Republican Debate

Byron York at NRO has a good rundown of the Republican debate yesterday in Michigan. I watched much of it myself, although not every minute. It was the most notable debate so far due to the presence of Fred Thompson (yes, I'm a supporter). It was Fred's first debate, and the general consensus around the blogs and MSM appears to be that he did pretty well after a slow start. The debate was focused almost squarely on economic issues, so there was not a great deal of disagreement on the Republican mantra of lower taxes, free trade, spending restraint and a moderate regulatory environment, although with some exceptions from the fringe guys.

Moderator Chris Matthews went after Fred on a couple of times, and Fred showed that he couldn't be pushed around. Matthews pressed him to name Candian PM Steve Harper, which he did, and then Matthews spouted off on Thompson's answer about whether the govenrment should intevene in the case of an auto strike - Thompson said no, paused a bit to gather his thoughts for a more thorough response and delivered that the economy and national security consideration should be given to such a situation, but that it should not really involve government outside those parameters. Matthews voiced his opinion Fred should have stopped at "no" and Thompson countered by stating "that's your opinion, Christopher", which I thought was an excellent counter to Matthews' bluster.

Rudy and Mitt went after each other's respective records on taxing and budget issues, and there were several mentions and critiques of Hillary Clinton. John Henke of QandO fame is Fred's online outreach guy and live blogged the event here. Ed Morrissey also has reaction at CQ here.

I thought Fred did very well myself, along with Rudy and John McCain. I thought it was interesting how Fred responded to a Social Security question. When asked what he would do to fix the entitlement issue, he responded that he would change the growth in payments for younger workers (not anyone in retirement or near it) to be indexed to the inflation rate rather than the wage rate (which would lower benefit payments) but also form personal accounts for these younger workers, which is a trade off I would heartily endorse with enthusiasm. It was one of the more detailed responses from any of the candidates on any issue, but I expect someone or another to try to beat him up with it, but I'm pretty sure given his performance that he will be able to handle it pretty deftly.