Politics

Breaking down the debate

By the Times staff
Published January 25, 2008

RUDY GIULIANI, former mayor of New York City

Good quote: "This has become a very competitive race and I always expected it would be a very competitive race. And I believe that I'm going to have the same fate that the New York Giants had last week, and we're going to come from behind and surprise everyone. We have them all lulled into a very false sense of security now."

Good quote II: "We should have a project like putting the man on a moon the way we did back in the '50s and '60s. It should be a major national project to be energy independent. That's a matter of national security. It's also the best way - the very best way - to protect against global warming."

Rating his performance: His best moment may have been the way he cornered Romney and McCain into saying they wanted some kind of catastrophe fund. It's one of the benefits to Florida of having a presidential candidate so focused on our primary.

MIKE HUCKABEE, former governor of Arkansas

Good quote: "Concerns that I have is that we'll probably end up borrowing this $150-billion from the Chinese and when we get those rebate checks, most people are going to go out and buy stuff that's been imported from China. I have to wonder whose economy is going to be stimulated."

Good quote II: "Let me remind you I wasn't in Washington during all of this time. So that's one of the reasons they ought to give me a chance, since I wasn't there messing this up."

Rating his performance: Confident, relaxed and funny. His populism showed. He was quick with the one-liners. Talking about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he quipped: "Just because you didn't find every Easter egg didn't mean that it wasn't planted."

JOHN McCAIN, senator from Arizona

Good quote: "I will, as president, veto every one of these big spending bills. I will impose some fiscal discipline. There is nothing that anything the Democrats have said, except, that I have seen, except tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect. We will clean up our act."

Good quote II: "We are succeeding in Iraq, and every indicator is that. And we will reduce casualties and gradually eliminate them. Anybody who doesn't understand that it's not American presence, it's American casualties. We have American troops all over the world today, and nobody complains about it, because we're defending freedom."

Rating his performance: He seemed lively and bright, compared with other appearances. Confident and comfortable. He focused on spending cuts as an answer to almost every question.

RON PAUL, representative from Texas

Good quote: "We're spending nearly a trillion dollars a year overseas maintaining this empire. And then, there's never been a war fought without inflation and destruction and devaluation of a currency.And this - this is what we're doing today to ourselves, is we're literally spending ourselves into oblivion."

Good quote II: "I think what we have to run on is the old-fashioned Republican program. I can't be identified with this. I'm known as the taxpayer's best friend. I have never voted for a tax increase, and I voted for the least amount of spending. So I'm not part of that crowd. ... I was waving the flag the whole time, saying, 'Slow up, slow up.'"

Rating his performance: He's a lone, sometimes hard to follow, voice. We salute his blunt candor on Iraq. "It was a very bad idea, and it wasn't worth it," he said. He was the only one to answer directly.

MITT ROMNEY, former governor of Massachusetts

Good quote: "What an audacious and arrogant thing for the Democrats to say, as Hillary Clinton did, that they are responsible for the progress that the surge has seen. ... The success over there is due to the blood and the courage of our servicemen and women. ... Not to Gen. Hillary Clinton."

Good quote II: "As we face tough times, we need to have somebody who understands - if you will, has the private sector, has the business world, has the economy in their DNA. I do. I spent my life in the private sector. "

Rating his performance: He has a polished answer for everything. ("I can run on my own record.") We still don't understand if he favors an assault weapons ban.

[Last modified January 25, 2008, 02:11:37]