After watching tonight's GOP debate, I have to say that most of the candidates performed extremely well. Here are my observations:
1) Mitt Romney -- Romney seemed like the clear winner tonight. He never got rattled no matter how hard he was attacked. His answers seemed clear and specific. He got the chance to explain himself on Romneycare, and I thought he did a better job than he had previously. Most important, he was able to fend off all of the attacks from Perry and to return the fire pretty effectively.
2) Rick Perry -- Perry seemed like the clear loser of the debate. He seemed to ramble at times and to stumble at others. Even when he was making a fairly effective attack on Romney (like the flip flop argument) he seemed to lose his train of thought in the middle and the attack faltered. Perry also clearly lost an important debate with Santorum about granting in state tuition rates to illegal immigrant college students. I expect that Perry's position in the polls will decline a bit over the next few weeks.
3) Michelle Bachmann -- Bachmann had good and bad moments. Overall, however, I doubt that she won any converts to her cause. It was mostly a blah event.
4) Herman Cain -- This was the best performance by Herman Cain since the very first debate in my opinion. His answer about his own cancer and the effect that Obamacare would have had on his treatment was powerful and extremely effective. He projected good humor and knowledge of his subject.
5) Jon Huntsman -- Huntsman said exactly what one would have expected him to say. He constantly took advantage of the time rules, something that bothered me but probably had no impact on most people watching. He obviously has to promote himself and his own accomplishments, but he still struck me as going too far in that effort.
6) Ron Paul -- This was clearly the best outing of all debates so far for Paul. His answers were crisp and clear which is something new from Paul. His views still limit his support to a small number of true believers, but he no longer seemed like the nutty uncle that you get to see each year on Thanksgiving.
7) Newt Gingrich -- Once again, Gingrich showed that he is a master of these debates. He clearly outclassed most of his rivals. Of course, he still has all the baggage that will probably make it impossible for him to succeed. Nevertheless, Gingrich is a force to be reckoned with.
8) Rick Santorum -- Santorum too had an outstanding performance. His dissection of the Perry position on in state tuition for illegal immigrant college students probably won him a bunch of converts for the moment. Maybe he will pick up some support in the polls.
9) Gary Johnson -- Johnson got the biggest laugh of the night when he said that his neighbor's dog had created more shovel ready jobs than Obama. I wonder, however, how many of the folks watching knew that Johnson had stolen the line from Rush Limbaugh who had said essentially the same thing this afternoon on his radio show. Strangely, for the audience that Johnson was trying to reach, probably half knew that his great line actually belonged to Rush.
One last note: the Fox News correspondents deserve major kudos for running a debate that was far better than the one on CNN or MSNBC. We did not get any questions that were truly a waste of time. About half of the time was spent on the economy which is where most folks' interests center. The questions did not carry bias like the ones on NBC. Indeed, except for the little extras from Google like the word clouds and the instant polling which were unnecessary, the debate was carried off extremely well.
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