ABC News’ Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire last night averaged 6.25 million total viewers, 1.4 million of them in the 28-49 demographic, 1.73 million in 25-54. That was good enough for third place among the GOP debates so far this campaign behind the two most recent ones, ABC News’ Dec. 10 debate (7.57 million total viewers) and Fox News’ Dec. 15 debate (6.71 million). ABC points out that last night’s debate anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos aired against the NFL Wild Card Game No. 2 – Detroit vs. New Orleans.
Fact Check 1 - Romney created 100,000 jobs at Bain Capital Fact Check 2 - Santorum’s Ethics Record and Lobbyist Cash Fact Check 3 – Perry: Defense Cuts will compromise America’s freedoms Fact Check 4 – Perry: Obama Is Waging War on Religion Fact Check 5 – Send the troops back to Iraq? Fact Check 6 – No state is trying to ban contraceptives? Fact Check 7 – Utah was the No. 1 job creating state when Huntsman was governor Fact Check 8 – Government regulations keep America’s manufacturing sector from being competitive Fact Check 9 – Obama called the Iranian election “legitimate” Fact Check 10 – When Is the BCS Football Championship Game?
Fact or Fiction Number 1 - Mitt Romney created 100,000 jobs while heading Bain Capital
ABC News’s Matt Negrin reports:
Newt Gingrich raced out of the gate in tonight’s debate by being skeptical of Mitt Romney’s claim that Bain was responsible for creating 100,000 jobs, and he pointed to scrutiny of the firm in a recent New York Times article and a documentary.
In response, Romney repeated a familiar talking point – that Bain, under his leadership, was responsible for creating 100,000 jobs at companies in which it invested. Romney was asked tonight if the 100,000 jobs are discounting the number of jobs that were lost at companies backed by Bain. He said the figure includes “both” and that it’s a “net” tally. He rattled off some talking points on companies that added jobs, like Sports Authority and Staples.
Bain was not the sole investor in Staples (which Romney said added 90,000 jobs) nor Sports Authority (which he said added 15,000). In 2002, for example, Staples founder Tom Stemberg wrote on CNN Money that Bain “gave us a boost.” Though the company also had help from two other firms. Sports Authority, too, was started with financial help from a few other investors.
Democrats were quick to respond to Romney’s claim tonight. In an email to reporters, the party pointed to a number of quotes the candidate has made years ago about that figure — including this part from a 1994 Boston Globe article: ”In a telephone interview late yesterday, Romney dismissed the characterization of Staples and his other investments as streamlining, saying that what he has done is ‘build and grow businesses,’ not shrink them. He asserted that there is no way to calculate whether jobs have been lost or gained economy-wide as a result of his ventures, and noted his 10,000-job figure simply measures what happened to employment at companies in which Bain invested.”
FactCheck.org checked Romney’s 100,000 jobs claim earlier this week and found it to be “unproven and questionable.”
Rick Santorum, standing to Romney’s left on the stage, was asked early in the debate whether his comment that the United States doesn’t need a CEO (it needs a leader) was directed at Romney; he confirmed that, yes, it was.
Fact or Fiction Number 2 - Santorum was called “corrupt” and took the most lobbyist cash of any lawmaker in Washington
ABC News’ Chris Good reports:
During the debate, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum sparred over Santorum’s ethics record. Who characterized it more accurately?
Moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Ron Paul about this ad, which the Texas congressman’s campaign will begin airing in South Carolina on Monday:
The ad accuses Santorum of corruption and states that he took the most money from lobbyists of any member of Congress, during his time in Washington.
Paul stood by the ad tonight, noting that the “corruption” allegation originally came from an independent group. Santorum protested that the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), had leveled “ridiculous” charges against him and that CREW disproportionately makes such charges against conservatives.
Both are (mostly) right.
On the topic of lobbyist cash: Santorum did receive the most contributions from lobbyists and lobbying groups in the 2006 election cycle, when he lost to Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Santorum’s objection—that the total was based on PAC donations—is partly true. Center for Responsive Politics counts both PAC and individual (over $200) donations, according to its listed methodology.
On the topic of corruption, CREW did file a complaint against Santorum, and it did list Santorum on its “most corrupt” members of Congress list in 2006. But the complaint was never taken up by the Senate Ethics Committee and Santorum lost his reelection campaign, as noted in this ABC News story. CREW’s complaint alleged that a loan violated the Senate gift rule and that Santorum appeared to have traded legislative action for donations. Santorum did write a letter to Pennsylvania newspaper protesting the allegations.
