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.
Newt had his moments in the debate, but he failed to
deliver any knockout punches. His knowledge of policy is far more
detailed than Romney’s, who usually just sticks to his narrow
talking points, and Newt’s conservative credentials remain far
stronger. Romney continues to appear as a more handsome and taller
GOP version of Michael Dukakis — the bloodless and visionless
technocrat who, as Newt suggests, just wants to “manage the decay”
in Washington, D.C.
Romney’s contribution to the Reagan Revolution was nil, as
he admitted in a roundabout way to Blitzer. Newt used the same
question to remind the audience that Michael Reagan had just
endorsed him. Newt added that Nancy Reagan had also conferred upon
him her husband’s mantle in a past speech.
The Republican establishment has been working overtime to
hoodwink GOP voters into overlooking the ideological differences
between Romney and Newt, trotting out Big Tenters with zero
expertise on conservatism to claim that Newt is not “conservative.”
Against an immutable standard of conservatism, he is not, but next
to Romney he looks like Edmund Burke.
The establishment never fails to choose the more liberal
of two leading candidates. The boys from the yacht club have once
again decided to lose with a semi-reformed RINO.
If Romney wins the nomination, he will have won largely on
personal attacks and a plastic, big-bucks campaign. Some
victory.
Ron Paul had one of the most endearingly direct lines in
the debate when he said, after a petty back-and-forth between Newt
and Mitt that Wolf Blitzer had encouraged, “That subject doesn’t
really interest me a whole lot.” Blitzer seemed determined to ask
“nonsense” questions, as Newt put it, circling back several times
to now-exhausted tax return and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac issues.
When he wasn’t trying to stir up trouble on that front, Blitzer was
uncorking cutesy questions about the candidates’ wives and an
ageist question to Ron Paul about his medical records.
From time to time Blitzer kicked control of the microphone
over to “CNN en Español.” Modern America doesn’t have segregated
schools anymore, but it does have segregated channels. Media
liberals call this progress.
