FOX's Republican Debate in New Hampshire

I was helping my children get to sleep tonight when by chance or design I found myself watching the Republican debate in New Hampshire. I apparently missed the beginning, which will become significant later.

Here's my run down:

1. I thought McCain did well. I would pick him as the winner from my perspective, although admittedly my attention was sometimes divided. I also think that he and Thompson are the most transparent in their positions. Everyone else has flip flopped on something at one time or another.

2. I seemed to have missed any brilliance from Mit Romney. I'll confess up front that I don't like him. It has nothing to do with him being a Mormon. In fact, if anything he's lost points with me for acting like his faith doesn't encompass his whole life. It seems to me that means he's more serious about winning an election than about his faith, which means his faith isn't much of a faith.

Frankly, he comes off to me as an artificial pretty boy. I can't see people under 40 voting for him. For some strange reason, older folk can't seem to spot hypocrites as easily as the younger crowd. I'm not surprised that FOX seems to be skewing things in his direction. More on that to come...

3. Huckabee apparently did worse than I saw--or not. The New Hamphire focus group FOX set up hated him, maybe a little too much. Apparently he jumbled the first question. Did anyone see that? I didn't notice any incredible screw up.

In fact, to get a little ahead of myself, the reaction of the FOX focus group was so overwhelmingly in favor of Romney and overwhelmingly against Huckabee that I smelt a rat. I noted in my previous post that FOX was anti-Huckabee in its coverage and commentary (so was MSNBC). So the commentary was again tonight. In fact, one of FOX's commentators had to make a full disclosure that she was connected to the Romney campaign.

I won't convince the unconvinced, but in my opinion FOX is the least objective of all the networks. Let no one think that these people are Christian conservatives. They're political and economic conservatives. Such people are far more likely to worship the almighty dollar than the Almighty God. Such people are utilitarians and egoists, not moral absolutists. Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of Christian conservatives can tell the difference.

Huckabee didn't do badly tonight in the parts I saw. FOX just doesn't like him and uses its power to its own ideological ends. Mind you, I'm not endorsing anyone here. I'm just pointing out to Christian conservatives that Huckabee is the conservative Christian horse in this race and FOX doesn't like him at all. Recognize that FOX's conservatism is not the same as Christian conservatism.

4. And for those who might question this, did you know that FOX did not allow Ron Paul to debate tonight? The New Hampshire Republican party backed out of supporting the debate for this reason. I hope a bunch of angry NH Republicans vote for Ron Paul in the caucuses just to stick it to the FOX News monster. Teach them a lesson.

5. Guliani and Thompson were on the margins of the debate. FOX at least put it right when it saw Guliani's hanging off the side of the table as symbolic of his marginalization in the NH race.

Thompson's a nice guy and his answers aren't bad. It just always seems like he's sitting on the side, not really in the center of the action. He doesn't have spiz.

Well, I thought they were all civil and didn't see a knock-down winner, but all in all thought McCain did the best. Some of that no doubt has to do with positions he took. And so to be fair to FOX, they surely agree most with Romney.

Then again, I wonder if he's donating money to them on some level. I swear, almost everyone in the NH FOX focus group became a convinced Romney supporter and all of them thought Huckabee was trash. This group seemed to have the attitude as if to say, "We're smarter than the stupid Christians in Iowa. You'll never catch one of us voting for a Huckabee." The thought struck me, "I wonder if they've stacked this deck!"

No matter. Romney will not be on the Republican ticket, and Obama will beat whoever is. That's a prediction, not an endorsement.