As for CREW’s partisanship: Santorum is probably right about CREW’s reputation among Republicans, but the group focuses its criticism on both parties. Its current “most corrupt” list includes 10 Republicans and four Democrats.
When Santorum made the list, in an election cycle marked by GOP ethics scandals, the list included 21 Republicans and four Democrats.
Fact or Fiction Number 3 - Perry: Defense Cuts will compromise America’s freedoms
ABC News’ Elizabeth Hartfield reports:
“You can’t cut $1 trillion from DOD and expect America’s freedoms aren’t going to be compromised.”
That was the claim stated by Texas Governor Rick Perry in response to a question from WMUR’s political director Josh McElveen about the role of President as a commander-in-chief. The claim, was in reference to Obama’s shrinking of the military, as outlined to the Pentagon earlier this week.
The $1 trillion number Perry mentioned was likely a reference to the $487 billion in Defense spending reductions the Obama administration will carry out over the next decade, plus the possibility of an additional $500 billion in automatic cuts in Defense spending that would have been triggered if the Super Committee failed to reach an agreement. Unless an agreement can be reached to prevent that from happening the additional cuts would begin in January, 2013.
Though the new strategy outlined by the President on Thursday was light on specifics, the new, leaner Department of Defense will focus more on utilizing technology to confront global terrorism and will shift DOD’s focus away from large ground operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more towards operations in the Pacific.
Many military officials have been skeptical about these cuts, but Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey offered his support of the plan on Thursday.
“There will be people who think it goes too far. Others will say it doesn’t go nearly far enough” the general said. “That probably makes it about right. It gives us what we need.”
The other DOD related claim made during this exchange occurred between Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, when Paul criticized Gingrich for not serving in Vietnam. Gingrich claimed he was not eligible for the draft. During the years of the Vietnam war Gingrich was a student, earning his M.A. followed by his Ph.D in modern European history in 1971.
Under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 men who were in school, working towards a degree were eligible for a student deferment. Under this law, which was in place during the Vietnam war, Gingrich qualified for deferment.
Fact or Fiction Number 4 - Perry: Obama Is Waging War on Religion
Rick Perry accused President Obama of battling religion — Catholicism in particular — in tonight’s debate, saying those battles would “stop” if the Texas governor is elected president.
In particular, Perry cited the Obama administration’s decision in September to deny funding to Catholic charities for victims of sex trafficking. Perry opined that Obama did so because he disagrees with Catholics over abortion.
The Christian Post wrote that the Obama administration made the decision “because it does not provide clients with access to abortion and birth control services.”
“This administration’s war on religion is what bothers me greatly,” Perry said at the debate.
Perry’s rhetoric might be an exaggeration, though it’s certainly reminiscent of an ad he released in which he said: “You don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As president, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion.”
Most respondents in a poll by Yahoo! don’t agree with Perry’s assessment of the White House’s stance on religion. Out of nearly 20,000 votes in a real-time poll conducted by Yahoo.com during the debate, 58 percent of voters said they didn’t agree with the Texas governor.
Fact or Fiction Number 5 - U.S. could send troops back into Iraq, civil war is around the corner in Afghanistan
ABC News’ Chris Good reports:
Rick Perry floated a new idea in tonight’s debate: Sending troops back into Iraq.
“I would send troops back into Iraq because I will tell you, I think we start talking with the Iraqi individuals there,” Perry said. “The idea that we allow the Iranians to come back into Iraq and take over that country with all of the treasure both in blood and money that we have spent in Iraq because this president wants to kowtow to this liberal leftist base and move out those men and women.”
Republicans like Mitt Romney cautioned, as the last U.S. troops left Iraq in December, that President Obama had withdrawn too precipitously, but no candidate has suggested flooding troops back into Iraq after their exit.
The question about Perry’s comment: If the U.S. wanted to send troops back to Iraq, could it?
The answer: probably not. While a U.S. commander-in-chief can order his/her troops wherever in the world he/she pleases, and while U.S. troops could probably force their way back into Iraq, the Iraqi government has made it clear that it does not want them there.
