Alex Marlow, Managing Editor, Breitbart.com:

New, aggressive Mitt Romney, who debuted in the goofy Brian Williams quasi-debate last week, was out in full force tonight and he was very, very good. Romney needs to be ready for a fight if he’s to go toe-to-toe with Obama, and the former Massachusetts Governor is finally showing some grit. Rick Santorum drew some blood on him in a heated exchange on healthcare, but Mitt has sworn he’d repeal Obamacare, and that should mitigate many voters’ concerns about his sub-par record on that issue.

Newt Gingrich is most effective when he’s bashing the media and taking the fight to the left (as opposed to strictly Obama), and he wasn’t able do much of either tonight. He called moderator Wolf Blitzer on one “nonsense question,” which was fun, and was able to shoe-horn in one Alinsky reference (which he didn’t have the chance to flesh-out), but those high-ish-lights weren’t enough to make up for an otherwise pedestrian performance.

Rick Santorum spent the first two thirds of the debate yelling at people—though his talking yelling points were generally quite good—and then got sweet and sensitive for the latter third. I like my President cool, calm, and collected, and Santorum needs work on that front.

Thanks to Ron Paul for the comic relief.

As usual, the real winner tonight was President Obama and his palace guards we call the mainstream media. While Wolf Blitzer wasn’t overtly partisan, he was able to keep the focus off of the failure currently occupying the White House or left-wing values and on moon colonies and which wife is best.

Mike Flynn, Editor, BigGovernment:

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Tonight, the 4 remaining GOP candidates meet for the final debate ahead of the Florida Primary on Tuesday. Expect fireworks between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Also, expect great analysis and reactions from the Breitbart world after the debate. Get the popcorn ready, sparks start flying at 8pm EST on CNN (!).

Newt Gingrich was a tour de force in tonight’s debate. He took a narrative the media hammered at al day, flipped it, and effectively killed it in the span of five minutes. He received another standing O for his rhetorical display thereby insulating himself from further attacks by the other candidates.

No candidate would repeat John King’s remarks after watching the audience’s reaction. He rode the wave for almost the entire debate. Gingrich has repented for his trangressions; as voters we are trying to decide whether he’s genuine. Some will decide that he is; some will decide he’s not.

Santorum bombed on the SOPA question. Internet piracy is a problem but SOPA is akin to shooting goldfish in a bucket with a shotgun. Santorum argues that there should be protections for IP holders on the Internet and says that SOPA goes too far, but I’m not convinced of his resolve. As my friend Derek Hunter notes, tell that to Napster.

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MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP) Romney did say that while he might be willing to release his tax returns, he wouldn’t do so until tax filing time in April. And the multimillionaire former businessman didn’t get much gratitude from his rivals for his halting change of heart.

“If there’s nothing there, why is he waiting `til April?” Gingrich told reporters.

Romney at first sidestepped calls from his rivals to release his records, then acknowledging later that he’d follow the lead of previous presidential candidates.

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Mike Flynn, Editor, BigGovernment:

At last, days before what everyone in the media claims is the “final” primary contest before Romney’s inevitable capture of the GOP nomination, we had our first real debate. Not only was there back-and-forth among the candidates, but we were also treated to something resembling substance on some interesting issues. After South Carolina, something like 3% of all GOP delegates will have been selected. No need to end this party too soon, especially since the candidates’ characters and positions are only now starting to emerge.

Gov. Perry and Gingrich had the best night, overall. But, a good debate performance is already baked into the cake for Newt, so it isn’t clear how much of a bump he gets. Perry has steadily improved in the debates, with tonight’s performance being his best, but it may be too little too late. Sad, as I still think he has the record and the temperament to warrant a second look. GOP voters seem stubbornly fixated on never giving him that.

Romney, on the cusp of the media’s coronation, was finally subjected to sustained attacks from his rivals. He generally deflected most of these. But, not in a way that gives me confidence should he be the nominee. It was more in the ‘i-have-some-good-lines-to-counter-these-points’ kind of deflection rather than directly answering the charge. He was trying to win on points. Marquiss of Queensbury rules won’t cut it in November.

As for Santorum….well. He could certainly best Obama in a smugness contest. I’d like to borrow that man’s mirror for a day, but I’d probably become convinced I’m some modern-day Pericles and combust in a fire-ball of my own awesomeness. That a collection of evangelical leaders tapped him as their choice for the next President says way too much about the current state of leadership in the evangelical movement.

