http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/02/08/an_analysis_of_the_debate_analysisAn Analysis of the Debate Analysis
February 08, 2016
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RUSH: So, again, the best definition of conservatism... For those of you who didn't see the debate, I know this kind of leaves you in the dark, because you don't know and you're relying on somebody to tell you. I will at some point, but I want people in the audience to think about this. These are things that the postdebate analysis didn't even get into. And the postdebate... I mean, everywhere. The postdebate analysis on Rubio was that he made a fool of himself, that he exposed himself as unprepared, robotic, nervous, not worthy of the bump that he got coming out of Iowa.
It may have, in fact, been like the Dan Quayle moment. That was Brit Hume's take on Fox News. If you don't remember that, Dan Quayle was George H. W. Bush's vice presidential nominee. They were having a vice presidential debate, and Lloyd Bentsen (known here as Lord Bentsen, because he's one of these left-wing Democrat aristocrats from Texas), was debating. Was it a vice presidential debate? It was a vice presidential debate, yeah. That's right. It must have been... Well, I forget the year.
Anyway, during a discussion of inexperience, I believe it was, Quayle happened to mention that JFK was not that experienced when he was elected president after serving just a short period of time in the Senate, and Lord Bentsen pounced. Lord Bentsen said, "I knew JFK. John Kennedy was a friend of mine. And you, Senator, are no John Kennedy." And the roof came off the place. It was total humiliation. It was one of the most, I mean, just devastating slams ever to have been witnessed in politics.
And poor Mr. Quayle had the deer-in-the-headlight eyes for a while before he tried to recover from it. That's what many said happened to Rubio Saturday night. Now, I'm here to tell you that it was nowhere near that, but it wasn't good. Rubio did seem to be unable to say anything else at certain times in the debate. But the question is, how did people who are gonna vote in this thing see it, versus how do the analysts see it? I am convinced, after so many years of doing this, that... It happens... I've always been amazed... Sorry for the stutter here. I'm looking for the best way to say this.
The way debate performances are analyzed, it's as though people waiting to vote actually have their votes so insecurely attached to themselves, they can watch a debate and see one slipup and say, "Oops! That's it." When I hear somebody say Rubio had a bad night, very bad night... Well, Rubio fans that are committed are not gonna abandon him for this. Maybe people who are, you know, maybe leaning Rubio, yeah. But it takes more than this to talk committed supporters out of a candidate. This is just not the way that people make up their minds.
In fact, there's even some good analysis that debates are not that big a factor in choosing a candidate. In presidential debates I remember not recently, but back in the... I forget the years. But it's not all that new that debates have taken on more importance than they used to. Snerdley is frowning at that, but the old saw has always been that debates really don't change things much at the presidential level. Now, that's always been a rule of thumb based and backed up on polling data.
But the way these things get analyzed afterwards, it's almost like you analyze a football game and you get mad at a wide receiver who dropped a certain touchdown pass, and that's why the team lost. Well when you're analyzing a football game, you already know who won, you already know who lost, and you can factor all these things in, in hindsight. But a debate takes place long before there's a result, and nobody really knows how any of these myriad number of things that happen in a debate are gonna affect the outcome and individual votes.
For example, the definition-of-conservatism question may not be as harmful to candidates in New Hampshire as it could be in other states. Because the electorate in New Hampshire is made up a lot of moderates and independents. They have their share of conservatives, but it may not be as big a deal as if you fudge that question in South Carolina, for example. But there's some people that really got that question horribly bad wrong. I mean, embarrassingly bad wrong, Saturday night. Isn't it kind of fundamental? Define conservatism.
There were some people that were embarrassingly bad on it.
Not one comment postdebate.
Also on the postdebate analysis of Rubio and Christie? Yeah, Rubio did not look good. There's no sense in you Rubio people trying to mask this. It was not his best. He did repeat it over and over again, and it did look at times like he had forgotten anything else to say. You have to admit it. But what nobody else talked about is how did Christie look on the attack, and did that help him? And there's another question if you're gonna go this route, and it's a serious question as well that nobody can answer.
Okay, let's say you assume that Rubio's performance in the debate with his repetition of his claim that Obama is not incompetent and what he's doing is not accidental... If that's gonna hurt Rubio, who's gonna end up being helped? If that is gonna cause people voting for Rubio to not vote for Rubio, where they gonna go? Does it mean they're gonna go to Christie? Well, this is what you would be led to believe by postdebate analysis, that in this confrontation with Christie, if this is the way you look at it, exposed Rubio, then isn't it natural Christie would pick up the votes that Rubio's gonna lose because of it?