U.S. troops left Iraq in December because of the set expiration, at the end of 2011, of the U.S.-Iraqi “Status of Forces Agreement” to keep them there. The Obama administration had engaged in talks with Iraq to keep some U.S. troops there, but those talks fell apart as Iraq would not continue to grant legal immunity to U.S. troops within its borders, as ABC’s Jake Tapper reported in October. Since the exit of U.S. troops, Iraq has seen a wave of violence.
Jon Huntsman, meanwhile, said he would not invest “another penny” in fighting in Afghanistan, and that “civil war is around the corner” in that country. It’s worth noting the state of affairs between the U.S., the Afghan government, and the Taliban. U.S. negotiations with the Taliban have the support of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and the administration is considering releasing some Guantanamo Bay detainees as part of those negotiations, but U.S. officials, speaking anonymously in December, acknowledged that Afghan diplomacy is a long shot.
Fact or Fiction Number 6 - No states are trying to ban contraceptives
ABC News’ Greg Krieg reports:
Mitt Romney thinks contraception is “working just fine.”
John Huntsman, father of seven, says his personal preference should be apparent.
Rick Santorum has a more nuanced view on the use, and right to use, condoms and birth control. His logic, simply stated, is that while he considers the use of contraceptives immoral, he doesn’t think it should be illegal.
“The states have a right to do a lot of things. That doesn’t mean they should do it, ” Santorum told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. “Someone asked me if the states have the right to do it? Yes. They have the right to do it, they shouldn’t do it.”
Simple, right? Not exactly. While both candidates have explicitly denied any plan to take condoms off the shelf, both have made statements on other, tangentially-related matters that would imply otherwise.
Romney backed Mississippi’s ultimately failed (it was voted down in a referendum) Personhood Amendment, which if passed would have defined life as having begun at the point of conception.
Such language “could potentially ban common forms of contraception like the birth control pill, as well as prevent a pregnant woman experiencing complications that threaten her life or health to obtain safe abortion care,” Molly A.K. Connors wrote in New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor.
In 2005, Romney, then the governor of Massachusetts, vetoed a bill meant to expand emergency access to the “morning after pill.” The law would have required hospitals to offer the pill to rape survivors and allowed for certain state-sanctioned pharmacists to sell it without asking for a prescription.
“The bill does not involve only the prevention of conception: The drug it authorizes would also terminate life after conception,” Romney wrote, defending the veto in this op-ed piece.
For his part, Santorum has often spoken out against the Supreme Court’s ruling in Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965). That decision, which stated that the constitution protected “the right to privacy,” was inspired by an ultimately overturned state ban on contraception.
Santorum and many anti-Abortionists feel that the ruling paved the way for Roe v. Wade. The Griswold case, he said yesterday, “created a new Constitutional right, which in my opinion is judicial activism.”
So while it would be unfair to say Santorum wants to ban contraception, he has been and remains a vocal opponent of the most prominent court ruling in its favor.
Fact or Fiction Number 7 - Utah was the No. 1 job creating state when Huntsman was governor
FactCheck.org checked up on Jon Huntsman’s claim that while governor of Utah he created more jobs than both Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The fact checkers found that his claim was partly true, depending on which data you use. Utah’s job growth was definitely above the national average under Huntsman’s term, but using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Texas’ job growth ranked higher.
Check out all the details from FactCheck.org here.
Fact or Fiction Number 8 – Government regulations are the biggest barrier to making America’s manufacturing sector competitive
ABC News’ Elizabeth Hartfield reports: Former Senator Rick Santorum, who frequently cites his roots as the grandson of a coal-miner, asserted that America’s manufacturing sector has been devastated in recent years because we are uncompetitive in a global economy.
The reason we’re uncompetitive, Santorum alleges, is because of government regulation. Santorum claims that the U.S. corporate tax rate- 35 percent- is the highest in the world.
That fact is actually incorrect- the U.S. tax rate is the second highest in the world, Japan is the highest at 39.5 percent. Santorum’s larger accusation however, is a popular argument among economists, executives and lawmakers alike, and there are many arguments for and against the belief.
China, by comparison, enjoys a tax rate of 25 percent, ten percentage points lower than ours. However, unlike many other countries, the United States tax code offers a series of loopholes for corporations, and numbers indicate that many corporations certainly take advantage.
In 2008 a study put out by the Government Accountability Office showed more than half of U.S. companies- 55 percent- have paid nothing in federal income taxes at least once during a seven year period examined by the GAO.