Ron Paul seems to be having a blast in this campaign. I know many people obsess over his obviously antiquated views on foreign policy, but he is acting like a modern-day Diogenes and making the other candidates more honest.

Line of the night goes to Gingrich: 99 weeks is an Associate Degree.

Dana Loesch, Editor, BigJournalism:

Newt Gingrich won tonight’s debate. Rick Perry finished second, followed by Santorum, Romney, and Paul. My favorite moment of the debate was when Romney slammed campaign finance law and the necessity of super PACs thus slamming … John McCain’s legislation. McCain, who last week endorsed him. Gingrich’s Ben Franklin-esque answer on helping people from poverty rather than making them easier in it earned him a standing O. Takeaway quote on unemployment benefits: “99 weeks is an associate degree.”

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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) Sunday’s debate began much the same way as Saturday night’s, with Gingrich saying Romney was a “relatively timid Massachusetts moderate” whose state ranked fourth from the bottom in job creation when he was governor.

But confronted with one of his campaign leaflets declaring Romney to be unelectable against President Barack Obama, Gingrich hedged. “I think he’ll have a very hard time getting elected.”

Romney said he had created more jobs in one state than Obama has in the entire country, adding that it was important to replace “a lifetime politician” like the president with a different type of leader.

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Mike Flynn, Editor Big Government:

Little known fact; during the last GOP debate in Iowa, the RNC held their holiday party at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in DC. There weren’t any TVs among the open bars. So, no one at the RNC was actually watching the debate among candidates vying to be the standard-bearer of the party. Perhaps the RNC has throw parties during all of these debates. How else to explain its continuing acquiescence in letting the legacy media pay inquisitors to its nominees? The GOP field actually did well combatting some of silliness from Diane Sawyer, Snuffleupagas and some guy we’ll never hear from again. But, the American public was short-changed in getting 1 hour and 41 minutes (!) of chatter on issues that almost no one outside of the hard left cares about. (2 questions on the economy…kinda?) Et tu RNC?

The obvious big winner of the night was Mitt Romney. Inexplicably, he largely escaped criticism from his fellow nominees. Weirder still, as Romney is vulnerable to at least 25 attacks from the right, is the fact that Newt, et al decided to attack him from the left. Being in the same room as Snuffleupagas will do that to you I guess.

The other big winner was Ron Paul. One would have thought he were the front-runner given the attention he received from the moderator and other nominees. Santorum, inexplicably finding himself in the big leagues, reverted to form and acted like a candidate who is simply trying to get attention. His initial statement that America doesn’t need a CEO or manager, but a leader is frankly baffling. I think it speaks to a personal insecurity that he has virtually no private sector experience and no executive experience. Making awesome speeches on the House or Senate floor is not a leader. He was like a player called up to the majors who whiffed at every at-bat. Santomentum is fading.

Newt seemed neutered. He did a great professorial turn at times and reminded me how great he is in this medium, but he need to draw distinctions. He didn’t.

Perry did well, but he was mostly irrelevant tonight. He started with a great theme about Washington insiders, but pulled his punches in the end. He didn’t screw up, but he needs to quickly put points on the board.

Huntsman spoke Chinese.

Whatever happens in November, whomever at the RNC approved these debate formats needs to find a new line of work.

Alex Marlow, Managing Editor, Breitbart.com:

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(Reuters) – The knives will come out at back-to-back debates this weekend as Republican presidential hopefuls frantically jockey for position days before New Hampshire’s key primary.

Debates are once again the main show in the 2012 race after candidates spent two weeks on the road campaigning in coffee shops and pizza places through Iowa and now, New Hampshire.

The six contenders will go at it twice within 12 hours, first on Saturday night and then again on Sunday morning. It is their last, best chance to sway large numbers of voters with New Hampshire set to vote on Tuesday.

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Last night the leading GOP candidates for President held their final debate before voting starts in Iowa next month. Below are reactions from two more Breitbart editors.

Joel Pollak, EIC Breitbart.com:

I thought each of the candidates did well tonight. I was particularly impressed by Rep. Michele Bachmann–though I don’t care for her attacks on other candidates, she showed the poise that earned her frontrunner status early in the campaign. I was somewhat disappointed with Gov. John Huntsman, who is surging in New Hampshire and could have been expected to deliver a more effective performance.

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If I were living in Mexico I would do everything in my power to get myself and my wife across the border to America, and that would include breaking immigration laws. There’s no way I could live with myself if I didn’t do everything a husband should to get his wife out of the poverty, corruption and hopelessness that represents too much of Latin America. Knowing this about myself makes it hard for me to condemn others who actually  are in that situation and have decided to do the same.

