{"id":4253,"date":"2016-02-08T18:19:24","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T18:19:24","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2016-02-08T18:19:24","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T18:19:24","slug":"an_analysis_of_the_debate_analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2016\/02\/08\/an_analysis_of_the_debate_analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"An Analysis of the Debate Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: So, again, the best definition of conservatism… For those of you who didn\u2019t see the debate, I know this kind of leaves you in the dark, because you don\u2019t know and you\u2019re relying on somebody to tell you. I will at some point, but I want people in the audience to think about this. These are things that the postdebate analysis didn\u2019t even get into. And the postdebate… I mean, everywhere. The postdebate analysis on Rubio was that he made a fool of himself, that he exposed himself as unprepared, robotic, nervous, not worthy of the bump that he got coming out of Iowa.<\/p>\n

It may have, in fact, been like the Dan Quayle moment. That was Brit Hume\u2019s take on Fox News. If you don\u2019t remember that, Dan Quayle was George H. W. Bush\u2019s vice presidential nominee. They were having a vice presidential debate, and Lloyd Bentsen (known here as Lord Bentsen, because he\u2019s one of these left-wing Democrat aristocrats from Texas), was debating. Was it a vice presidential debate? It was a vice presidential debate, yeah. That\u2019s right. It must have been… Well, I forget the year. <\/p>\n

Anyway, during a discussion of inexperience, I believe it was, Quayle happened to mention that JFK was not that experienced when he was elected president after serving just a short period of time in the Senate, and Lord Bentsen pounced. Lord Bentsen said, “I knew JFK. John Kennedy was a friend of mine. And you, Senator, are no John Kennedy.” And the roof came off the place. It was total humiliation. It was one of the most, I mean, just devastating slams ever to have been witnessed in politics. <\/line><\/p>\n

And poor Mr. Quayle had the deer-in-the-headlight eyes for a while before he tried to recover from it. That\u2019s what many said happened to Rubio Saturday night. Now, I\u2019m here to tell you that it was nowhere near that, but it wasn\u2019t good. Rubio did seem to be unable to say anything else at certain times in the debate. But the question is, how did people who are gonna vote in this thing see it, versus how do the analysts see it? I am convinced, after so many years of doing this, that… It happens… I have always been amazed… Sorry for the stutter here. I\u2019m looking for the best way to say this. <\/p>\n

The way debate performances are analyzed, it\u2019s as though people waiting to vote actually have their votes so insecurely attached to themselves, they can watch a debate and see one slipup and say, “Oops! That\u2019s it.” When I hear somebody say Rubio had a bad night, very bad night… Well, Rubio fans that are committed are not gonna abandon him for this. Maybe people who are, you know, maybe leaning Rubio, yeah. But it takes more than this to talk committed supporters out of a candidate. This is just not the way that people make up their minds. <\/p>\n

In fact, there\u2019s even some good analysis that debates are not that big a factor in choosing a candidate. In presidential debates I remember not recently, but back in the… I forget the years. But it\u2019s not all that new that debates have taken on more importance than they used to. Snerdley is frowning at that, but the old saw has always been that debates really don\u2019t change things much at the presidential level. Now, that\u2019s always been a rule of thumb based and backed up on polling data. <\/p>\n

But the way these things get analyzed afterwards, it\u2019s almost like you analyze a football game and you get mad at a wide receiver who dropped a certain touchdown pass, and that\u2019s why the team lost. Well when you\u2019re analyzing a football game, you already know who won, you already know who lost, and you can factor all these things in, in hindsight. But a debate takes place long before there\u2019s a result, and nobody really knows how any of these myriad number of things that happen in a debate are gonna affect the outcome and individual votes. <\/p>\n

For example, the definition-of-conservatism question may not be as harmful to candidates in New Hampshire as it could be in other states. Because the electorate in New Hampshire is made up a lot of moderates and independents. They have their share of conservatives, but it may not be as big a deal as if you fudge that question in South Carolina, for example. But there\u2019s some people that really got that question horribly bad wrong. I mean, embarrassingly bad wrong, Saturday night. Isn\u2019t it kind of fundamental? Define conservatism. <\/line><\/p>\n

There were some people that were embarrassingly bad on it. <\/p>\n

Not one comment postdebate. <\/p>\n

Also on the postdebate analysis of Rubio and Christie? Yeah, Rubio did not look good. There\u2019s no sense in you Rubio people trying to mask this. It was not his best. He did repeat it over and over again, and it did look at times like he had forgotten anything else to say. You have to admit it. But what nobody else talked about is how did Christie look on the attack, and did that help him? And there\u2019s another question if you\u2019re gonna go this route, and it\u2019s a serious question as well that nobody can answer. <\/p>\n

Okay, let\u2019s say you assume that Rubio\u2019s performance in the debate with his repetition of his claim that Obama is not incompetent and what he\u2019s doing is not accidental… If that\u2019s gonna hurt Rubio, who\u2019s gonna end up being helped? If that is gonna cause people voting for Rubio to not vote for Rubio, where they gonna go? Does it mean they\u2019re gonna go to Christie? Well, this is what you would be led to believe by postdebate analysis, that in this confrontation with Christie, if this is the way you look at it, exposed Rubio, then isn\u2019t it natural Christie would pick up the votes that Rubio\u2019s gonna lose because of it?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the way it works. I think if Rubio actually loses votes, you know where they\u2019re gonna go? Ted Cruz. They\u2019re not gonna go to John Kasich, and they\u2019re not gonna go to Christie, and they\u2019re not gonna go to Jeb. But depending what you want to happen if you\u2019re an analyst on television or radio after one of these debates, and you have a desired outcome — which they all do. Silly for people to deny it. If indeed Rubio screwed up and lost some support, where does it go? Where does a disappointed Rubio voter go? <\/p>\n

And they make the automatic conclusion that it\u2019s gonna go to Christie, because Christie exposed him. And I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any evidence of that at all. And I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any formula that would be predictive of something like that. I think if you want to answer that you have to say, “Okay, why do Rubio supporters support him, and who\u2019s closest to him if somebody gets soured on Rubio?” And then you figure out where they go. Might they go Carson? No. I mean, how many people are gonna knowingly vote for somebody they know is not gonna win this thing? <\/p>\n

Do you realize four or five candidates are gonna get votes from people who know they haven\u2019t got a prayer. There is an intricacy and a complexity to this that makes predicting it by virtue of what you think are missteps in a debate impossible to do. I\u2019m still… I am still not convinced that Trump had a problem in Iowa solely because he didn\u2019t go to the debate. It may be a factor, but it\u2019s not the sole factor. By the same token, Trump in this debate was… For Trump, he was awesome. When the subject of eminent domain came up, when something that Trump believes in passionately comes up, get out of the way. <\/p>\n