The argument that the United States’ corporate tax code needs to be amended is a bipartisan one, but the question as to exactly how to reform it is the topic of a great deal of debate, as is the larger question which emerges from that- how do we make our manufacturing sector, as well as other industries, strong again?
Fact or Fiction Number 9 - President Obama said the Iranian election was “legitimate”
Rick Santorum said at tonight’s debate that President Obama “tacitly supported” the 2009 re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and called the elections “legitimate.”
FactCheck.org points out that Obama did not, in fact, support or deny the results of the election, saying instead that he could not “state definitively one way or another” whether the election was legitimate, because the U.S. did not have election monitors in Iran.
Fact or Fiction Number 10 - If they weren’t debating, candidates would be at home watching an NCAA football (or basketball) championship
ABC News’ Greg Krieg’s Instant Fact Check: There is no college football championship game being played tonight. There is an NFL playoff game. But no college ball.
ABC News’ Chris Good reports:
America loves sports, and for a politicians, fanship is a good way to prove you’re just one of the guys or gals. Most of the time.
Asked by moderator George Stephanopoulos what they’d be doing on Saturday night if they weren’t debating, three candidates said they’d be at home watching a national-championship college sports game.
Unfortunately, no such game was being played. Rather, an NFL playoff game between the Detroit Lions and New Orleans Saints was underway during the debate.
“Watching the national-championship college basketball game,” Newt Gingrich said in response to Stephanopoulos’s final debate question. “Football,” he adjusted, when corrected on the sport.
Santorum agreed: He’d be at home watching the national-championship NCAA football game.
“It’s football,” Mitt Romney said, also agreeing. “I love it.”
False: It’s neither. Badly as they may have wanted to, no candidate could have been watching a football or basketball championship game tonight.
Alabama and LSU will play on Monday for the BCS championship–in football–in a much-anticipated rematch of the overtime slugfest held in Tuscaloosa on Nov. 6, which LSU won 9-6.
Note to Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney: The game will be broadcast at 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. Monday.
Tonight's highly-anticipated slugfest never materialized as billed. Instead, Mitt Romney glided through nearly unscathed, some of the sharpest exchanges came over ancillary or inane issues, and the ABC News team dreamed up some of the worst debate questions recent memory. What a letdown. My instant scorecard:
Mitt Romney is your winner, strategically speaking, at least. Sure, the former Massachusetts Governor had some very strong answers (his destruction of George Stephanopolous' specious "gotcha" questions on banning contraception was a highlight), but Romney emerged victorious principally because none of his rivals even came close to knocking him off his game. Most didn't even try, which is utterly confounding. Newt tossed a few tepid jabs Romney's way at the very beginning (on Bain Capital) and at the end (on their respective economic plans), but neither exchange was memorable or salient. Jon Huntsman tangled with Romney on China at the tail end of the night and tried to bait his fellow ex-governor on his Bay State jobs record -- without success. In short, no one even approached laying a glove on the frontrunner. I don't understand it. Romney was perfectly content to keep his focus on underlining President Obama's failures and agreeing with his competitors whenever possible. His closing riff on competing visions for the future of the country felt like a defining moment -- which Michael Baronechronicles here. Overall, Team Mitt couldn't have scripted this night any better. I'm still trying to process why no one else on stage appeared eager to alter the script.
Rick Santorum was sharp and thoughtful tonight, and benefitted noticeably from the increased air time. He didn't come across as the embittered culture warrior that many Lefties try to portray him as, even when questions on social issues over-stayed their welcome. More on that later. Santorum effectively parried some jousting from Ron Paul, and landed one of the best lines of the night. After the moderators challenged Ron Paul over his campaign's particularly shrill attacks against Santorum ("corrupt"), Paul's answer was briefly interrupted by loud microphone feedback. Without missing a beat, Santorum quipped, "maybe it knows you're not telling the truth." Well played. I suspect Santorum's momentum will continue to build. He was at ease on stage, displayed a solid command of a wide array of issues, and spoke passionately about Iran and national security. His two attempts to draw contrasts with Romney came at the beginning (the managers vs. leaders distinction), and at the end (on healthcare, when he expressed his consistent opposition to individual mandates). That last point may require a fact check. All in all, a good night for the former Senator.
