There was nostalgia in the air as the four surviving Republican candidates met at the Reagan library to debate for what is probably the final time in the 2008 primary election season – at least as a collection of viable candidates who still have a chance to win the GOP nomination.

 
There was nostalgia because they met at the Reagan library, where they’d first debated as an entire Republican field in early May of last year. It’s hard to believe that nearly nine months have passed since that first ‘group meeting,’ where the most memorable aspect of that particular evening was Rudy Giuliani’s fumbled answer concerning his abortion stance.

 
Governors Tommy Thompson and Jim Gilmore were there – remember those guys?

 
Do you remember MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asking for a show of hands on whether the candidates believe in the theory of evolution? My how things evolve and change – at least now we’re talking about real issues. And the ‘then’ front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, has now endorsed John McCain.

 
There also was nostalgia because the candidates spoke in the building where Ronald Reagan’s Air Force One 707 is permanently housed, with the plane’s cabin maintained as if the Gipper himself was going to climb aboard at any moment and fly off to meet Mikhail Gorbachev. It’s like time standing still in the conservative 80’s. 

 
Finally, there was nostalgia because there was a tangible sense that all of this ‘hoopla’ is ending. I don’t think anybody’s sad that the long, drawn out campaign season is finally working itself out – but I think most true conservatives are plenty sorry that John McCain looks like the candidate with irresistible momentum.

 
He’s the ‘man of steel’ in the Republican Party now, who would’ve ever thought?

 
It’s not really a sense of sadness to think of McCain as the nominee – it’s more like, what now? It’s the same feeling you get when you’ve just done or said something stupid, and the impulse shocks your brain – ‘man, I sure wish I hadn’t done that.’

 
The unspoken theme of the evening was: can John McCain be stopped? The unspoken answer is: no. In my mind, McCain won the debate – not because he offered superior ideas, or any real ideas at all beyond his spur of the moment ‘I’m going to screw the Republicans again, just because I feel like it, and I can’ feelings.

 
McCain won the debate because Mitt Romney just couldn’t gain a foothold on why McCain doesn’t deserve the nomination.

 
McCain looked calm and confident, and everything Mitt Romney said seemed to bounce off him like bullets off of Superman. McCain is the one with the legendary bad temper, but somehow the victories of the past several weeks, the endorsements from many in the party establishment and the confidence of barely 1/3 of Republican voters in South Carolina and Florida appears to leave him with an invincibility that won’t be shattered.

 
He’s aided by the fact that Romney refuses to go after George W. Bush specifically, which might gain Romney some credibility for bucking the establishment. Late in the debate, Romney was fed a Peggy Noonan quote about how George W. Bush has destroyed the party by turning its coalitions against each other. Romney ducked any direct criticism of Bush, just as he ducked the very first question of the evening, posed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper: ‘Ronald Reagan posed a famous question in 1980, about whether America is better off than it was four years ago under Jimmy Carter. Mr. Romney, is America better off now after seven years of George W. Bush?’

 
Romney waffled and started talking about his record in Massachusetts, not wanting to attack Bush directly. McCain got a chance and wouldn’t do it either. Mike Huckabee first said that we aren’t better off, and then proceeded to defend the Bush Administration. Ron Paul was the only candidate who said unequivocally no, we aren’t better off.

 
Ron Paul is the real ‘straight’ talker of this campaign season, the only one who consistently stands up to fight the emerging dominance of federal power, the only one who doesn’t seem to care about what the party establishment thinks, and the only one who is clearly ideologically based.

 
I’ve said it before – put Ron Paul’s ideas in Mitt Romney’s or Fred Thompson’s body, combine it with Mike Huckabee’s gift for oration and you’ve got one heck of a candidate.

 
Or, I guess we already had that combination once – he was called Ronald Reagan.

 
But now, the only issue that seems to faze ‘the man of steel’ is immigration (does that mean it’s like kryptonite?). McCain fielded a question regarding the amnesty bill that he sponsored in 2006 – whether he would now sign it into law if it was presented to him as president.

 
Uh-oh. McCain said ‘it would never pass today, so it’s a non-issue whether I would sign it.’ Well, John, can you address the gist of the question, then?

 
It was just another bullet that spent itself before penetrating Superman’s body. Arise, Sir John, and accept the badge of the GOP.

 

Who would’ve thought?

 
CNN – Unfair, unbalanced, and dishonored

 
As previously mentioned, the debate took place with Ronald Reagan’s 707 in the background – and the atmosphere was somewhat surreal, with the candidates seated comfortably in back of a table. It was just about as ‘comfortable’ a stage as you’re ever going to get for a debate. It was almost like holding the forum at a mall with the open air all around.

 
So comfortable, in fact, that CNN felt completely cozy enough to virtually ignore Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul the entire debate. Huckabee -- echoing Tom Tancredo and Democrat Mike Gravel from earlier debates – complained a few times about the lack of ‘time’ being allotted to him, and although it sounded like he was whining, he was right.

 
Gentlemanly Ron Paul didn’t complain at all, but maybe that led to some open rudeness by Anderson Cooper, who literally cut Paul off after a few sentences on the few occasions that he was ‘allowed’ to speak.

 
Cooper announced at the beginning of the debate that the candidates were on the ‘honor’ system in terms of limiting their answers to the questions. Well, CNN was clearly under no such restrictions, as there was no ‘honor’ in the control room, or in the moderator’s chair. 

 
CNN alone has apparently determined that this race is down to McCain and Romney – and they were completely willing to throw the juiciest questions towards their end of the table, and then let them fight it out and point fingers virtually uninterrupted. Maybe it makes for good theater and good TV, but it did little to move the discourse along.

