Steyn on Fred, Hugh on Mitt UPDATE: Not all have spinned and fallen short
Fred was great. He's like Perry Como. He should never not sit down. Romney, I thought, was not good.Didn't watch it, couldn't tell you. Dissenting opinion, from... guess who:
"I Thought That Mitt Romney Won The debate."Wait for it...Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 12:11 AM
Dick Morris is no friend of Mitt Romney, and his declaration of Romney as the "winner" tonight is the assessment that caught my eye. That's called "an admission against interest," and it is very significant.
But the key is that Romney didn't lose a single supporter and may have picked up many who watched him handle the barrage while displaying a command of the immigration and health care issues while looking presidential throughout.Well, that's all that matters, then. Oh, and McCain's mean.
MORE: Apparently Teh Ferd! had no designated "spinner" in the "spin room", and Mary Katharine Ham thinks that's borderline unforgivable.
Well, it plays into the "not particularly well-organized" meme, but on the other hand: I didn't even know there was something called a "spin room" with people whose professional title is "spinner" sitting in it. ( Is that like a "fluffer"?* )
Now I'm just a humble pseudonymous west-coast blogger, squeaking by on a few hundred hits a day--a common man, a man of the people, salt of the earth, not some jet-setting big-league media professional hobnobbing with Bill O'Reilly every week like MKH here, so my take on it is a bit different. In this case, Fred's refusal to hire one of these spinners--wait, let me put that in concerned scare quotes: "spinners"--to massage the narrative of the debate doesn't seem like a bad choice at all. Apparently Straight Talk Express John McCain needs to retain a gladhander to smile and tell people like Mary Katharine that everything went great for McCain, especially since the reactions to his performance I'm reading make it sound like he was punctuating every sentence with "flibberty-floo!"
...and we liked it!
Whether it was an oversight or a conscious decision to leave the "spinner" chair vacant and just let Fred speak for himself, instead of a designated Baghdad Bob, I look at this as a feature, not a bug. I can figure out for myself who won, thanks very much. I bet a lot of people might feel the same way. Besides, sounds like his performance in this debate was well-received without it.
MORE: Some folks in this Hot Air thread were taking this as a slam at MKH, which was not what I intended. I was trying to be so goofy and over the top that it wouldn't come off as sarcasm at her expense, but it doesn't look like I succeeded in making that distinction. Sorry, Mary Katharine. My point is just that there are two ways to look at the absence of a Fred spinner in the spin room.
*Don't google that if you don't know.