About Last Night
The GOP Debate: My 4 Takeaways
Like almost every other political junkie in New Hampshire I watched (almost all) of CNN’s marathon 3 hour debate last night. Here are, in no particular order, my takeaways.
- 3 hours is too long, 11 candidates is too many.
Look, Jake Tapper is a perfectly good television reporter who can handle moonlighting as a presidential debate moderator. But there is no person on earth who can, while television cameras are rolling and snarky Gang of 500 tweets are flying, coax/wrangle/cajole/bait 11 professional politicians standing two feet from one another into having a substantive conversation about anything. It’s going to be all one-liners and traditional stock answers. And 3 hours is way too long for that.
2. That said, if winning = substance + passion, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio all had a great night.
Whether it was Carly taking on Trump & Planned Parenthood, Christie talking about the 55-year old construction worker or Rubio discussing foreign policy and immigration, these 3 candidates connected (at least with me). The problem for the viewers was there was still 2 hours and 55 minutes of “debate” left around all that. See point #1.
3. Jeb Bush and John Kasich did just fine too.
Bush and Kasich are two serious candidates vying to be the GOP establishment pick. They both have solid conservative records, a smart campaign staff and the resources they need to compete in the 1 early nominating state that really matters to them both at this point — New Hampshire. Both are building A+ operations here. In other words, they don’t need to set the world on fire on a debate stage five months before anyone votes. Hit singles and don’t fuck up. That’s what they did.
4. Donald “Beautiful Woman” Trump was a spectacular disaster, but it’s unclear how that ball will bounce with likely Republican primary voters.
And we won’t know until polling begins to trickle in over the next 72 hours. I’ve been wrong about Trump before (and so have you, dear reader) so I won’t even hazard a guess. Stay tuned.
