Fox News's Great Debate

Fox News always does a great debate. My liberal friends will be mad at me for saying this but they've got the showmanship of these things down right. The questions are never too cloying; they tend to be pointed and only occasionally show flickers of right-wing idiocy. Britt Hume, Wendell Goler and Carl Cameron play it pretty straight and there's none of the O'Reilly or Hannity bombast. When Ron Paul, the irritated libertarian, said that we should take our troops off of the Arabian peninsula and noted that one of Al Qaeda's reasons for being in business in the first polace was because of the presence of said troops, Chris Wallace asked if he was letting Al Qaeda dictate his foreign policy. Paul deftly said that he was taking his orders from the Constitution.

The debate showed the schisms in the party. Yes, they all support the surge with the notable exception of Paul. But there are differences, certainly personal ones. Rudy praised McCain. McCain praised Rudy. Huckabee praised McCain. They all seem to hate Romney, the shifty newcomer. Romney was less dominant than in past debates. His rapid diction gave him a lighter feel than when he takes his time. McCain seemed like more of his old self. The twinkle was there and he got off the best line of the night saying that maybe Fred Thompson skipped the debate because it was "past his bedtime"--a deft touch that showed the 71-year-old to be sly and to imply that Thompson was the geriatric. Huckabee remained charming and strong. His lines about not hating immigrants, while boilerplate still softened the rhetorical tone of the party.

Giuliani, I think, looks better and better in these debates. He doesn't get rattled. He shows flashes of deadpan humor and he fires off enough anti-liberal fusillades to appease conservatives. He ripped into the liberal media and in the course of describing his tenure as New York City mayor made the nation's largest metropolis sound like a Stalinist redoubt that he single-handed liberated. His diction is slow and commanding. There's a reason he's still a very formidable candidate. Of course when Thompson starts showing up at these things the dynamic will be very different.