I don't think that's the way it works. I think if Rubio actually loses votes, you know where they're gonna go? Ted Cruz. They're not gonna go to John Kasich, and they're not gonna go to Christie, and they're not gonna go to Jeb. But depending what you want to happen if you're an analyst on television or radio after one of these debates, and you have a desired outcome -- which they all do. Silly for people to deny it. If indeed Rubio screwed up and lost some support, where does it go? Where does a disappointed Rubio voter go?
And they make the automatic conclusion that it's gonna go to Christie, because Christie exposed him. And I don't think there's any evidence of that at all. And I don't think there's any formula that would be predictive of something like that. I think if you want to answer that you have to say, "Okay, why do Rubio supporters support him, and who's closest to him if somebody gets soured on Rubio?" And then you figure out where they go. Might they go Carson? No. I mean, how many people are gonna knowingly vote for somebody they know is not gonna win this thing?
Do you realize four or five candidates are gonna get votes from people who know they haven't got a prayer. There is an intricacy and a complexity to this that makes predicting it by virtue of what you think are missteps in a debate impossible to do. I'm still... I am still not convinced that Trump had a problem in Iowa solely because he didn't go to the debate. It may be a factor, but it's not the sole factor. By the same token, Trump in this debate was... For Trump, he was awesome. When the subject of eminent domain came up, when something that Trump believes in passionately comes up, get out of the way.
There isn't gonna be anybody change his mind. There isn't anybody gonna make him question what he believes, and he's gonna destroy anybody disagrees with him. And he firmly believes in eminent domain. Now, many people on the Republican/conservative side immediately withdraw from eminent domain 'cause they think it's nothing but big government times 10 stealing and taking people's property, not compensating them fairly.
And here's the leading Republican candidate extolling the virtues of eminent domain in a way that most voters have never heard, because most candidates would not dare promote, defend, advocate eminent domain. But Trump, as a builder and somebody who encounters the need for eminent domain throughout his business, has hands-on experience with it. He says, "You want the pipeline? I couldn't get 10 feet of it without 'em. You want your highways? You want your roads, your bridges? You hear people talking about infrastructure rebuilding; you can't do it without eminent domain."
If somebody -- and here's the kicker -- if somebody gets screwed in the deal, it's because they didn't do a good enough deal with the government when the government came in and wanted their property. If the government comes in and wants your property, make a killer deal. They've got an endless supply of money. You hold 'em up. You don't give it away. You hold 'em up. And he ends up blaming the people who get screwed by eminent domain for making lousy deals.
Who does that? There's Trump out there being Trump full and full, through and through. And Jeb Bush decided to get into it with him on this (imitating Bush), "Well, the difference is that, yes, Donald's right when you're talking about public sector and government eminent domain, but Donald Trump is not that one. Donald Trump wants your property to build a casino, or when Donald Trump wants your property to build a road or a bridge, that's when you're gonna get shafted." And Trump's sitting there making faces and acting frustrated and pooh-poohing Jeb away and then shushes him up. Just says be quiet (imitating Trump), "You don't even know what you're talking about, stop trying to be me, Jeb. Stop trying to look tough, it's not working Jeb, it's not working."
Here's another shining moment for Trump. Trump's getting booed throughout this whole thing and after a while he gets fed up with being booed because he thinks he's making brilliant points. He's making points that normally bring the house down with standing ovations. He's getting booed. So he finally decides to give it up. And he tells everybody (imitating Trump), "The reason I'm getting booed in here is because the only people in the audience are a bunch of donors. I tried to get tickets for my supporters, and they said you can have 20. That's why I'm getting booed. You got people in here who don't like Trump. You've got the donors; you've got the lobbyists; you've got the K Street people. You've got these people that want Jeb. You got these people that want all these moderates in here, and that's why I'm getting booed. My fans were not allowed in here."
The place booed, but nobody denied what he said. They might have ripped him for blowing cover, but nobody denied what he said. This debate was filled with great moments for many of the candidates. But if you rely solely on the post-debate analysis for your cues, you're going to miss, because some of it doesn't register with them, like when they were asked to define conservatism.
I guarantee you, that question, that's when I would venture to say that if any of the professional political people in the audience, TV networks, moderators, analysts, they might not have taken a couple of minutes off during that answer because they don't think it's relevant, doesn't matter, "What do you mean, define conservative? That's not important." But to the viewing audience, that's everything to them. Who is and who isn't a conservative and who can and cannot explain why. And, as I say, some of these candidates botched it big as possible. Some of them nailed it.
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