Andre Tartar notes that several candidates endorsed torture:
On subject after subject, the candidates tried to out-hawk each other and the president, with perhaps the most surprising development being that Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry would all like to reinstate waterboarding.
Conor Friedersdorf was wowed by Huntsman's and Paul's responses to the waterboarding question:
Jon Huntsman made the most eloquent case against waterboarding. "This country has values," he said. "We have a name brand in the world… I've been an ambassador for my country three times. I've lived overseas and done business. We diminish our standing in the world and the values that we project that include liberty and democracy, human rights and open markets when we torture. We should not torture. Water-boarding is torture. We dilute ourselves down like a whole lot of other countries and we lose our ability to project values that a lot of people in a lot of corners of the world are still relying on the United States to stand up for."
Candidates are strongly inclined to do in office what they promised on the campaign trail. Torture, war with Iran — these aren’t throwaway lines on the campaign trail but what we can reasonably expect if Republicans capture the White House, at least unless Ron Paul or Gary Johnson or Jon Huntsman shocks us all and wins the nomination.
Jennifer Rubin, no surprise, calls Perry's call to re-examine all foreign aid a gaffe:
[Perry's] pronounced that “absolutely, every country would start at zero on aid.” Asked specifically, he said that included Israel. Now, they’d probably get a hefty amount, he added. Well, oops. As fast as you could say “damage control,” the Perry campaign was out with an e-mail explaining how he was committed to Israel (which he is). But why treat Israel as any other supplicant? And really, as a budgetary matter, foreign aid is insignificant. Perry no doubt would be a warm friend to Israel, but the gaffe was the sort of rookie mistake one might expect of a governor lacking foreign-policy nuance.
Bruce Reidel agrees:
The reality is that military budgets are planned on multiyear cycles. Friends don't rethink their friendships each fiscal year. The Pentagon and the IDF are tied together ’round the clock with hotlines and early-warning alert centers. I helped set up the hotline from the defense secretary's Pentagon office to the defense minister's Tel Aviv headquarters. It conveys the constancy and consistency of the alliance, a special relationship.
Kevin Drum's impression of the debate as a whole:
Herman Cain almost charmingly demonstrated that he simply knows nothing about the outside world, and Rick Perry beat expectations by not imploding spectacularly again. All of the candidates insisted that they'd take a completely different approach to Iran than Barack Obama, but then proposed doing almost exactly what Obama is doing. For the most part, though, as Dan Drezner says, the candidates kept the crazy bottled up fairly well. But not always.
Huntsman is clearly the most seasoned foreign policy hand in the field. He’s trying desperately to capitalize on that, including launching a new ad in the run-up to the debate. But it just doesn’t seem to matter.
Dan Drezner graded each candidate. His review of Herman Cain:
The worst debate performance of the night. Slow, rambling, evasive, and contradictory. His answer on torture contradicted itself inside of 30 seconds; his Pakistan response was a total dodge. His solution on Iran — energy independence! — would be like suggesting that the appropriate response to a rising China would be to move all Americans to Mars. Both activities will take the same length of time. Grade: F.
Fred Kaplan was equally unimpressed:
Cain was remarkably honest about how little he knows, about anything. Is Pakistan a friend or foe? “We don’t know.” Would you send American ground forces to clear out the sanctuaries in Pakistan? “That is a discussion that I would make after consulting with commanders on the ground” (and with the Afghans and Pakistanis too). How would you know when to overrule your military commanders? I’m afraid I dropped my pen in astonishment, so didn’t get an exact quote, but Cain said that he would surround himself with “the right people … multiple groups of people offering different ideas,” then choose the ideas that “make sense.” (So that’s how it’s done.)
Josh Marshall thinks Rick Perry did well, relatively speaking:
If this Rick Perry had shown up for the other debates it’s interesting to speculate where this race would be now. Less hypothetically, can this kind of performance along with the massive amounts of money Perry’s now readying to spend on TV ads change the equation and get him back into the race? It’s really hard to figure how he gets back into it. But who knows?
The Dish 