Impressions of the Tampa Debate

Yeah, I know. It's a day late and maybe a dollar short. But I'll write it up anyway.

Some bullet points

• Romney kept hammering Gingrich on his supposed lobbyist and influence peddling.  He may have scored some points, but I am a bit suspicious of the charge and who is making it.
• Romney couldn't redirect the Bain Capital discussions back to Big Government, but is still calling it an attack on capitalism.  Others may be impressed, I'm not.
• Santorum let Paul get away with calling the embargo a "blockade".  A blockade is a military option.  No military action has been taken against Iran.
• One of the moderators asserted that the Bush tax cuts failed, which wasn't exploited as the opportunity that it was.  A comparison between Bush's tax cuts and Obama's stimulus would be instructive.
• The debate format, which forbade audience participation, made for a dull debate.  The questioning had a liberal slant, which would have been harder to achieve if participation had been allowed.
• Paul seemed much too weak on foreign policy.  But he says good stuff about Big Government.  This conflict is hard to reconcile.
• The moderators set up Santorum nicely for an attack against the others.  But then they try to control the audience participation.  They are trying to keep this on their preferences, not the party's preferences.  This is, after all, a Republican debate.
• Romney still defending individual mandate.

Who won?  Maybe Romney did, but that depends upon how effective the attacks are.  He needs to score on that in order to turn the momentum back in his favor.  Gingrich was not effective enough to parry those attacks and counter attack, but he is back into positive mode.  He was successful in looking magnanimous, but that may not earn him any votes.  He may have missed an opportunity to give Romney the coup de grace.  On the whole, I'd say it was a draw, with a slight edge to Romney.