The South Carolina GOP Debate Wrap Up

Posted by Jason Easley on 05.16.2007

The GOP candidates got together again on Tuesday night for their second primary debate. I’ll give you the highlights and my opinions on how each of the candidates fared in this special Wednesday column.

The second Republican primary debate took place in Columbia, SC Tuesday night and it was a much improved performance over the first debate at the Reagan Presidential Library in California. The theme of this second debate was the lower tier candidates jumping on Giuliani, McCain, and Romney for their lack of conservative credentials. Giuliani was labeled soft on abortion, McCain soft on immigration, and Romney a flip-flopper who was soft on everything.

Rudy Giuliani, once again, was called on to defend his pro-choice position, and once again, his answer was less than convincing. In fact, it was the same answer that he gave at the last debate. "I think we can agree, all of us, on this stage, that we should seek reductions in abortion. I ultimately do believe in a woman's right of choice, but I think that there are ways in which we can reduce abortions. Abortions went down 16 percent when I was the mayor. Adoptions went up 133 percent during the eight years that I was mayor, compared to the prior eight years."

Fox News was not only the broadcaster, but the cosponsor of this debate and it was clear that they decided to slant the air time given to the candidates towards Rudy, McCain, Romney, and Huckabee. Brownback, Hunter, and Tancredo got the occasional bones thrown there way. Gilmore was used to create some conflict on the stage. Thompson was rarely heard from, and Ron Paul got even less screen time then Tommy Thompson. The Fox producers appear to have wanted to create a more lively debate than the first one, which MSNBC put together, and they succeeded.

The highlight of the debate was Ron Paul making the mistake of trying to point out that that one of the reasons why Islamic fundamentalists hate the U.S. might have something to do with our foreign policy in the Middle East. "They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. ... We've been in the Middle East. Right now, we're building an embassy in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting," Paul said.

Of course this led to Rudy Giuliani defending America's honor, "That's really an extraordinary statement. That's really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11 that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11. I would ask the congressman withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that." Did anyone else notice that Giuliani completely distorted Paul's original point? By the way, there is nothing absurd about the idea that the U.S. is hated because of our foreign policy. What was absurd was Giuliani's shameless mentions of 9/11 and terrorism throughout this debate.

Tom Tancredo took it a step further than Giuliani when he said, "My dear friend Ron here, I dearly love and really respect, but I'll tell you: I just have to disagree with you, Ron, about the issue of whether ... Israel existed or didn't, whether or not we were in Iraq or not, they would be trying to kill us, because it is a dictate of their religion, at least a part of it. And we have to defend ourselves." That's right. Muslims will try to kill Americans no matter what we do, because they just plain don't like us. Overall, I could have done without the commercial breaks that Fox inserted into the debate, and the questions were sub par, especially the final hypothetical terrorist situation, which John McCain said was a highly unlikely scenario.

Here are tonight's winners and losers as I saw them:

Winners

John McCain - Welcome back John. For the first time sparks of the old McCain started to shine through. Someone must have talked to him about his body language because it was much better tonight. McCain got to distance himself from the GOP field by talking about his opposition to torture, his support for campaign finance reform, and stem cell research. Now if McCain would just soften on the Iraq war, Giuliani might be in some serious trouble.

Ron Paul- Once again the only person on the stage who seems to have a clue about what a real conservative is supposed to be. He gets major points for reminding everyone that George W. Bush ran on a non-interventionist foreign policy in 2000. His opposition to the Iraq war, unwillingness to bow to peer pressure and apologize for his position was commendable.

Mike Huckabee - Another candidate who wouldn't bow to peer pressure and apologize for having to raise some taxes while he was governor of Arkansas. Huckabee was more relaxed this time, and actually answered some questions. This was a much improved performance over the first debate.

Jim Gilmore - Gilmore makes it into the winners' circle because at least this time we knew he was there. He is still much too bland to have a shot at winning anything, but he gets major props for not being afraid to name names and point out the flaws of the top three GOP candidates. This night may have been his one moment in the sun.

Losers

Rudy Giuliani - There is a reason why Rudy's lead over McCain has slipped from 20 points to 7, and that is that he is turning out to have some major liabilities as a candidate. Giuliani was in full panic mode tonight, breaking out 9/11 and the terrorist threat to America every chance he got. He attempt to make the Fort Dix Six seem like a real terrorist threat was laughable, only to be topped by his comment that he knows something about securing a city. What exactly is it that he knows? While he was securing the city, the World Trade Center was attacked and thousands died. This isn't exactly a sterling indictment of his security prowess. He got laid out again on the abortion question, and seemed obsessed with bringing up his poll numbers by invoking 9/11 every 10 minutes.

Mitt Romney- Mitt still sounds like a North Eastern Republican. He hasn't figured out a way to defend himself from the flip-flopper charges. He doesn't seem to know if he is a hard ass conservative, or moderate, and it is killing his campaign.

Duncan Hunter- Hunter earns major points in my book for pointing out correctly that China is cheating on trade. He loses points though for using the same border fence story again. We have learned that Duncan Hunter has two issues immigration and trade. Neither of these can win him the GOP nomination.

Sam Brownback- Defending his position that women who are raped should have to have the baby was a new low for this stumbling campaign. Brownback needs to quit soon, before he takes us all back to the Stone Age.

Tommy Thompson - A terrible performance which was made even worse by Thompson's apparent disinterest in any of the questions he was asked. How did this man stay a governor for as long as he did?

Tom Tancredo - Tancredo got to say a lot more in this debate, and unfortunately for him, this wasn't a good thing. His idea that the Muslim faith is crazy and blood thirsty was the topper of a really poor night for him.

Once again nobody distanced themselves from the pack, and this still looks like a poor group of candidates, but look out for McCain, he is coming. What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Drop me a line and we'll talk about it. I'll be back on Friday with the news. See you then.