The debate was into the second hour, and Mitt Romney had just
played the Arlen Specter card against Rick Santorum, blaming
Santorum’s 2004 endorsement of his fellow Pennsylvanian for the
passage of Obamacare in 2010. Santorum responded by playing the
Dukakis card against Romney.
“Yes governor, you balanced the budget for four years,”
Santorum told Romney during the Arizona debate televised by CNN.
“You have a constitutional requirement to balance the budget for
four years. No great shakes. I’m all for — I’d like to see it
federally. But don’t go around bragging about something you have to
do. Michael Dukakis balanced the budget for 10 years. Does that
make him qualified to be president of the United States? I don’t
think so.”
As highlights go, it wasn’t spectacular, but Wednesday’s
debate — the 20th nationally televised meeting of Republican
candidates during this long campaign — was generally lacking in
highlights. There were no dramatic gaffes or stumbles, and few
memorable zingers. While the commentators on CNN afterwards offered
their own “what did it mean” analyses, it is unlikely that the
debate changed many minds.
Newt Gingrich had arguably the best performance of the
four finalists for the Republican nomination. CNN’s moderator John
King was booed when he asked a question submitted by a viewer
online: “Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which
candidate believes in birth control, and if not, why?” This
prompted Gingrich to lecture that “not once in the 2008 campaign,
not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted
in favor of legalizing infanticide. … If we’re going to have a
debate about who the extremist is on these issues, it is President
Obama who, as a state senator, voted to protect doctors who killed
babies who survived the abortion. It is not the
Republicans.”
The Republican audience in the Mesa Arts Center applauded,
but the same “elite media” which ignored Obama’s record four years
ago are also unlikely to make much of Gingrich’s strong debate
performance. Gingrich thus did not “win” Wednesday’s debate in the
same sense that he won the two debates that preceded the Jan. 21
South Carolina primary. Nor did any of the candidates “lose”
Wednesday in the same sense that Gingrich lost the two debates
preceding the Jan. 31 Florida primary.
After Wednesday’s debate, CNN commentators tried to make
the case that, because Santorum was not the clear winner, therefore
Romney “won.” However, Santorum was all smiles in his post-debate
interview with the network’s Gloria Borger, evidently feeling that,
by not losing, he had scored a victory. It was Santorum’s first
debate since he
moved to the top of national polls following his Feb. 7 triple
victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri. According to the
well-established precedent of this campaign cycle, whenever any
non-Romney GOP candidate eclipses the former Massachusetts governor
in the polls, he either stumbles in debates (Rick Perry), is
devastated by scandal (Herman Cain) or is buried in attack ads by
Romney, which was the fate suffered twice by Gingrich, first in
Iowa and then again in Florida. Santorum committed no Perry-esque
gaffes in Wednesday’s debate and seems unlikely to suffer a
Cain-like scandal, which probably means that the Republican
campaign from here out will be shaped less by TV debates than by TV
advertising. And to secure the money necessary to fight Romney’s
well-funded campaign in the ad wars, Santorum will be in Texas
today for three fund-raising events before returning to the
campaign trail Friday in Michigan, scene of next Tuesday’s
closely-watched primary.
Last night’s anti-climactic debate may, in fact, be the
last GOP debate of the 2012 campaign. A scheduled March 1 debate in
Atlanta was canceled after Romney pulled out. Another debate is
scheduled March 19 in Portland, Ore., but Romney has not yet agreed
to participate in that event and would probably only do so if it
suits the interests of his own campaign. If Romney can win Michigan
and Arizona next Tuesday, then leverage that momentum to do well in
the “Super Tuesday” primaries March 6, it is difficult to see why
he would give his rivals another shot at him in a TV debate. If
Romney should then go on to clinch the nomination, some cynics will
look back on the long series of debates and wonder whether it was
all just a charade, a stage-managed TV show designed to create an
illusion of excitement on the way to the predictable coronation of
the Republican establishment’s favorite.