 
McCain’s not funny, he’s ‘mean’

 
One of the many reasons why conservatives and many Republicans intensely dislike John McCain is because the Arizona Senator has made a career out of criticizing his colleagues, often cutting deeply and personally in order to advance himself and his megalomaniacal agenda.

 
McCain was clearly stung by any criticisms from George W. Bush in 2000, and now Mitt Romney’s television advertisements have apparently drawn out the ‘beast’ in McCain, as he’s tossing out one-liners on Romney that are supposed to be funny – but just come across as ‘mean.’

 
Romney was asked a question about whether McCain has a mainstream conservative record – and Romney reeled off an impressive number of liberal things that McCain’s done over the years to earn his bad reputation with conservatives (McCain/Feingold, McCain/Kennedy, McCain/Lieberman, his opposition to the tax cuts, his opposition to drilling in ANWR, etc…) concluding his answer by mentioning that “no conservative would be endorsed by the New York Times.”

 
Body blow landed, Mitt. But it didn’t dent the ‘mean’ man of steel.

 
McCain meanly retorted that he was endorsed by both of Romney’s Boston newspapers (including the conservative Boston Herald), who “supposedly know you the best,” and there’s no way that he won’t be endorsed by his hometown newspaper in Arizona. McCain bent back in laughter, but who else was laughing? Who cares? The point was that liberals, like those at the New York Times, love you, John. And why is that?

 
Because you’re not shy about cutting into conservatives and our ideas, and liberals love that quality about you.

 
If McCain ends up facing Hillary in the general election, their debates could very well devolve into a series of adlibbed cat fights to see which politician can bend the truth the farthest and cut the lowest to try and rattle the other. If that’s the case, my money’s on McCain -- and that’s not a compliment.

 
Prepare yourself for the grumpy, mean old war veteran versus the wicked witch of the west. They’ll need towels to mop up the blood after one of their debates -- no wonder the media is drooling at the prospect.

 

 
Mike Huckabee didn’t get many opportunities to speak, but when he did, he displayed his characteristic ability to paint vivid verbal imagery, putting images into words as to why he should be president.

 
Mike Huckabee deserves a lot of credit – he’s ridden a wave of terrific debate performances and free media to eke out a victory in Iowa and nearly pull it off in South Carolina. If Fred Thompson had pulled out earlier, the whole dynamic of the Republican race could be very different. Four more percentage points for Huckabee in the Palmetto State and John McCain suddenly becomes much more human (fleshy), susceptible to bullets.

 
But there was also the feeling that this debate was Huckabee’s last chance, hence his desperation to try and make an impression. He hasn’t won in nearly a month, can’t seem to expand beyond his evangelical base of support, and he’s out of money. He’s run his campaign all these months on a shoestring – so he’s used to it, but the only wind left in his sails is coming from his lungs, and with no more debates on the calendar, time’s out for the Huck.

 
Huckabee’s message seems to have come around, though he often contradicts himself (such as when he first said people were worse off after Bush, but then defended him). He consistently mentions the need for smaller, less intrusive government – and there his record contradicts his rhetoric.

 
He did talk about the ‘tax me more fund,’ which Huckabee set up in Arkansas – that anyone who believes we should be paying more in taxes is welcome to just send it in. That was an effective point. Too bad there’re things out there like the video of him begging the legislature for tax increases.

 
Huckabee’s certainly got the politician persona to hang around the national scene, and he’s done well enough to become known. Whether he can use that exposure to further establish credibility and mend fences with the conservative world – time will tell.

 

For now, he’s done.

 
Paul’s answer was better

 
After the debate, the network talking heads were drawn to the most bitter exchange of the evening between Romney and McCain, where Romney complained about McCain’s ‘dirty trick’ of claiming in the last days of the campaign in Florida that Romney was for a timetable in withdrawing from Iraq.

 
‘Mean’ John McCain wouldn’t give an inch, again reiterating that Romney was for a timetable, citing a quote from an interview Romney gave back in April – and then digging up a quote from December, 2006, concerning Romney’s refusal at that time to say whether he was for a troop ‘surge.’

 
Mercifully, Anderson Cooper tossed the question over to Ron Paul after Romney and McCain had droned on for several minutes, and Paul got right to the point. Paul said ‘these guys are arguing technicalities about a policy that they’re both basically for.’ Paul said we should be talking about the entirety of foreign policy, whether the policy was the right one rather than arguing the ‘technicalities.’

 
The response drew applause from the audience, who were probably relieved that somebody dared to stand up to ‘mean’ McCain and Romney, who’s trying to appear attractive to all conservatives.

 
As argued before, Paul’s main flaw is that he speaks in language that isn’t easily comprehensible to someone who doesn’t have an advanced economics degree. Paul’s calls for ‘sound money’ must bounce off many voters just like bullets off the ‘man of steel.’

 
What Paul’s saying makes a tremendous amount of sense, but he’s not the candidate who can carry off the message on a national level.

 
Super Tuesday – the beginning of the end?

 
With a heavy sense of dread we head off to the event we’ve all been anticipating for months, the ‘Super Tuesday’ primaries in over twenty states that could very well clinch the GOP nomination for ‘Superman’ John McCain.

 
With Rudy Giuliani’s endorsement, McCain gains additional fundraising might and organizations in several key states – including the ‘big’ ones. McCain almost certainly will win in California, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, and after that, there’s not much that can stop his ‘straight talk express’ momentum train.

 
John McCain’s rise from clinical political death last summer is almost complete – and now we’ll have to look around the room to see who’s to blame. Conservatives weren’t able to coalesce around one candidate, or come up with one of our own.

 
We knew the Republican Party establishment wouldn’t help out, either. They’ve given us arguably the most liberal overall candidate in the entire GOP field, a man who’s prided himself on trashing conservatives and their ideals at every opportunity.