Though he’s taken it back enough times for me to believe him, Governor Rick Perry was wrong to question the “hearts” of those who disagreed with his decision to offer in-state tuition to the children of illegal immigrants, and he was even more wrong to create a magnet that uses taxpayer dollars to incentivize even more illegal to cross the border and burden our system.

But Newt Gingrich is absolutely right that of the 11 or 12 million illegals currently living in this country, many have lived here for years and are a part of a community and a part of a family that deportation would tear apart.

Are we really prepared to do that?

Talk radio host Dennis Prager once made a point about this issue that’s worth repeating: Every day throughout Southern California thousands of illegals gather outside Home Depots everywhere (this is a fact) looking for someone to pick them up and give them day labor. Every day, who knows how many housewives pick up these illegals and take them home alone to do that day labor. And yet you never hear about a rape or robbery or murder in these circumstances. Never.

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There were three winners in the CNBC debate: Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich. Gov. Rick Perry was the obvious loser because of his memory lapse.

The guy with the toughest job on Wednesday night was Herman Cain, who has been hammered by sexual-harassment charges. He needed a strong performance to put him back on message with his 9-9-9 tax plan and pro-business, free-enterprise views. I give him first prize, simply because he performed so well. He had the most to gain and the most to lose. He gained.

How these sex-harassment charges play out remains to be seen. And how much damage they will do to the Cain campaign is an unknown. But it’s noteworthy that a new Rasmussen poll for the Florida Republican primary shows Cain at 30 percent, Romney at 24 percent, and Gingrich at 19 percent. At the moment, Cain is still at or near the top of the pack. So far, it’s hard to find any Republican-voter migration away from Cain.

But the more interesting story might be Newt Gingrich, who has surged into third place. When I interviewed him on Tuesday, the night before the debate, I asked him about 1 percent versus 99 percent, the class-warfare argument being propagated by President Obama and the Wall Street protesters. Gingrich replied, “I am for 100 percent. I think this idea of 99 percent and 1 percent is grotesque European-socialist class-warfare bologna.” (Italics mine.) No one puts it that well.

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This email from TeamPerry hit our inbox this morning:

We’ve all had human moments. President Obama is still trying to find all 57 states. Ronald Reagan got lost somewhere on the Pacific Highway in an answer to a debate question. Gerald Ford ate a tamale without removing the husk. And tonight Rick Perry forgot the third agency he wants to eliminate. Just goes to show there are too damn many federal agencies.

The governor said it best afterwards: “I’m glad I had my boots on, because I sure stepped in it tonight.”

While the media froths over this all too human moment, we thought we would take this opportunity to ask your help in doing something much more constructive: write us to let us know what federal agency you would most like to forget.

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Mitt Romney is still flip-flopping even as he seems ever more confident of the Republican nomination. Rick Perry is breathing life into his campaign, after his poor debate showings, with his new flat tax plan, which has been fairly well received. Herman Cain, the intelligent, accomplished, and optimistic man he is, nevertheless is encountering flip-flopping problems of his own, particularly around his stance on abortion and the question of the number of “9’s” in his economic plan. Ron Paul, polling the strongest he ever has over the years, still needs to convince more Americans that the elimination of major agencies of the federal government won’t make the country fall apart. Michele Bachmann may be fizzling out, despite her conviction to repeal Obamacare, and Rick Santorum, another individual of strong conservative convictions, still can pull ahead.

And from the shadows of what is called his “personal baggage,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is gradually rising. Turns out Mr. Gingrich had a flat tax plan way before Mr. Perry, one that is favored by many conservatives/libertarians because of its flat 15% tax rate, as opposed to Mr. Perry’s 20%. Speaker Gingrich provides a comparison of both his and Rick Perry’s plans on his website.

An informal poll taken at Hot Air on Tuesday shows that Ron Paul’s economic plan garners 56% of voters’ support, followed by Newt Gingrich’s plan at about 25%. Rick Perry’s plan received about 9% of the vote, and Herman Cain came in with about 7%. Mitt Romney’s more complicated plan received under 2% of the vote.

We are now coming to terms with the fact that none of the Republican candidates for President are perfect. Many of us like different qualities in each of them and would like to “build” our own candidates from various components. We soothe ourselves a bit by considering the matrix of presidential/vice-presidential ticket possibilities. Perhaps if we pair them up, we can get the best qualities of at least two of them? But really, there can only be one President. (more…)

Pardon us for stating the obvious, everyone knows this, along with knowing that if there were a Republican in the White House, Washington is precisely where the main protest effort would be held. Funny how things change with Barry, the community organizer-in-chief in the House.

