was better in the first half. He came out ahead (with the repub audience) in the back and forth about Social Security in the first 15 minutes.