November 28, 2007
Liveblogging The CNN/YouTube Republican Debate
End note. I rode CNN pretty hard earlier, but overall this was a very good forum for these candidates. The producers did a better job than last time at picking interesting and varied questions (with the requisite gotchas, of course), and the holdouts for facing the YouTube Generation -- Romney, Giuliani -- probably did themselves a favor by deciding to show up.
What will get the most attention tomorrow is the knife-fight between Giuilani and Romney that kicked things off. Their cases against each other -- that Giuliani ran a liberal government in a crazy city and that Romney is a political changeling who accomplished little as governor -- went public only recently, and tonight is the first time we saw the candidates make their arguments mano a mano. Their squabbling produced a good moment for Thompson, who got to play the grown-up in the room as he methodically parsed what was wrong with both their records on immigration.
But as those anti-Huckabee press releases indicate, Thompson's camp realizes their man is in trouble. The "Law & Order" star was the one who was supposed to swoop in and rescue stranded GOP voters; now it looks like Huckabee's doing the rescuing, among evangelical Iowans, anyway.
Except for that shaky answer to the gays in the military question, Romney seemed in command of himself, as usual. Giuliani's temper, which his Big Apple critics also describe as pettiness, showed a little tonight. Two potentially big problems for him also surfaced. Though Thompson did not mention Bernie Kerik by name, the room knew whom he was referring to when he said, "I am a little surprised the mayor says everybody is responsible for everybody they hire, but we'll have to address that a little bit further later."
Cooper did bring up the Politico story, and it's doubtful Giuliani's explanation will satisfy those who want to know more. Giuliani has kept his mayoral records pretty tightly under wraps, having taken the unprecedented step of arranging with the New York Department of Records to have his administration's papers filed away with a private foundation under his helm. That he conducted an extramarital affair while in office opens a number of questions about the degree to which taxpayer-funded institutions or services might have helped facilitate something he himself calls a "mistake."
According to the Miami Herald's Naked Politics blog -- a nod to that city's underdressed populace, no doubt -- a post-debate poll of Iowa and Florida Republicans voted Huckabee tonight's winner, 44 percent to second-place Giuliani's 18 percent. We have no idea how that poll was conducted, but the result surely indicates that Huckabee's charm extends beyond Midwest evangelicals. For reasons I discussed earlier today, though, it's doubtful it extends to the rest of the Republican base -- fiscal conservatives and security conservatives in particular. Huckabee could just be a cuddly conservative in the vein of David Brooks -- which may explain why the folks at the Corner are now experiencing Huck Fatigue.
Jim Geraghty and The Corner saw CNN's forum as hostile to conservatives. They might have a point: The retired colonel who asked the candidates about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a member of Hillary Rodham Clinton's LGBT steering committee, according to Townhall. It's called Google, CNN. Power Line hands out awards (Clinton's colonel gets "worst ambush"), the Weekly Standard's Richelieu thought the debate was "depressing" and Ed Morrissey mostly liked what he saw tonight.
10:12. It's over. Colleague Jessica Taylor IMs that three out of seven press releases sent from the Thompson camp attacked Huckabee. Worried much, senator?
And colleague Gwen Glazer IMs that she suspects the CNN.com livestream was overloaded; it never got going for her. Good that so many people were apparently interested in this debate, but bad on CNN. Also, next time, when you know the debate is going to go over as you surely knew it would tonight, CNN, just snip a few questions, hmm?
10:10. OK, some nonsense about baseball that I have to pretend to understand. (Hi, boss.) To Giuliani: "Being a lifelong Yankees fan, this year, after the Yankees lost everything, you rooted for the Red Sox in the post-season. Can you explain that position to me?"
The Red Sox are apparently in the American League with the Yankees, so rooting for the Red Sox is OK if they are not playing the Yankees, is the gist of what Giuliani said, I think. Also, the Yankees have sucked not done very well since Giuliani left office. OK, even I know that's true.
10:08. Ron Paul: This revolution will not be televised... if I lose the nomination. He says no to a third-party run.
10:05. Neither Thompson nor Romney are for the Confederate flag in the public square. Is anyone on this stage? (I mean this sincerely; e-mail if you know.)
10:02. A question about blacks and the GOP. This is a bad moment for Giuliani... if you are at all familiar with his record with minority communities when he was mayor. Most voters outside NYC are not -- yet. For them, he just delivered a very reasonable and believable answer.
10:01. Chuck Norris in the house. Awesome.
10:00. Ah, technology. DVR troubles. Should be back up in a minute.