More Americans blame Washington than Wall Street for the country’s economic problems, a new poll shows.

Will last night’s debate revive Perry’s struggling candidacy? Reuters and others seem to think  so.

“This is the start of Romney vs. Romney. We’ll have him debating himself before this is over,” said one senior Perry adviser, explaining the strategy.

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, or so they say; however, what happens throughout the state of Nevada does not, obviously. They may have placed a bet, but there’s still seems room for hedging it, somewhat.

“It’s not necessarily a different answer. It’s just the more discussions you have the more you take into perspective,” she said after Tuesday night’s GOP debate in Las Vegas. “You just have to weigh pros and cons — so, as of now, we are still on the 14th.” Five GOP presidential candidates have said they will boycott Nevada’s caucuses if the date is not altered to accommodate New Hampshire.

Keep your eyes on Greece. Occupy Wall Street may be more entertaining, but only so long  as there is a Wall Street to occupy.

(Reuters) – Greek unions began a 48-hour general strike on Wednesday, the biggest protest in years, as parliament prepared to vote on sweeping new austerity measures designed to stave off a default that could trigger a crisis in the wider euro zone. (more…)

Mike Flynn, BigGoverment EIC: Rick Perry bought himself some time. His performance was uneven, but he showed glimmers of real energy and a fighting spirit. It was his best performance to date. His plan to boost energy production is a solid plan and, since it can be done largely through executive action, very achievable. That said, he needs to do a better job of linking his plan to the overall economy and how his policies will benefit voters in non-energy-rich states. He’s running for President of the US, not Texas.

Throughout the debate I kept having to remind myself that Ron Paul is a little bit crazy, because he turned in a very good performance. His campaign this time around is tacking more to mainstream GOP issues, rather than some of the more fringe issues he focused on in the past. He and Gingrich are acting as a kind of Greek chorus, providing something of a conscience for the other candidates.

As expected, Mitt Romney gave a solid debate performance. He’s good in these venues. He is very good at playing the role of President; the problem for him is that many conservatives worry about what he’ll do once he is actually President. I don’t think conservatives saw anything last night to make them more comfortable with Romney, but I expect mainstream GOPers will start to openly endorse him.

Cain will fade. There is too much ambiguity around his 9-9-9 plan and he isn’t doing anything to build up a campaign infrastructure. My private theory is that he is a stalking horse for Romney. His role is to block Perry from consolidating the anti-Romney vote. Cain is running to be Romney’s VP or a cabinet secretary.

Larry O’Connor, Breitbart.tv EIC: It seems that every debate thus far has had a front-runner or “flavor of the month” go down under an assault by all of the other candidates. Bachmann and Perry both came into debates over the past months with weekly news magazine cover stories, momentum and targets on their backs. Each could not live up to the expectations they brought. Last night it was Herman Cain’s turn, and as long as the discussion stayed centered around domestic and fiscal policies, he actually maintained his presence as the most interesting and inspiring candidate. But he truly showed his lack of preparedness on foreign issues and Republican voters tend to want a candidate who knows his way around tricky world affairs.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Benjamin Domenech moderates a super-sized panel with Guy Benson, Matt Lewis, and Pejman Yousefzadeh on their reactions to last night’s debate.

We’re brought to you as always by Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Matt Lewis and the News
Guy Benson’s Townhall Columns
Pejman Yousefzadeh’s Chequer Board
Benjamin Domenech’s daily email, The Transom

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Last week’s GOP presidential debate hosted by Bloomberg and The Washington Post at Dartmouth College continued to reveal an emerging storyline of this election cycle. A few observations:

Herman Cain continues to impress. This guy has moxie, folks. He knows what he believes and why he believes it. One attendee in the audience last week told me Cain has a presence when in the room, and there’s something refreshing (if cavalier) about his approach and the way he argues his points. There were a few slip-ups, but overall, it was a solid performance, and his trajectory continues to rise.

Some seem surprised that Herman Cain is now the frontrunner, but it make perfect sense. What Cain represents is something that has been severely lacking in political leadership, and that is common sense. Interestingly enough, the vast majority of people in this country still have a modicum of common sense, which explains why his poll numbers continue to rise as more people become aware of him. Many politicians appear to have some common sense when they first go to Washington and than rapidly lose it due to the influence of special interest groups, including organized political parties. If Mr. Cain can resist contamination by traditional Washington influences, he may prove to be just what our nation needs for restoration to greatness. (more…)

Bloomberg and The Washington Post are scheduled to start trying to smear the candidates at 8pm EDT. Whomever “wins,” the GOP has already lost by allowing their enemies in the press to vet their candidates. Will the other candidates (and the moderators, of course) try to “finish off” Rick Perry or shift their attention to the surging Herman Cain? Will Romney or Cain ever criticize each other? Will Ron Paul still look at Iran and say, “meh, live and let live”?

