8:07 PM: Wow, Mitt goes for semi-current cultural reference — George Costanza. Actually sort of surprised Mitt came up with that.
8:13 PM: Santorum hits Romney on aping Occupy Wall Street rhetoric. This is what he’s referring to.
8:16 PM: Did Newt just say that getting rid of the Civil Service system would save $500 billion a year?
8:28 PM: Actually thought that was a very strong answer for Santorum. But the zero clapping and the handful of guffaws sort of suggests the audience didn’t see it the same way.
8:29 PM: We’re moving into people getting under Mitt’s skin phase.
It looks like the Romney campaign did a good job getting the audience stacked with his supporters. But Mitt’s getting testy. We’re seen this before. It usually doesn’t go well for him.
Clearly, Newt doesn’t give a crap about competing in Michigan. But Romney just took his position on the auto bailout even further into total incoherence. He opposes the auto bailout. But now he only opposes the money given before the bankruptcy phase. And what happened when they put the companies through a managed bankruptcy was what Mitt wanted all the time. So they actually figured out what to do from Mitt. Only that wasn’t good either because it was a sell out to the unions. In a Rube Goldberg kind of way it sort of makes sense. But having tried to pander in every possible way at the time and doing the same thing now, the whole thing just comes out as an incomprehensible jumble.
8:53 PM: Mitt is walking the only line available on birth control: This isn’t about contraception; it’s about religious freedom.
8:55 PM: No debate complete without Newt invoking “tyranny.”
This is kind of amazing. The drift of this conversation is that not only should you be against contraceptives personally. And not only should you give religious exemptions to religious organizations. But even allowing any federal money to go to birth control is wrong. This is playing ball way back on GOP’s 10 or 15 yard line.
Is there really any question that the Romney Camp totally kicked butt getting their people into the hall? I mean, maybe everybody’s beating up on Santorum. But this is not a crowd with an equal or proportional number of Santorum supporters.
Something profoundly comical about Romney attacking Rick Santorum over supporting Specter, when Santorum was the conservative backed into supporting the moderate Specter and Romney was probably to the left of Specter at the time.
Maybe 18 months ago this stuff was the stuff of three or four members of Congress and World Net Daily. Now Mitt Romney just said that Iran may get nuclear material and give it to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah will bring it to Mexico.
Nuclear Hezbollah will climb over the fence and then blow up a nuclear warhead of a dirty bomb in Cleveland.
This is a presidential debate.
How badly did Rick whiff tonight? Let us count the ways.