Tuned In

Debate Watch: You Come at the King, You Best Not Miss

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4lnlDVW3o

It’s become a cliché to say that each Republican debate is the most important yet—at least since the last Most Important Debate—but last night’s showdown in South Carolina had a strong claim, coming after Rick Perry’s drop-out, Rick Santorum’s retroactive win in Iowa and Newt Gingrich’s twofer of climbing ahead in the polls while an ex-wife told ABC News he had asked her for an open marriage. With so much on the line Saturday, it was time to go on the attack. Especially against the guy moderating the debate, CNN’s John King.

When King opened the debate by asking Gingrich about the bombshell marital charge, it was as if he had walked up to the former Speaker, set up a glass fishbowl on a tee, and handed him a Flintstones-sized club to swing at it. I had suspected that the embarrassing interview might give Gingrich a chance to do what he likes best at debates—hammer the media—and did he ever, dropping a fuel-air explosive of an answer on King: “I am appalled that you would begin a Presidential debate on a topic like this.”

(Side note: the Tuned In Jrs. asked to watch part of the forum before bedtime last night, so this exchange was their very first experience ever of a Presidential debate. Because it’s never too early to teach your kids open marriages and cynicism about the American political process!)

I will say this for Gingrich: he was absolutely right that King should not have opened the debate with this question, if not for the reasons Gingrich was thinking. If King wanted to have any chance at a genuine response to the charges, it would be better to ask later, mid-debate, after the candidates had expended breath and energy on other issues, not at the start, when he was guaranteed to get what had to have been a carefully (and very effectively) prepared indignant response. (When King asked if he’d like to address the charges, Gingrich said curtly, “No. But I will,” with precision timing.) The crowd gave Gingrich a standing O, and while he may not have settled the issue for good, he had the room for the rest of the night.

King seemed cowed by the exchange, but it was not the only time he became a target. He was booed introducing a question on SOPA, noting that his employer (and mine) Time Warner has supported the anti-online-piracy bill, whose critics charge (rightly, IMHO as  media critic) is so heavy-handed it could censor or kill sites with even a tangential link to people who pirate material. And when he tried to move on from a question on abortion without a response from Ron Paul—who has often been marginalized in debates—the crowd browbeat him into giving the congressman a chance to answer.

At times, King seemed less like the debate’s moderator than its prisoner, and he didn’t help himself with his choice of topics, which went heavy on social issues and hot-button controversies like immigration but almost ignored foreign policy and went into little detail on the economy. The debate also went off on some tangents, as the candidates went deep into their opponents’ pasts to attack them; who knew the House scandals of the ’80s and ’90s were such a big issue in the 2012 election?

King’s best moment was a well-worded and -framed question about Mitt Romney’s tax returns, asking not just if Romney would release this year’s returns but past years’ (and invoking Romney’s governor / Presidential candidate father to do it). Romney chuckled and said, “Maybe,” and got booed, before offering a response that suggested he might release some returns after all. Romney did better with the crowd on his defense of his work at Bain Capital—”There’s nothing wrong with profit”—and tried to show some fire by promising to “stuff it down [Obama]’s throat” at debates in the fall. Rick Santorum, meanwhile, had maybe his feistiest debate yet, accusing Romney and Gingrich at one point of “playing footsies with the Left” on healthcare reform.

Can the GOP top this? Depending on Saturday’s results, this could be one of the last really significant primary debates—or this could continue on for quite a while. Future moderators may want to show up in flame-retardant suits.