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Did MSNBC rig the Florida Republican presidential debate?

January 25, 2008 — Update  

As a follow up to Florida Insider editor Gary Reese’s opinion piece, our staff took the time to see if his assertion that McCain was “frozen out” of the last 30 minutes of last night’s debate.  Our examination found that Reese was in fact correct.  Mitt Romney spoke for approximately 6 minutes 50 seconds, while McCain was limited to less than 3 minutes.  Even Ron Paul, lagging in the polls, received 3 minutes and 12 seconds of air time.

About 30 minutes before the debate ended, the same network’s moderator duo of Tim Russert and Brian Williams essentially cut John McCain from substantive discussion. A debate that commenced with questions being asked of the candidates in the order in which they’re showing in Florida polls concluded with McCain largely getting iced out of the picture.

Coincidence? Not according to Republican insiders we talked to last night in Florida. Most of them thought McCain was the winner. They suspect that MSNBC wants the more orthodox conservative Romney to win the Jan. 29 Florida primary because he might be an easier conquest for Hillary Clinton in the November election than McCain would be.

We don’t necessarily subscribe to the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy theory of last night’s proceedings. Maybe the network was just covering for its own polls. They show Romney with a bigger lead in Florida than do most other polls.

Whatever the case, where did MSNBC commentators get this immediate consensus about a clearly victorious Romney? It’s baffling that liberal MSNBC would be so gushingly forthcoming with praise for the Republican robot Romney.

Let’s face it: The "winner" of the debate will be picked later today, and over the next few days, when our InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion daily tracking poll reveals whether GOP voters moved to McCain or Romney following the debate. The two are running a virtual dead heat for next Tuesday’s prize – when the true and final "winner" of the debate will be decided by Florida Republican voters. But if a debate can decide an election that follows five days later, this one was it. The stakes are high.

This scorecard review of the debate contains a lot of opinion, just like MSNBC’s did. The difference is a matter of fair disclosure. We don’t have a dog in the partisan hunt of the presidential election. Instead, our bias is to limit commentary here to the debate’s effect on the likely winner and losers of Tuesday’s elections. Ron Paul, for example, is a bright guy, but protest votes for him are losing their value as anything more than votes cast out of stubborn, if principled pride.

McCain "won" because he made a confident case for himself as being exactly what his detractors in his own party say he can’t be: the leader of the Republican Party. He was the most presidential man on the stage Thursday.

He asked the most artful questions of other candidates, and even used praise of them for shrewd effect. Sometimes his tactics didn’t work, as when he passed on a chance to grill chief rival Romney. Instead he angled for Florida’s many senior voters. He asked Mike Huckabee why Huckabee advocates a "flat tax" when, said McCain, it would hurt seniors. Huckabee took McCain to school with a snazzy, passionate retort. It deflated McCain’s pitch to charm 30% of Florida’s voters, its seniors.

McCain also hit home, though. He praised Rudy Giuliani for his leadership in New York City after 9.11. The compliment was probably designed to draw votes away from Romney.

McCain benefited from the grim atmosphere the debate otherwise suffered from for a while. Candidates grimaced, but McCain’s frown looked appropriately serious for the job sought; Romney’s looked constipated.

There was no applause or laughter until roughly halfway through the debate. Questioner/moderator Tim Russert exercised his Zen mastery of the "gotcha" line of questioning. He specializes in a "have-you-beaten-your-wife-lately" style of inquiry that sometimes surpasses the trenchant and enters into self-absorption. Co-moderator Brian Williams was tough but more measured.

Mitt Romney also fared well, make no mistake – or at least better than in some past debates. He gained momentum as the night progressed. McCain’s marginalization by the questioners in the last half-hour helped. So did some tough questions that were tossed Romney's way, albeit ones he knew would come: Will Americans vote for a Mormon? Will he reveal how much of his own money he’s spent so far on his campaign? (No, but only because he doesn’t want the other candidates to know. Hmmm.)

But Romney played too much "me too" with his chief rival McCain, especially on foreign policy. Romney’s glib style sounded better on the subject of the economy than on foreign affairs.

Mike Huckabee regained some of the magic he conjured starting about two months ago, also in a Florida debate. His guy-next-door approach expertly mixed passion and politics that kept tiptoeing towards the Democratic side of things. Is he auditioning for a spot as the Republican vice-presidential candidate if the textbook conservative Romney wins the nomination?

Rudy Giuliani initially looked nervous. He later found his footing,and he ended strong by getting an audience laugh. In between, he appeared less stricken with Attention Deficit Disorder than in past debates. He seemed to give voters no new reasons to vote for or against him. He’s now running third in the Florida polls, which is two slots below where he and many others expected him to be as we near election-eve in Florida. He took no wild shots at anyone.

Is he content to fade gently into that good night? When he made a late pitch that he would come from behind to win, as the New York Giants pro football team did last week, the chuckle his comments earned from the crowd came across almost as a shared joke: Nice guy, but he’s finished.

Ron Paul unwound his usual spool of sizzling intellectual arguments on why his hands-off-the-world positions are the genuine Republican ones. But his professorial goofiness hobbles his lucid talk. He also hurt the GOP in general with his Democratic positioning on the Iraq disaster (correct though he may be).

Paul and Huckabee may have helped nudge McCain towards the ideological right when the former two at times staked out borderline liberal stands.

There were few surprises on issues. Everybody wanted tax cuts. And (except for Paul) holding fast in Iraq. And helping Florida homeowners with public, private, or public-private reforms to homeowners insurance that will assist this hurricane-prone state. And – most of all – keeping Hillary (and Bill) Clinton out of the White House.

But who remembers specific questions and answers the next day? What the still large number of undecided Republican voters in Florida and the rest of America are left with this morning is a general impression.

They must ask themselves, and quick: Does my Republican Party want Mitt Romney, the heir apparent to GOP tradition? Can he slay the Hildebeest in November?

Or how about John McCain, a man more qualified as an office-holder than as an ideologue?

Or: If I’m for another of the candidates, am I wasting my vote, and should I help sway the election by choosing between Romney and McCain?

We’re about to find out.