A Little Bit Ghetto

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Early in Thursday's Republican presidential debate, CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer caught Mitt Romney flatfooted on one of his anti-Gingrich ads. The ad accuses Newt of calling Spanish a "language of the ghetto." What, Blitzer asked Romney, did you mean by that? "I haven't seen the ad, so I'm sorry, I don't get to see all the TV ads," replied Romney. "I doubt that's my ad."

 

 

But it is his ad. "We did double check, just now, Governor, that ad that we talked about," said Blitzer. "We double checked. It was one of your ads. It is running here in Florida on the radio, and at the end you say 'I'm Mitt Romney and I approved this ad.'"

 

The exchange captured what Romney has tried to avoid -- the image of a remote plutocrat working so hard to buy an election he isn't even aware of his own ads.

 

 

Establishment pundits will no doubt ooh and ah over Romney's generally confident performance -- CNN informed viewers that he now enjoys the services of a new "debate coach" -- but rank-and-file conservatives should find the prospect of a rising Romney deeply depressing. How is it possible that two years after the Tea Party propelled the GOP back to congressional power Republicans are contemplating a former Paul Tsongas voter as the head of their party?

 

Gingrich spent too much of the debate responding to attacks rather than making them. He should have used every question as an occasion to remind voters of Romney's liberalism. The best licks on Romney as a liberal ended up coming from Rick Santorum. Training less fire on Gingrich at this debate than at previous ones, Santorum turned his attention to Romney with a sustained broadside against Romneycare. How, Santorum asked, will the GOP be able to argue against the Obamacare mandate with a nominee who hatched the idea? Romney said in reply: "It is not worth getting angry about." Yes, it is.

Romney's tutelage under a new debate coach admittedly bore some fruit. America's immigration problem isn't "11 million grandmothers," he said concisely after Newt had belabored his point about not deporting elderly illegal immigrants.

[Valin]

@Geee

 

It Seems

Thursday, January 26, 2012, 9:50 PM

Pete Spiliakos

 

that with every debate the questions just seem to get worse and worse. Zero questions on Medicare. Who-knows-how-long on moon colonies. Why should your wife be the best First Lady? What job would you give Marco Rubio (it wasn’t phrased that way but…)? The candidates are complicit. They could move the debate to more important issues if they wanted to.