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Last night, to its credit, CNN showed what can happen if a news organization sets aside its political bias and lets the candidates actually debate. If journalism schools exist in the future, they should build a course around comparing the MSNBC/Politico partisan hackery with last night’s CNN debate.

Below is a recap of reactions from your BIG editors:

Andrew Breitbart: Whatever Wolf Blitzer took to make it tolerable for him to be around so many flyover-country Tea Party rubes, he should distribute it to his peers in the mainstream media for the coming election year. CNN put on the show that MSNBC was government-subsidized not to. What was conspicuously missing–and thus making it journalistically fair–was the usual framing of Tea Party concerns as inherently racist. So CNN, especially with its exciting intro package that felt like an ESPN playoff game intro, gets high grades. Maybe I was so appalled by MSNBC’s lower-than-low performance that CNN comes out the winner this evening, simply by behaving professionally.

What Democrats and leftists want is that artificial injection of race. But those who will bring it up in desperation after this Tampa tea party debate will have exposed one of the Democratic Party’s greatest weaknesses: concern over the plight of real minority oppression. None of the Tea Party’s critics will recognize that one of tonight’s questioners was a Tea Party member who happened to be a Muslim woman from Afghanistan. To the modern leftist, this woman is invisible. Her question mark spurring cognitive dissonance across the Daily Kos-Huffington Post-MSNBC bizarro world spectrum.

As for the candidates, there was one moment where Chuck Barris should have gonged Jon Huntsman: his humorously prepared, yet clunkily delivered “no apology” reference to Kurt Cobain. He’s providing no value to the debates, and has no constituency. Tonight should be his last debate. If MSNBC tried to bury Bachmann in the previous debate at the Reagan library, she resurrected herself on CNN tonight. The predictable governor-à-governor sparring of Romney and Perry is already becoming tedious.

Mike Flynn: Now we know why CNN has the brand it does. Hopefully, John Harris, Brian Williams, Politico and MSNBC were taking notes. Wolf certainly got his liberal biases in, from time to time, but not at the expense of a free-wheeling and interesting GOP debate. Newt had the best lines in the debate, but he’s Newt and isn’t going anywhere. Everyone else had some good lines. Rick Perry, yet again, was the subject of attacks from all sides. He was much steadier than in the first debate. He stood his ground, so I score him with the win.

Joel Pollak, EIC Breitbart: The big winner tonight was the Tea Party.

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Tonight, CNN and Tea Party Express co-host a debate of GOP candidates in Tampa, FL, site of the upcoming GOP convention. I’m not really sure how the ‘tea party’ is going to be represented in this debate, since the moderators are pulled from CNN, but there is no way it can be any worse than the MSNBC/Politico forum last week. In that fiasco, John Harris and Brian Williams drew deeply from lefty activists like ThinkProgress to launch attacks on the GOP candidates. It was as if the DNC had done a mind-meld with Harris and Williams (redundant, I know!), and got 90+ minutes to prospect for material for negative campaign ads.

Color me naive, but CNN is not MSNBC. Liberal, sure. But, it at least tries not to seem totally in the tank for the left, unlike Politico and MSNBC. So, I don’t think the DNC will own the same real estate in Wolf Blitzer’s brain as it had in Harris/Williams. Then again, according to news reports today, it won’t have to. Amazingly, two leading candidates for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann, look set to take a page from the DNC and ThinkProgress playbook and attack Gov. Rick Perry for daring to speak the truth about Social Security. Below is a flier the Romney campaign is distributing in Florida.

And, yesterday, Bachmann’s campaign had this to say to Byron York:

“Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America,” says a Bachmann adviser. “Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does. She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” … “She strongly disagrees with his position on that…”

So let me get this straight; we now have TWO GOP candidates against any kind of entitlement reform? Really? We can’t begin to get out from under our overwhelming debt burden unless we tackle these auto-pilot programs. You could close every government agency and slash defense spending in half and we’re still screwed if we don’t reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. How can Romney or Bachmann seek to be President if they don’t understand this basic fact? I mean, its not just a theory…its math.

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