Tuesday, May 8, 2007

And the winner is...

So, a few days ago I posted a semi-serious statistical analysis of the first Republican debate. At the end of the post, as you can read below, I promised to crown a winner in several days' time. After completing the post, I endeavored to rehabilitate my mind from the hours of sifting through talking points by thinking about anything and everything else. On Sunday, I published one of the filler posts that has been kicking around as a draft for a while to buy some time, but today I realized that I'd have to stop procrastinating and write this post. However, after reading over the numbers again, I decided that I didn't really want to anoint a single victor. Instead, I'll make the case for each of the candidates and let you decide.


Sam Brownback
Brownback's first accomplishment was having a "B" in the beginning of his last name, netting him the lead-off position in this list. Brownback successfully positioned himself as a hardcore conservative. His goal was to pick off some far right votes, and he was thus able to shoot from the hip. He successfully answered 85% of the questions, which one can afford to do if he is unworried about alienating the centrist vote. He also got the opportunity to declare his anti-abortion and anti-evolution stance, scored a Reagan reference, and managed a subtle attack on his more moderate opponents. The final reason Brownback won: he was able to get in on 13 different questions more than any of the other fringe candidates, and even tying him with Giuliani. So without further ado, congratulations Sam Brownback.

Jim Gilmore
Gilmore successfully kept his head down in what turned out to be a gotcha-question free-for-all. Recognizing early on that the tricky questions threatened death-by-Youtube to anyone who stuck his head out too far, Gilmore kept his head down and lived to fight another day. He squirmed his way out of 2/3 of the questions he was asked, more by far than any of the other candidate. This included a crucial obfuscation on his murky stance on abortion. He tied Brownback with 3 platitudes, offering up lofty--but safe--rhetoric. Gilmore also managed a Reagan reference and several subtle attacks. Most importantly, he won by being one of the few candidates to maintain his appeal to both the Right and center by not offering up any material to compromise his hold on either demographic.

Rudy Giuliani (did I really promise to do everyone? whew...)
Rudy notched some serious face time. The front-runner entering into the debate, Giuliani realized that in a fractured Republican field and and bad political climate, conservatives would be forced to lean in the direction of electability, instead of for the socially-conservative candidate that they might prefer. Recognizing this, Giuliani maintained his pro-abortion position, while still throwing the Right a bone ("I hate abortions"). Finally, Giuliani tied Romney for the most unprompted Reagan references, tapping into the cult of celebrity popular with the Republican camp.

Mike Huckabee
Huckabee entered the debate as the dark horse, and managed to maintain this position. Like Brownback, the former governor hopes to capture the Conservative Christian votes that stray from the Big Three. Huckabee staked himself solidly in the Right's camp with anti-evolution and abortion positions. In fact, Huckabee was so confident in his conservative positioning that he was the lone candidate who did not go out of his way to include President Reagan in one of his responses.

Duncan Hunter
Like Gilmore, the Californian also managed to lay low. However, unlike Gilmore, Hunter accomplished this while only dodging a single question. He gave straight answers, and did a good job striking an iron while it was hot: Hunter's pet issue is immigration and border control, which is peaking at the moment. Furthermore, Hunter established himself as a candidate of substance by answering his questions without a single empty platitude. I doing so he strengthened his position as the pet candidate of conservative intelligentsia, including George Will. All in all, the Representative did a good job gaining his exposure without compromising integrity.

John McCain
McCain fired up the old Straight Talk Express, breaking out lines like "I'll follow [bin Laden] to the gates of Hell", and clarifying his belief in evolution with "when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also." McCain attempted to revive the rebellious outsider status that made him the media darling in 2000. Furthermore, McCain made important gains on Giuliani by sticking to his guns on the war, staking out an anti-abortion position, and tying Romney for the most questions asked. McCain also made a point to address the camera directly, distinguishing himself from the other candidates, and preempted the issue of age by pointing out the elephant in the room.

Mitt Romney
For this endorsement, just look to the post-debatee polls. Almost all of them have Romney winning the debate. He demonstrated a knack for filling up his time with sharp answers. He was physically the most appealing candidate. He had a direct, if suspicious, answer on the issue of abortion. He invoked Reagan twice, went attack and platitude-free, tied McCain for the most questions fielded, and managed to answer fully 80% of them. He also squeezed through the issue of his religion, offering up a JFK-esque response. So Romney managed to shed two of his major parachutes, gave substantial answers, and made himself a media darling. Not bad for an hour and a half.

Ron Paul
No one made a more significant leap into the public eye than Ron Paul, vaulting from obscurity to YouTube hero status. Paul was the only man in the race against the war, and pressed his advantage with every opportunity. He racked up 9 total attacks, four more than all the other candidates combined, and managed to do it without sounding (too) shrill. All but one of his responses skewered his opponents on their backing of the war, and this may actually be a great strategy. Consider the numbers: though two-thirds of the American public opposes the war, a majority of the Republican base still supports it, so most of the Republican candidates have felt obliged to support it. However, there is still a significant percentage of Republicans who do oppose the war, and in a race in which the leading candidate has just better than a quarter of the votes, small slices of the pie become significant. The Texan's rhetoric, invoking Eisenhower and Nixon, reminded the conservative audience that they had won elections in the past on anti-war tickets. Perhaps this reminder will loosen some more votes to his side.

Tom Tancredo
The first Tommy T. in the debate demonstrated a knack for ducking a question gracefully. Of the three questions he avoided, he neatly avoided one with a platitude, and a second with a Reagan reference. The Colorado representative also joined Huckabee and Brownback as the lone three men expressing disbelief with the theory of evolution. A solid and safe performance, introducing Tacredo to the nation and putting the pieces in place for a later push.

Tommy Thompson
Nothing endears a person to a Republican audience like lines such as "[I was] the one that started welfare reform, reduced welfare caseload...in the state of Wisconsin, by 93%." and "[I] vetoed more than 1900 items in 14 years in office, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars." (the accuracy of these statements is in question, but that rarely matters in a debate). Thompson kept himself solidly in the majority, with stances against abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, and signaling that he believed in evolution. Thompson's neutral positioning is key for his game-theory strategy, recently cited by George Will:

In the last 24 elections, since 1912, winners of the presidency won a plurality of the states along the Mississippi. Today the Republican presidential candidate with perhaps the most impressive resume says:

Republicans should assume that in 2008 they will lose Ohio (20 electoral votes), where the state party's corruption and incompetence cost it the governorship, a U.S. Senate seat and a House seat in 2006. So the GOP candidate must carry Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota (27 electoral votes). In 2004, George W. Bush narrowly carried Iowa and narrowly lost Wisconsin and Minnesota, the only state that has voted Democratic in eight consecutive elections.

The man with the impressive resume is Tommy Thompson, who says he can carry those three Midwestern states.



So, congratulations to the winner(s). I hope to do one for the next Democratic debate, whenever that is, but that will require enough time having passed to make me forget how much time this took.

Thanks for visiting Eclexia.

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