The Art of the Scorecard

"Indeed, he so clearly connected with the woman and the audience that every other candidate immediately followed suit and began getting off their stools for just about every answer given after that. . . .

"McCain also took what could be his greatest liability in the GOP primaries -- his sponsorship of the immigration bill -- and turned it to his advantage by connecting immigration to military service, his resume trump card. . . .

"By contrast, Rudy Giuliani seemed a tad unhinged. He tried to have it both ways when it came to terror and national security, claiming on one hand that the sacrifice of American lives in Iraq 'is one of the reasons we're safe now in the United States,' while on the other hand repeatedly raising the specter of Islamic terrorists who will do us all in if we don't put him in the White House."

So Rudy was either "commanding" or "unhinged." And while Dickerson says Romney didn't make much of an impression, Politico's Roger Simon rates him the winner and puts McCain in fourth place, behind Mike Huckabee.

"Analysis: He is not closing the deal. We might have put him in fifth, but he finally caught fire an hour and forty-five minutes into a two-hour debate. But he kept saying 'my friends' so much, you began to wonder if he had any . . .

"I interviewed McCain in February about the problem his immigration stance poses for him and he said: 'One of the biggest problems with immigration reform is that it takes so long to explain it. If I had a half hour with every Republican, they'd all say, "Oh, yeah, now I get it.'' Well, he doesn't have a half hour. He needs a better soundbite, which is what debates are all about."

But fourth place for McCain is kind compared to the judgment of Mark I at RedState:

"Sen. McCain's presidential campaign ended Tuesday night. I didn't see all of the GOP presidential candidates debate. In the parts I did see, however, I saw three things from Sen. McCain. I saw him talking down to the audience, the other candidates, and the nation on the issue of immigration. Second, I saw Sen. McCain being beaten up by everyone on stage over his position on immigration. Third, I saw and heard him in an insultingly thinly veiled fashion accuse every opponent of his position on immigration of being a racist.

"If that's not enough of an indictment of the state of his campaign, consider that after the debate, all of the CNN pundits analyzing the performances of the candidates thought McCain won."

So whoever CNN is for, he's against?

Giuliani made an impression on Power Line's Paul Mirengoff:

"The winner was Rudy. My only quibble was with his exuberance on the subject of (for lack of a better term at this hour) nation-building, as when he said that America's biggest challenge is exporting our values to the Middle East (or words to that effect). Though such pronouncements make for soaring rhetoric and may be defensible on the merits, they could come back to haunt him in a general election if he gets that far."