9:55. I've been DVRing back and forth so am a little confused about where the "should we go to Mars" question came from. Somehow, I think viewing this debate linearly wouldn't have helped.
9:49. A particularly bad moment for Romney here. He used to be gung-ho for full gay rights, remember, and now he just isn't. While "I changed my mind" works better on the abortion flip -- people do it all the time -- Romney hasn't exactly come out and said, "I changed my mind, homosexuals are immoral."
Cooper reminds Romney that he once "looked forward to the day" gays could serve openly in the military. Does the former governor stand by that statement? "I look forward to hearing from the military exactly what they believe is exactly the right way to have the cohesion and support of our troops, and I'll listen to what they have to say." Can't tell if the boos are for the response or the rhetorical gymnastics he used delivering the response.
9:40. Interesting question from editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson: Would the candidates imbue their vice presidents with as much power as Dick Cheney's been given? Thompson and McCain get this one, and neither answers it directly. McCain, however, responds that Bush gave Cheney as much power as he has because Bush -- McCain's one-time GOP primary rival, remember -- had little foreign policy experience, and then came 9/11. "I wouldn't have to do that," McCain says.
9:32. McCain has said "we are winning in Iraq" before, but this might be the first major candidate forum where it didn't seem completely out of sync with reality. There are several reasons the war has dropped out of the headlines in the past month or so, one of which is that conditions in Iraq aren't getting worse. (Whether they're flatlining or getting better is still up for debate.) The downward trend there has been a problem for war supporters like McCain and President Bush for some time.
9:29. Torture -- the interrogation technique, not this debate. Romney proposes what might otherwise be a reasonable explanation of his position -- no to torture, but no to telling the enemy what exactly we do as well -- were it not for the pervasive mistrust of the Bush administration that's led to a swelling demand that all such techniques be laid out precisely for the world to examine.
McCain, as we know, hates that explanation, and goes after Romney hard. The Vietnam War hero seems to be needling his rival a little, considering Romney has zero military experience.
9:26. If you're upset at America's loss of standing in the Muslim world, this is probably not the slate for you. Paul aside, the GOP's attitude on this matter can be summed up thusly: no appeasement, no surrender.
9:20. Can we just agree now that Huckabee wins all the God questions? The guy's a Baptist minister; it almost isn't fair.
9:16. Huckabee delivered a very thoughtful explanation of how one can be pro-life and support the death penalty. And then he shows yet again why he is catching fire all of a sudden. Pressed to answer directly the question -- would Jesus support the death penalty? -- he quips, "Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office."
9:12. Why does this question -- should women be criminally liable for obtaining illegal abortions -- keep coming up? This is a classic, misleading talking point of some elements of the pro-choice movement. As far as I can tell, all of the pro-life candidates here believe the culpability lies with the doctor -- or "abortionists," as Paul puts it -- and not patients. Quite a few conservative bloggers were skeptical the Republicans would get a fair shake in this format, and they are being proved right with questions like this.
9:10. Someone at CNN is really intent on getting Romney and Giuliani to go at it tonight. The topic of dispute this time: their records on crime.
9:07. See? Giuliani doesn't even own a gun, and he's known he was going to run for president for at least a couple of years.
9:04. OK, die-hard gun lovers and Giuliani are just never going to get along unless he does a serious 180. There's a reason big-city mayors tend to be relatively liberal on gun control: gun violence. That simple.
9:00. In a real departure from the Democrats' crack at this forum all the way back in July, Thompson's YouTube candidate video is all attack, no bio. He seeks to nab Romney's flip-flop on abortion and Huckabee's previously non-hostile stance toward taxes.
Instead of going to break, Cooper asks: "What's up with that?" Then he gives the attackees a chance to respond.
Romney: I was wrong.
Huckabee: Does this mean I'm a front-runner? Cool!
8:55. Tancredo just responded to a question about unsafe products from China by coining, I think, a new euphemism for foreign imports: "immigration of products."
8:52. Huzzah, the Politico question. "It's not true," Giuliani says. If I understood him correctly, he just indicated that the accounting documents were kept secret because of threats against his safety that he doesn't want to talk about.
8:48. Pledge time, part deux. This YouTube question comes from anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Pretty much everyone on stage takes the no-new-taxes pledge except Thompson -- "I've never met a tax I like... but I don't do pledges to anyone but the American people" -- and McCain and Hunter, which is a little surprising. The California rep cites the possibility of a "national emergency."
8:45. Why on earth, Sen. McCain, would you pick a fight with Ron Paul?