Newt Gingrich had, by and large, a terrific showing. He didn't go nuclear on Romney as so many -- myself included -- expected. As I suggested above, his hits against the frontrunner were pretty tame. Beyond the brief back-and-forth on Bain Capital, Romney never even received (or sought) a chance to reply to the former Speaker's criticisms. That's how rare and lukewarm they were. I would add that his multiple citations of the New York Times' anti-Bain attack was particularly lame. Newt excelled tonight by returning to the tactics that sustained his original comeback: Media criticism and policy substance. After an interminable series of queries about gay rights began to vex almost everyone in the hall (and at home, I'd imagine), Newt absolutely sliced up the moderators for their biased and extraneous questions. He challenged their relevancy and wondered why the media won't focus on the other side of this equation: Namely, the Obama administration's numerous anti-religious liberty mandates that have targeted Christians, and especially Catholic hospitals. It was Newt at his indignant best, and the audience roared its approval. Kudos. What seemed bizarre was Newt's apparent eagerness to spar with Ron Paul. He was visibly irritated by several of Paul's assertions, but what does Gingirch have to gain by engaging in protracted back-and-forths with Paul? Curious.
Jon Hunstman turned in perhaps his strongest debate of the cycle, answering several questions ably and urging viewers to examine both his excellent record as Utah's Governor and his strong economic plan. At times, he strayed back into his stale boilerplate about restoring Americans' trust (it's not a bad sentiment, he's just used the same line ad nauseam), and drew an audible groan in the media room when he busted out some Mandarin during a discussion of trade policy. In short, Huntsman was better than usual, but that isn't saying much. It wasn't a breakout performance, and it won't move the needle too much.
Rick Perry scored with several answers tonight, most notably his first and last contributions to the discussion. Both of those pinnacles arose when Perry spoke forcefully and convincingly about the Texas model on jobs, regulation and energy. Unfortunately for the Lone Star governor, the clip that will go viral was his insistence that he would redeploy American troops into Iraq. Perry was undeniably justified in decrying the Obama administration's shameful bungling of critical withdrawal negotiations, but framing the issue the way he did is extremely politically problematic -- even if his motives are honorable. Overall, Perry used his infrequent opportunities to speak to steer voters' attention to his state's stellar job record, and to emphasize the need for a Washington outsider with executive experience to clean up the country's mess. That's a strong message. Will it take hold in South Carolina, or is it too late?
Ron Paul was the most pugnacious combatant tonight, fearlessly (if occasionally disingenuously) confronting nearly all of his opponents throughout the session. Untouched? Mitt Romney. Anyone want to explain that for me? I'm all ears. Paul had his share of high points -- reveling in his reputation as the group's resident Constitutionalist -- and a few swings and misses. Many Republicans may be slightly alarmed by Paul's refusal (again) to rule out running as a third party candidate if he doesn't win the nomination. Is he committed to defeating President Obama or not?
ABC News earns a special mention tonight, unfortunately. The network's news division is home to many excellent professionals whose work I admire, but tonight was an epic flop. Diane Sawyer was strangely giggly. George Stephanopolous belabored an absurd hypothetical point about the Constitutionality of banning contraception -- to the point that the audience became vocally impatient. The local anchor from WMUR-TV at times seemed more interested in listening to his own mellifluous broadcaster's voice than anything else. ABC's decision to devote a prime, lengthy segment to relentlessly pounding away at hot-button issue social questions was indefensible. Twenty-five million Americans are unemployed or under-employed. Others have given up looking for work. Our national debt has reached 100 percent of GDP. Entitlements are growing at a head-spinningly unsustainable rate. Yet the journalists at ABC decided that ~15 minutes on gay rights and birth control questions was the best use of the candidates' and viewers' time. These are complicated and not insignificant issues, of course, but they absolutely do not merit the attention they were afforded tonight. The DNC should mail the anchors flowers for their undue and distracting attention to peripheral, contentious wedge issues that seemed tailored to make Republicans look uncaring and mean. Also strange were the repeated non-questions posed to the candidates. For example, one presidential hopeful would wrap up an answer, prompting Stephanopolous or Sawyer to simply turn to one of his rivals and say, "Governor?" Several contenders simply chuckled and wondered aloud if there was an actual question being asked. Sloppy. One final point for ABC: You have a top-flight, tough, plugged-in political correspondent named Jake Tapper. Use him. I'd be willing to bet that a great many Republican voters who watched tonight's telecast would rate its broadcast host as the overwhelming loser of the evening. Too bad. .
