Sunday Morning GOP Debate Thoughts -- Romney Takes A Few Shots, But Doesn't Buckle

Posted by Ashish on 01.08.2012

Rivals get a bit more aggressive but Romney stays poised...

After a sleeper of a debate last night, this morning's Meet The Press debate was a bit feistier with Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Jon Huntsman all going after Mitt Romney a bit. Last night's debate was extremely frustrating to watch because it seemed as if many of the candidates had resigned to battling amongst themselves for second place. Some commenters to my article last night said that the strategy was to fight each other for the anti-Romney votes. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. I've discussed that to death for the past several months. But what these people seem to be missing is that Romney has already won Iowa, is going to win New Hampshire, and is leading in South Carolina. There is not time to try and consolidate the anti-Romney vote now because by the time they get close to doing it, Romney will have already won the first three states, at which point nobody is going to stop him. The only way for anybody to make noise is if Romney gets brought back down, and nobody made the slightest attempt to do that last night. A divided field that criticizes each other and leaves the frontrunner alone when he is in position to win the first three states is basically a field that is not serious about winning the nomination and is instead fighting for reputation and placement.

The exchanges between Romney and Gingrich from today's debate will make for the main highlights, particularly an exchange over PACs and Gingrich questioning Romney's honesty. But I thought Huntsman had a moment that will play great in New Hampshire and to the many independents that will vote on Tuesday -- that the attitude of partisanship above country that Romney displayed when criticizing Huntsman for being the Chinese ambassador under President Obama -- is what is wrong with politics today. Answers like that are why Huntsman won't go anywhere in a state like South Carolina, but in New Hampshire, where well over 30% of the electorate on Tuesday will be independents, sanity and compromise will go over well. Huntsman's just battling for a top three finish at this point, so scoring some points off his ideologically closest rival, Romney, will serve him well.

Santorum continues to not really do much to make himself stand out since doing so well in Iowa. He seems mostly interested in battling Paul for a top three finish, but what he is missing is his opportunity to be viewed as THE anti-Romney candidate. Something these people don't seem to realize is that going after Romney when you're on stage next to him gets played in all the highlights of the debate, making it look like a two-person race. It forces Romney to respond and thus elevates you to top tier status. Bickering with Ron Paul makes you look like a second tier candidate. And let's face it, picking off Ron Paul voters in the "live free or die" state is not going to happen. Ideologically, New Hampshire is Paul's best state out of the first four and he is in good position to finish second on Tuesday. The idea of Santorum being the main rival to Romney is already fading away now because of how little he engaged him in these two debates.

Gingrich showed some fight today, but has a losing point when it comes to Super PACs and his non-stop complaining about how unfair Romney's Super PAC ads against him have been. This is a year where conservatives want someone who can beat Obama, and they expect Obama to throw everything at the Republican nominee. A guy who can't even handle attack ads from Romney in a primary without whining is a guy who probably won't instill a lot of confidence that he can take on Obama. It's too bad the attack won't stick, because Romney was caught in a lie again on this, claiming he had never seen the ad Gingrich was referring to, then listing every single detail about what the ad had in it. Romney's a slippery one. Where Gingrich was most effective today was in calling out the massive hypocrisy of Romney constantly claiming to not be a politician and be some kind of outsider. Gingrich rightfully called him out, saying he has been running for office (and mostly losing) for the past 20 years. That doesn't make him an outsider, it makes him a bad politician who doesn't win much but keeps running anyway.

One other very revealing moment in the debate was when Romney basically embraced his past position on gay rights, something he has tried to distance himself from for the past several years. It's the clearest sign yet of how confident he now is that he will win the nomination. Romney is a guy who, the second he wins the Republican nomination, will go right back to embracing the more liberal, moderate positions he had before starting his quest for the Republican nomination years ago. The amazing thing is that the rest of the field seems OK with letting him do just that -- acting like a conservative on social issues when he has to, then dropping all of that and veering back to moderate/liberal positions on those same issues once he no longer needs votes from far right conservatives in a primary. Two months ago, Romney would NOT have given that defense of gay rights that he gave today. He is now in general election mode.

Overall, this debate isn't likely to change the trajectory of things much, but at least some of the anti-Romney folks showed some fight. Paul has positioned himself well to probably do better than expected on Tuesday, same for Huntsman. The risk here for someone like Gingrich is he probably won't finish in the top three. He could actually finish 5th. A 4th place finish in Iowa and a 5th place finish in New Hampshire will have a lot of people questioning why he is even still in the race on Wednesday morning. Santorum not finishing in the top three could also really damage whatever momentum he has left from Iowa.

At this point Romney's main competition in New Hampshire are expectations. He'll have to win by more than 10%, and he probably will. But if he somehow slides into a single digit win, it'll start another round of "why don't voters like Romney" questions, weakening him in the build up to South Carolina, a state where he actually could be vulnerable to some extent. So while he did take a few shots today, nothing really buckled Romney, he was prepared for every attack thrown at him. At some point, somebody has to go after him on Romneycare and his flip-flopping record in a consistent way, right? Or is the GOP field content with leaving all that attack gold for Obama to use in the general election?

One final point. Romney is getting a disservice in these debates in terms of preparation for the general election. Nobody has gone after him in any sort of consistent way, and most of his time has been spent smiling while the rest of the field attacks each other, then repeating talking points and attacking Obama. The few times he has been attacked, he has been average at best at handling it. In the general election, he'll have to debate one on one with Obama doing nothing but criticizing his past record. He won't be able to sit back and act above it. Usually in a primary, the frontrunner gets practice in doing this. Think about how much practice Obama got in 2008 by having to debate Hilary Clinton one-on-one several times. It's an area where Romney would have been better served having a smaller field that would engage him, but that seems unlikely at this point.