Posted on 01/11/2008 5:07:32 AM PST by pookie18
Work took me away from watching the debate so all I can gauge how it went on is other bloggers and man o’ man, does it look like Fred took it or what? The best take on it tonight comes from Jim Geraghty:
Tonight, Fred Reminded Me of Roy Hobbs.
Winner: Thompson. This performance was so commanding, I wanted his last answer to echo back to the lights in the back of the auditorium, blow out all the lamps and spotlights, for the theme to “the Natural” to play, and for him to trot around the stage in slow motion while sparks showered down in the background.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net ...
“Don’t forget the other big news out of the debate. Ron Paul lost, big time.”
Yup - Most republicans these days don’t respond to the message of limited government, ending welfare statism, letting Israel off the paternalistic leash we have them on rather than having to ask us permission to kill terrorists, and deregulation. At least not by looking at the 1,2,and 3 in the national polls.
He won the call in vote, though. :)
I know what you’re gonna say - his supporters called it. Why couldn’t other candidates supporters do the same?
Saying Fred’s support is greater than national polls show (and I like Fred!) gets you a hearty back slapping on FR.
Saying the same about Paul - gosh you must be a kook!
He was good last night, and that’s what some of us wanted from him all along.
Part of the primary process is to prove that a guy can sustain solid effort day in and day out, because the Presidency is 4 years of the most brutal, stressful, hard-working days a man will EVER endure.
The MINIMUM a man has to do in the primaries is to do what Fred did last night, at EVERY debate. The MINIMUM we expect is that the campaign be an every-day thing, just like the presidency is, because you can’t just take a couple days off to be with the family when Putin is acting up or the Iranians are circling your warships with speedboats.
Hopefully, Fred will prove to the voters who so far have rejected him that he CAN play the game every single day, that he’s ready to put on performances like last night at EVERY debate.
If he had done that from the beginning, he’d be winning right now, in my opinion.
I liked the format on H&C yesterday, even though some of the questions were a little lame. I think it’s because Hannity actually did a relatively (for him) good job of keeping his mouth shut and letting the candidate answer the questions.
“Boy you got that right. I think last night was his Dean Scream moment.”
Which moment was that?
Cheap shot to take one screenshot that shows someone in mid-word looking silly.
When Libs do the same to Bush to make him look like a monkey, FReepers scream.
It’s an immature line of argument.
What did you oppose?
His message of limited government and the relationship between limited government and civil liberties?
How taxpayer backed easy credit has caused the housing crisis, and that the solution isn’t more easy credit?
That we shouldn’t force Israel to get a permission slip from daddy America to defend themselves?
I guess it’s easier to cut down the person based on a screenshot than their ideas, hmm?
Just about everyone here and other threads area all repeating the same thing...."It's about time."...or something like that.
All the other candidates got in early and peaked WAY too soon.
Rudy...first in, now in the basement. Mitt, John, and now Hukabee have all peaked and are on the way to the bottom.
Fred is just now rising, and will peak when it is really necessary. Super Tuesday.
‘If he had done that from the beginning, he’d be winning right now, in my opinion.’
Hard not to draw that conclusion. He did very well last night.
I really enjoyed the format of the debate as well.
Go FRED!
You are the real conservative that will appoint conservative judges to the SCOTUS!
I will say it was scary watching him in the post-debate Luntz focus group.
I say that because while he was talking, I was largely agreeing with his point, but the ratings for him were dropping through the floor.
The problem is that when you start talking about bombing people, it just seems to really get the base excited. Paul was right — there was NO NEED to go to war over a few speedboats, and the Navy both knew that, and did the right thing by confronting the boats and then letting them walk away.
But Paul saying that wasn’t popular. What was popular was people saying we should have blown them up. Some poor guy is ordered by his crazy boss to drive his speedboat around a navy ship, and a lot of pro-lifers here think it would have been great if we had killed the guy, even though he never took a shot at us.
If one of our candidates had just said we should nuke Iran and get it over with, he probably would have broken that agreement meter.
He may be smart economically but he's dangerously uniformed about foreign affairs. He actually accused us of another Gulf of Tonkin incident in his reply to the Iranian gunboats question. He sounded just like a 9/11 truther during that answer.
I thought the same thing about the Gulf of Tonkin reference. I also noted that he didn’t take the opportunity to distance himself from the 9/11 truthers earlier in the debate with the lame(?) excuse that he can’t tell anyone what to do.
Go, Fred! Woohoo!!!
Actually, my post was mostly meant to be funny, and to remind people that trivial comparisons to fictional people in movies isn’t always safe.
However, I’ve always been a Fred supporter. My criticism of him has been things he could correct if he wanted to. I was an early fred supporter. I was supporting the fred movement back in 2006 (when I was worried Fred would be too moderate for my hard-right conservative peers here at FR).
I wrote e-mails encouraging him to run, I sent him money. I wanted him to clear the field and be the conservative flag-bearer. I thought he had the capacity to communicate the conservative message in a way that would sell it to independents.
Then he made a series of acts that I did not like, and I think others didn’t like either since his poll numbers fell through the floor. Appearing on Leno instead of the NH debate. Saying we should do one-on-one debates and then refusing to do so when Huckabee took him up on his challenge. Blowing off church. Being utterly dismissive of Dobson and the voters he “represents” (as a strategic matter, not a moral one, morally I understood why he did it, just thought it was stupid).
He left the opening for Huckabee. He didn’t campaign hard (people yell when you say that, and attacked when people said it before, but now look at how many fred supporters are saying “this is what we wanted to see”, which is a really good indication that what we saw before was NOT what they wanted to see).
He had a “take me or leave me” attitude, which a few here found charming, but I found absurd — because I want all the voters to TAKE him, and a real candidate SHOULD care that voters accept his message, if he really believes his message.
But now maybe we are seeing signs of a new Thompson, a Thompson who has decided that he DOES care whether people vote for him or not, that he DOES want to convince people of the rightness of his philosophy, and not simply get the votes of people who already agree with him.
That’s a better explanation for my disgust with his previous approach. When he would say “this is who I am, take me or leave me”, it was like saying “if you already agree with my philosophy, vote for me, if you don’t, vote for someone else”.
But conservatives are decidedly a MINORITY in the election, and in order to win Fred needs to say “if you agree with my philosophy, vote for me. If you disagree, HERE IS WHY YOU SHOULD CHANGE YOUR MIND AND VOTE FOR ME”.
Anyway, if he’s doing it now, he might be too late, but there’s no going back now.
I’d feel a lot better if Huckabee and McCain didn’t look like the winners.
Meanwhile, Romney has always looked professional, he’s a solid conservative, he speaks well, and has worked his butt off for over a year to convince people that his message is the right message for the country. That’s what I want to see, so I put him first in my list. If he is unelectable, he won’t win our primary, and if not, I sure hope Fred is the one who wins.
Nobody said we should have blown them up. That’s why Ron Paul came off looking a fool. He couldn’t comprehend that either. Did you even watch the debate?
You’ve been making ridiculous statements on every thread since the debate. It makes your candidate, Romney, look badly when you run around making misstatements.
No he is not. He thinks he’s subtly being cute with his Go Fred! statement after “goes home”.
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