libertarian polls strong after debate, which pisses off Sean Hannity and his cronies...
Last night, Texas congressman Ron Paul was a lone anti war voice on the stage. Paul defended his truly conservative position against the war, as the other candidates tried to twist his position for applause. After the debate, as it was obvious that Paul's message did get thru despite Sean Hannity and GOP lackey Michael Steele lobbying for Paul being banned from future debates as the congressman was actually winning Fox's own post debate poll with a 30% share.
By the time Paul was interviewed, Hannity was so upset with Paul's strong showing that he wouldn't let Paul answer any of his questions, cutting him off and filibustering neoconservative rhetoric as he shouted over the softer spoken libertarian. Of course, Paul was a gentleman, and he knew his message did get thru, at least in part, to the most right wing audience in all of major media despite his critics attempts to silence him. At the end of Hannity's fillibustering, Paul challenged Hannity to a 1 on 1 debate on the issue, a challenge that Hannity conveniently ignored.
At the end of the day, the poll, which had Paul leading for most of the night, ended up with Paul finishing right behind the best financed candidate in the race, Mitt Romney. Fox's "you decide" poll results ended up like this...
Romney -----29%
Paul -----------25%
Rudy G.-------19%
Huckabee-----8%
Hunter----------5%
McCain---------4%
Tancredo------3%
Brownback----1%
Gilmore--------0%
Thompson----0%
Also making strong showings were conservative "2nd tier" candidates Duncan Hunter and Mike Huckabee who drove home their messages to attempt woo the crowd in the audience and at home. And from Fox's results, it seems some were impressed.
Most of the night was about 10 guys trying to "outconservative" each other. And as the candidates threw barbs at each other, accusing each other of not being "Ronald Reagan" enough, like them. In fact , Reagan's name was invoked several times throughout the night, as current GOP President, George Bush was largely ignored. Except by John McCain, who suffered for it in the post debate poll.
The best part of the debate was Fox's handling of it. Which was outstanding for the most part. The pace was great, and the format was effective in getting the candidates to engage with each other much better than Chris Matthews and MSNBC managed to a couple weeks ago. The only problem I had with their format was the allowance of applause, which is usually shunned in these types of debates. But apparantly Fox wanted some "applause lines" to have some actual applause behind them for whatever future purpose they have.
But outside of that indescretion, the debate was highly entertaining and much more informative than their previous "meet and greet."
And a big chunk of the credit goes to Chris Wallace. The Fox anchor has been much maligned, rightly or wrongly, since his "sandbag" of former President Bill Clinton last year before the mid-term electons. But last night, Wallace asked good questions and didn't allow the debators to dodge his questions with pre-memorized speeches that didn't actually answer questions.
After candidates would begin to dodge a question and begin to make a stump speech, Wallace would back them up and make them "actually answer the question." Wallace even granted each candidate more time to actually answer his questions. It was refreshing to see a little tighter control of the debate which made the candidates actually step up to the plate instead of offering non relevant bumper sticker slogans. Except of course, when they wanted to attack Paul for his Iraq position. Then it was ok.
It will be interesting to see who gets a "bump" or a "lag" in the upcoming polls as we head into summer. But I wouldn't expect anyone to drop out of the race regardless of poll numbers this early. After all, the debates don't really cost much to participate in, so all the candidates can hang in there till August, when the Iowa straw poll will shift monies and cause some thinning of the herd going into the fall. Of course, in a wide open Presidential race, anything can happen, as Fox learned last night.