Back from the Dead?

"Rudy was impressive as always. My criticism -- like that member of the Luntz group --is that he cited New York so much and in such an over-the-top way (everything he did was 'impossible') that he risked seeming a backwards-looking braggart."

Ed Morrissey has a totally different take:

"John McCain sounded a little passive most of the night, only really coming to life to scold Romney on his hesitation to acknowledge the success of the surge, and on the torture question."

Liberty Pundit is also less than impressed:

McCain had some good points, as usual, about Iraq and about our foreign policy. Unfortunately for him, I don't think that's going to be enough. He flopped around on the immigration issue, and that hurt. His evasiveness on the tax pledge and on his opposition to the Bush tax cuts also didn't help him, in my opinion."

As for the war, Time's Joe Klein lowers the boom on McCain -- and his rivals:

"Watching the Republicans talk about Iraq makes me want to scream. There is absolutely no recognition of the complexities, the difficult choices, the reality there. The most upsetting performance was by McCain, who knows the military and should know better. His granite-skulled insistence that the surge is working, 'absolutely' working -- and his attempt to browbeat Romney into agreeing with him -- was nothing short of demagogic. The progress in turning the Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda in Iraq is real; Petraeus was wise to see it and take advantage of it . . . But that has practically nothing to do with the 'surge,' which was originally all about pacifying Baghdad through the use of counterinsurgency tactics and creating the 'space' for an Iraqi political resolution.

"Well, Baghdad has been quieter -- mostly because it has been ethnically cleaned, with many Sunnis fleeing, and is now largely under the tacit control of Muqtada Sadr's populist movement. . .

"As I reported a few months ago, the shopkeepers and shoppers in Shorja market, where McCain took his famous walk, overwhelmingly support Sadr. McCain never mentions this. He talks 'victory' or 'surrender,' neither of which is an actual possibility here. His unwillingness to talk about the complexities of the situation represents, I believe, a willful misleading of the American public.

"Actually, Romney -- confused, constricted, embattled Romney -- came closest to being reasonable about Iraq. Beneath the scrambled verbiage and unfamiliar terms -- what is a 'support' role? -- he seemed to be saying that as soon as we finish off AQI, we should start getting out, leaving Iraq to the Iraqis while maintaining a small regional presence. But he didn't exactly say that . . . and he allowed McCain to bully him on the surge."

"Rudy Giuliani is out-to-lunch on Iraq in a peculiarly toxic, neoconservative way. His utterly delusional definition of 'victory' is when Iraq joins us in the fight against Islamic radicalism."

What about Thompson? He had to love this NYT headline: "For Thompson, Goal Is to Don Reagan Mantle":