Never fear, debate aficionados: There's another contest tomorrow morning (!) on NBC at 9am ET. Seriously, how absurd is that? And won't many Republicans be in church? In any case, we'll live-tweet it here on The Tipsheet. With that housekeeping out of the way, now it's your turn to tell me where I'm right, wrong, and totally off-base in my analysis. The comments section is open for business. Have at it...
Many of the journalists and professional political types who dutifully watched Saturday night's Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire probably had the same thought occur to them at several points: "For this we missed most of the NFL wildcard game between the New Orleans Saints and Detroit Lions?"
Not that there weren't fireworks. At one point when Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and Newt Gingrich traded barbs over the Texas congressman's description of the former speaker as a "chicken hawk." It got so heated you half expected the ABC News moderators to tell them to take it outside.
But the debate didn't really change the dynamics of the race and much of it was filled with the candidates repeating talking points we've all heard plenty of times before. So why couldn't we have just watched the football game instead?
Anyway, since we watched it, we owe it to ourselves to figure out what happened, if anything?
The biggest winner?
Mitt Romney, the front-runner, without question. Romney probably came into the debate prepared to be savaged throughout much of the evening by his rivals as they tried to knock him down a few pegs.
Instead, Gingrich and Rick Santorum attacked him early then quit. The former speaker hit him for actions as a private equity investor that led to worker layoffs. Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, dismissed his CEO experience as not the right kind of leadership for the Oval Office.
But they didn't follow through. It was left to Jon Huntsman Jr., the former Utah governor, to go after Romney for overly trash-talking China. But Huntsman has been doing this for months and it hasn't worked so why would it start now?
Romney answered the questions he wanted to and ignored the rest, leaving the impression that he was in control, exactly what he was going for.
Other winners?
President Obama definitely won, too. Romney remained the only GOP candidate who seemed presidential. With his big money advantage and the full weight of the Republican establishment, Romney still appeared to be the eventual nominee. That meant all of the opposition research and strategizing the president's campaign has done for a year or more won't go to waste since Obama's campaign expected to be facing Romney in 2012.
The biggest loser?
Besides those of us who missed most of a good football game? It would have to be Texas Gov. Rick Perry. There were times when you could easily forget he was in the debate. And while he didn't have any gaffes, nothing he did argued for why he should still be in the race. He seemed the most irrelevant person on the stage. By definition, that would make him the biggest loser.
Oh yeah, and he said he would send U.S. troops back into Iraq if he had the chance ensuring that voters, already disinclined to give it to him, will be even more so.
Other losers?
Santorum certainly fell in that category because he didn't build on his Iowa caucuses showing by making a sustained attack against Romney of the sort that might help him gain on the frontrunner in South Carolina.
Throw Gingrich in the loser category too for not landing many blows on Romney. What's more, Gingrich resorted in his early attack on Romney to citing a New York Times story that chronicled the layoffs at an office-supplies company forced by Bain Capital when Romney headed that investment firm. A Republican presidential candidate leaning on The Times in a GOP debate to bash a rival might as well start quoting the president's criticisms of the same rival. It's not a winning strategy.
Weirdest debate moment?
Huntsman breaking out into Chinese again seemed off-putting. Whenever he does it, he always seems to be showing off. All of us who have paid attention know that he lived in China, that he was the U.S. ambassador there. We're glad the Berlitz lessons paid off. Let's move on.
Most riveting moment?
The aforementioned fight between Gingrich and Paul. As you might expect, Gingrich took a dim view of Paul essentially calling him a Vietnam-era draft dodger. Paul stood his ground.
Most confusing moment for non constitutional lawyers?
George Stephanopoulos' back and forth with Romney over whether states having the constitutional right to ban contraceptives. It was the old Abbott and Costello "Who's on first?" routine, only in a more high-brow form.
As noted earlier, Saturday night's debate changed nothing. Romney did nothing to hurt himself and his rivals did precious little to damage him either. All I can say is, thank goodness Sunday's debate is early. It should be a fading memory by the time Sunday's wild card games start.
ABC News’ Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire last night averaged 6.25 million total viewers, 1.4 million of them in the 28-49 demographic, 1.73 million in 25-54. That was good enough for third place among the GOP debates so far this campaign behind the two most recent ones, ABC News’ Dec. 10 debate (7.57 million total viewers) and Fox News’ Dec. 15 debate (6.71 million). ABC points out that last night’s debate anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos aired against the NFL Wild Card Game No. 2 – Detroit vs. New Orleans.
