What happened
The Republican presidential candidates stuck to their talking points Wednesday in the last debate before the Iowa caucuses. A rigid debate format kept the candidates from squaring off over key issues, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney refrained from attacking fellow front-runner Mike Huckabee over the hot-button issue of immigration. Former senator Fred Thompson attracted some much-needed attention, especially by leading a revolt against the debate’s moderator, Des Moines Register editor Carolyn Washburn, by refusing to participate in a show of hands on whether humans are causing climate change. (The New York Times, free registration)
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Thompson “did himself the most good,” said David Yepsen in the Des Moines Register. He “exuded executive persona,” and proved himself to be a “stand-up guy” by exhibiting a willingness to take on entitlement programs threatening to “bankrupt” the U.S. But front-runners Romney and Huckabee “avoided any last-minute derailments of their front-running candidacies in Iowa and shored up the support they’ve built.”
Romney did more than tread water, said Rich Lowry in National Review Online’s The Corner blog. He avoided “seeming small in fights with Huckabee”—thanks largely to a format that prohibited actual debate—and “seemed in control, substantive and positive.”
The debate’s moderator, Washburn, should keep her day job, said Dean Barnett in The Daily Standard.