Looking at the Vegas debate from the outside

Last month in Maine with­out my com­puter I noticed the incred­i­ble between what actu­ally takes place and what the media reports. Last night due to a last minute migra­tion to a TV less room and the dis­trac­tions of a rather excit­ing ses­sion of Age of Mythol­ogy with my friends I had that feel­ing again get­ting only brief clips of the debate dur­ing the night and wak­ing up to MSNBC and CNN analy­sis to go on top of the live­blog of Stacy, Smitty and Wom­bat and Vodka Pun­dit.

If MSNBC is to be believed the most qual­i­fied can­di­date was not on the stage (Jon Hunts­man) and with the excep­tion of Rom­ney nobody belonged there, (Michael Steele cemented the wis­dom of those want­ing him out of the RNC chair­man­ship by not chal­leng­ing that sen­ti­ment) Mean­while on CNN Rom­ney Cain and Gin­grich were all targets.

So being sane and ratio­nal I checked on-​line and found there was one clear win­ner in last night’s debate. Ander­son Cooper

Pol­i­tics aside, as far as putting on a com­pelling debate, Cooper suc­ceeded there as well. The night moved quickly, a good spec­trum of top­ics were cov­ered, and Cooper man­aged to stay out of the way. This was the can­di­dates’ show, and that’s the way it should be.

This was also the first debate in recent mem­ory where the mod­er­a­tor didn’t sin­gle out a can­di­date for elim­i­na­tion. One of the most frus­trat­ing parts of these nights in the past has been watch­ing the mod­er­a­tor act like a big game hunter look­ing for a tro­phy by zero­ing in on a Rom­ney, Perry or Cain for destruc­tion. Cooper was right to throw a jump ball marked “9 – 9-​9″ to open the show, but there was lot of blood on the floor tonight and it came from more than one per­son — which is how it’s sup­posed to be.

As for the debate itself I found excel­lent analy­sis at Legal Insur­rec­tion:

Perry the win­ner not because he was so much bet­ter than the oth­ers, but because he was so much bet­ter than he was pre­vi­ously. He may have revi­tal­ized his cam­paign tonight. Cain was dam­aged, but not fatally. Rom­ney was okay, held his ground. Newt and San­to­rum both good, stood out. Bach­mann pretty good also. Ron Paul an outlier.

Bar­bara Espinosa is a big Perry backer so I’d like to hear her opin­ion but that will have to wait for her to win her bat­tle against the hor­ri­ble Hotel Wi-​Fi but I think Byron York found the sin­gle most impor­tant moment of the night: Perry’s Coun­ter­at­tack on Rom­ney con­cern­ing ille­gal immi­gra­tion:

“Rick, again, Rick, I’m speak­ing,” Rom­ney said. “I’m speak­ing, I’m speak­ing, I’m speak­ing. You get 30 sec­onds. This is the way the rules work here…Anderson?”

By the time Rom­ney appealed to CNN mod­er­a­tor Ander­son Cooper for help, Rom­ney seemed flus­tered, almost fran­tic. “Would you please wait?” he said to Perry. “Are you just going to keep talking?”

That was a moment of pure weak­ness. Let me explain some­thing to the Gov­er­nor; unlike Mass­a­chu­setts where the left didn’t worry so much about a gov­er­nor they could over­ride at will, the boys in Wash­ing­ton will not play by any rules and nobody from the MSM will come to your aid.

Even worse for Mitt this made for TV moment for an attack ad:

“We went to the com­pany, and we said, ‘Look, you can’t have any ille­gals work­ing on our prop­erty,’” Rom­ney said. “I’m run­ning for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have ille­gals.” It wasn’t clear whether Rom­ney thought hir­ing ille­gals was bad in itself or whether he just thought it would look bad for a can­di­date pur­su­ing the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion for president.

I can see the “inde­pen­dent” ads now: In Demo­c­rat neigh­bor­hoods it will be played as a “hide the wet­backs” moment to ener­gize and anger the true believ­ers, in the GOP areas it will be played as “I can’t let peo­ple see me doing this” and will be played to sup­press turnout and pre­tend­ing it will not hap­pen will not do.

I think the debate helps Perry and Bach­mann and tweaks Cain slightly but In the short-​term like all the other debates the mem­o­ries will fade after a day, so we will get more of the same, a media that con­sid­ers Rom­ney Obama’s best chance ampli­fy­ing each gaffe a con­ser­v­a­tive makes in the race.

But be assured that the left know­ing they have to run Barack Obama against who­ever wins the nom­i­na­tion, should still be afraid, VERY afraid.

Update: Appar­ently in the spin Room Stacy reports, like in Dart­mouth, the press is still vot­ing Cain:

Ten weeks ago, when I fol­lowed Her­man Cain around to cam­paign events dur­ing his bus tour of Iowa, there were rarely more than two or three local reporters cov­er­ing him at each stop. When he arrived in the “spin room” in the base­ment of the Sands Expo Cen­ter last night, he was instantly swarmed by cam­era crews and reporters rep­re­sent­ing dozens of news agen­cies from around the world. The pun­dits must now recal­cu­late their esti­mates of Cain, the contender.

I pre­dict peo­ple will still be talk­ing Cain when the next debate comes around. Exit Ques­tion: At what point does Rick Perry start spend­ing money going after Cain.

Update 2: Do you want to smile con­cern­ing the debate? Read Sun­shine State Sarah.