Florida Debate Thoughts

The major thing to strike me didn't even occur during the debate, it is (or is not) occurring this morning: no fevered shrieking about how unfair Tim Russert or Brian Williams are for asking tough questions. After the last MSNBC Democrat debate, Hillary front group Media Mutters and the other left wing outlets were chastising them for asking questions that might actually get to their thoughts on matters of great import. These are debates, isn't the point to get the candidates to answer substantive questions?

Second, I liked Rudy's answer to the question Williams asked about the NY Times endorsing Maverick and Shillary, he could have expanded on it by saying something like "the NY Times is the third best-selling paper in NY City behind the NY Post and the Wall Street Journal, why would I care about what they think" or something akin to that. Brian has it right when he says that an endorsement by the NY Times mean slightly less to conservative voters than an endorsement by Rosie O'Donnell and Keith Olbermann.

Video of that moment here:



Otherwise there were no earth shattering moments. It was a straight-forward debate about issues and the verbal attacks were minimal. I liked the candidates asking questions of other candidates, it was a nice difference.

Overall I don't think too many minds were changed and votes lost, I'd say Romney won but it won't mean much. It was analogous to a late season game between two teams who are out of the playoffs and playing out the season for pride instead of two teams battling for the number one seed and home field throughout.