[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixMvyaZmcoQ]
The positioning of the candidates at last night’s NBC News / Politico debate at the Reagan library told you all you needed to know: squarely in the center were Mitt Romney, the longtime varsity letterman in the GOP primary race, and Rick Perry, the hotshot new quarterback just transferred to the school who suddenly has his pick of Homecoming dates. The debate organizers were clearly looking for them to rumble in the parking lot, and they obliged, sort of, tangling early and often over their respective job-creation records in Massachusetts and Texas.
Halfway or so through the long debate, though, they began taking different tacks: Romney began passing on chances to hit his rival, instead making a general election critique of President Obama, and offering Perry a “mulligan” for a controversial immunization program for young girls he instituted in Texas. Perry, on the other hand, made a pointed, unapologetic defense of some of his polarizing remarks–doubling down, for instance, on his description of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.”
He also defended his law-and-order record in Texas. In one of the weirder moments of the night (and it was a night in which Ron Paul suggested the U.S. border fence might be used to keep Americans from fleeing to Mexico), moderator Brian Williams asked Perry whether he had lost any sleep over the 234 executions he had presided over as governor. The crowd responded to the number of executions with loud applause and at least one whistle (video, above), but at least, as far as I can tell, no pistols fired into the air. Williams had the presence of mind to ask Perry if he found the applause disturbing, but apparently he’s not losing any sleep over that, either.
The debate was carried on MSNBC, and I can only wonder how many Republican voters stuck around for the postgame analysis by Rachel Maddow and Al Sharpton. On that channel and elsewhere, pundits seemed to rule Romney the winner, arguing that he carried himself like a general-election candidate, while Perry was pugnacious on some questions and fumbled on others. I’m not sure. This is still a primary contest, after all, and while Romney’s was the performance that appealed more to Washington pundits, I don’t know if that’s a plus with primary voters—whereas I also doubt that Perry’s 100-proof conservatism, and declaration that “maybe it’s time to have some provocative language,” are exactly liabilities with the party faithful.
There was more, much more, in the nearly two-hour debate, and I invite you to read my colleague Michael Scherer for a complete rundown. But from where I was sitting, the two men in the middle got what they wanted: Romney, the validation of establishment Republicans, and Perry, a performance that probably made establishment Republicans a little nervous.
We’ll have to see which is the winning strategy in this primary, but there was one unambiguous crowd favorite last night: capital punishment! Let’s give it another big round of applause, folks!