Up to now [Romney] had looked consistently solid in these forums: calm, cool, reasonable, informed, somewhat robotic, but on the whole believably presidential. Tonight, by contrast, it was as though he had prepped for the showdown by doing several lines of coke backstage. He was talking too fast. Blinking too fiercely. Fidgeting too much. Babbling. Cackling. On the whole looking, as Newt Gingrich might put it, fundamentally twitchy
Clearly, [Romney] is in trouble. I date that trouble to his late-November decision to jump into Iowa. It seemed a smart move at the time: Herman Cain was the front-runner, but that wasn’t going to last. Newt’s surge was just beginning; there was no way to tell how intense it would become. It seemed plausible that Romney might sneak a victory with his chronic 25% support level. Now it seems possible he might be clobbered there, finishing well behind Gingrich and Ron Paul, perhaps even slipping down to Rick Perry level (a level Romney attained, momentarily, by challenging Perry to that bet).
Gingrich’s poise was in sharp contrast to the botched attacks, missed opportunities, and general awkwardness that marred Cain’s and Perry’s performances earlier this fall and helped end their surges. And his response to Romney’s early attacks was the rule for the night. For every criticism from an opponent Gingrich was ready with a snappy, confident explanation. His answers amounted to gobbledygook at times — like his insistence that conservatives of the early ’90s had only proposed an individual mandate in an effort to stop Hillary Clinton’s healthcare reform plan — but Gingrich isunusually effective at selling gobbledygook. There was plenty in his performance Saturday night to reassure the hordes of new supporters who’ve flocked to his campaign in recent weeks.
Gingrich just schooled Romney in their first clash. Total Gingrich win. Romney would do better to get it into his head that the salient difference between him and Gingrich has nothing to do with which one of them is a professional politician. Romney has more recent experience of elected office and has been running for who-knows-how-long. The salient difference is that Romney has experience of the private sector and Gingrich was a beneficiary of crony capitalism.
I think Romney’s strategy of going negative on Newt Gingrich at this point is a mistake (better to let Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann carry the ball on that one), and he was clearly thrown when George Stephanopolous demanded that he attack on cue early on, but if you’re going to attack, you need to do it well – and he very much didn’t. He didn’t have a lot of awful moments outside of challenging Rick Perry to a $10,000 bet (over something that Perry was basically correct about), but overall Romney probably gave his weakest performance.
Romney … made the gaffe of the evening when he attacked Rick Perry, of all people. Until now, Romney has been very careful not to punch below his class, but Perry got under his skin and Romney ended up going after Perry on Gardasil all over again. He didn’t do it well, either, and when Perry attacked Romney over statements in his book regarding health care, Romney tried to intimidate Perry by challenging him to bet $10,000 over the issue. If Romney wanted to make himself look rich, arrogant, and clueless, he could hardly have done a better job. When was the last time someone challenged you to a ridiculous bet in order to intimidate you out of an argument? For me, I think it was junior-high school.
Nate Silver kept an eye on Intrade during the debate:
I checked the share prices for the seven major Republican contenders at 8:59 p.m. on Saturday, just before the debate began. Those prices represent estimates of the likelihood that the candidates will win their party’s nomination. At that point, Mr. Romney’s chances of winning the nomination were attributed to be 47.2 percent. They had declined to 44.4 percent, however, as of 12:27 a.m. on Sunday. Meanwhile, the share price for Newt Gingrich, who had a strong evening, rose significantly.
It was the first time [Gingrich had] attacked another candidate on the debate stage, after months of attacking debate moderators for even trying to make the candidates fight…. Romney revealed that he really isn't as good at Gingrich at dishing this out. No one is—not in this field. No one thinks as quickly on his feet, and no one tosses up so many decoys to escape set traps.
Dan Drezner goes after Gingrich for questioning whether American will survive should Iran get the bomb:
Even a nuclear-armed Iran led by the current regime of nutball theocrats cannot threaten America's survival. I get why the United States is concerned about Iran going nuclear, and I get why Israel is really concerned about Iran going nuclear. The only way that developments in Iran could threaten America'ssurvival, however, would be if the US policy response was so hyperbolic that it ignited a general Middle East war that dragged in Russia and China. Which… come to think of it, wouldn't be entirely out of the question under a President Gingrich.
Daniel Larison focuses on Gingrich's Israel misinformation:
Gingrich’s remarks have nothing to do with telling the truth, and there’s certainly no courage required to make these statements. On the contrary, he is deliberately trying to deny an obvious reality to curry favor with hard-liners in his party. It’s a shame that the other candidates and the journalists at the debate allowed him to preserve the appearance of being someone interested in an accurate understanding of history.
In saying of the Palestinians, “These people are terrorists,”a statement blatantly aimed at the six out of ten Iowa Republicans who describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, he answered Hunter Thompson’s famous question about President Nixon’s 1972 campaign: How low do you have to go to be President of this country? Newt, we now know—did we ever doubt it?—will dig all the way to China.