Huckabee Lost

Watching the Fox New Hampshire Republican debate was a family affair at our house. The consensus among the four of us was Huckabee lost as much as Romney won.

Personally, I thought it was all Romney. He took control at the start and maintained it throughout the entire debate. Romney destroyed Huckabee when Huckabee did a Hillary imitation and refused to give a straight answer on his tax record. In the tax exchange, Romney had the best line of the night:

You know, Mike you make up facts faster than you talk and that's saying something, so let's slow it down and let's get the facts correct.

Huckabee's continuing obfuscation put him in a defensive posture, from which he never recovered.

The Luntz focus group called the same as we did. Romney had a very good night. Watch the following video:

Comments

[Matt]

Al-Ozarka, the first question they asked the focus group was who was undecided going into the debate. Three-quarters of the room put their hands up. The fourth or fifth question they asked was who supported Romney after the debate. All but five or six raised their hands. That's a hell of a turnaround.

Now it's possible many of those undecideds were leaning toward Romney to begin with, but that makes little difference--it only means he did what he had to to confirm their tentative choice. A weak performance in the debate could have pushed them into someone else's camp.

[Al-Ozarka]

Dude! The Luntz focus group was made up of Romney activists.

Do a little research for crying out loud!

Romney's polling at 9% nationally. There's good reason for that.

If you trust Romney's word, you're a fool.

[Kate]

There has also been a consensus among me and my friends that Romney won. I think Huckabee is going to lose a huge amount of support now. He already has absolutely no support on www.fittobepres.com, which my friend referred me to a couple of days ago. On it you can rate each candidate on 10 attributes and see their strengths and weaknesses based on everyone's rankings. While I was rating the candidates I noticed that Huckabee isn't even listed!