8:42. O-ho! Nothing like a few days worth of bad press to sharpen a position. Huckabee wants to abolish the IRS. Got that, Club for Growth?
"I'm not being facetious," Huckabee protests, to tremendous applause.
8:38. Am told that CNN.com's videostream of the debate is not working, and that YouTube isn't even trying to stream. Huh.
8:36. OK, everyone wants to cut spending.
8:32. Does Paul believe in the NAFTA Superhighway conspiracy or not? That was a confusing answer.
8:30. Tancredo loves that everybody is "trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo." Ha.
Tancredo goes further than his colleagues, though, when he says he wants an end to pretty much all immigration, period. For him, and for Hunter, the illegal immigration issue is a cultural issue, a battle for the identity of America's soul. It's a niche approach to the issue but it's one they and their supporters feel very deeply.
8:24 Pledge time. Thompson responds to the second question -- whether he will pledge to veto any immigration bill containing "amnesty" -- with a yes.
McCain eventually gets this question, of course, because his support of comprehensive immigration reform may just be the poison pill of his presidential campaign. He points out other major failures of the federal government, like the response to Hurricane Katrina, and then says, "We tried," a refrain heard often from him on this topic. "I want to assure you that I'll enforce the borders first, that as president of the U.S. we'll solve this immigration problem, and we won't demagogue it, and we won't have sanctuary cities, and we won't have all this rhetoric that unfortunately contributes nothing to this dialogue."
8:15. And the first question out of the gate is for Giuliani on illegal immigration, courtesy of Lou Dobbs a YouTuber. Giuliani: We had to allow the children of illegals to go to public school because otherwise there would have been "70,000 children on the streets at a time of a massive crime wave."
Cooper hands Romney this softball: Was NYC a sanctuary city? Shockingly, Romney says yes. Now we're into some back-and-forth here, with Giuliani bringing up the report that a landscaping company Romney used employed illegals. He accuses Romney of having lived in a "sanctuary mansion." A two-fer there: Giuliani is portraying himself as more of an everyguy than the incredibly wealthy Romney, and as far as we know the bit about Romney's landscapers is true. Oddly, the former Massachusetts governor denies that it is.
Giuliani's defense is a good one: As mayor of NYC I couldn't do much about illegal immigrants, but as president I can and will. Immigration is historically and probably constitutionally a federal issue. The U.S. has seen all sorts of DIY laws in local governments out of frustration at the lack of a solution from Washington. We saw some of this from Romney when he was governor, while Giuliani was much more immigration-friendly back when he was mayor.
8:09. OK, funny YouTube political song time. Seriously, Anderson -- no snowman?
8:06. And again with the Monday-morning handicapping with analyst Gloria Borger. Please stop, CNN.
8:05. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) introduces the participants in this order: Rep. Duncan Hunter (Calif.), Rep. Ron Paul (Texas), Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), former Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.), Giuliani, former Gov. Mitt Romney (Mass.), former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.) and Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.).
8:00. Showtime. Cooper says the questions tonight will be different in style and substance than in the Democrats' debate.
7:58. Hey, do you think the candidatesloudobbs will be asked a questionloudobbs about illegal immigrationloudobbs?
7:45. Welcome to The Gate's liveblog coverage of the CNN/YouTube Republican candidates' debate. Lots of stuff going on already, so let's just dive in.
Turns out Jim Geraghty was right about tonight's debate format being wrong for this point in the cycle, and how. Eclipsing all the questions we were asking earlier is whether host Anderson Cooper goes off-format and asks Rudy Giuliani about this Politico story posted shortly before 7 p.m. tonight.
The New York press corps has long been wondering when one of its ranks would come out with the explosive story that kneecaps Giuliani's somewhat improbable campaign for the Republican nomination. Ben Smith's story, which explores some mysterious billing for security services around the time Giuliani began his extramarital affair with his now-third wife, Judith Nathan, carries the potential for two elements that when combined are usually lethal in politics: adultery and graft.
If Giuliani does get asked about this tonight, he could arguably be within his rights to cry foul. After all, rules are rules and should apply to everyone equally here, right? Then again, how could CNN not ask about this? Do the producers really expect voters and the political press to tolerate semi-silly questions from snowmen and puppets while this issue hangs over their heads?
We'll find out soon enough. I've got a brand-new laptop, takeout Mexican (sorry, Tancredo/Hunter) and more importantly, DVR. Stay tuned.
Graphics: Reuben Dalke
Posted at 11:22 PM
Posted to:
Campaigns, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Republicans, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Tancredo, WH 2008
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