Monday Roundup: Debate and Switch

For those of you that didn't get to see last night's debate: you missed a social engineering experiment put on by CNN, in which the top three candidates were literally placed in the middle of it all. It didn't take long for the fracas to begin, as Edwards, Clinton, and Obama went after each other pretty hard on the war and votes to authorize it. While I disagree with Politico's call that Obama had the best moment of the night, I agree with them that he backtracked on making the war authorization vote a litmus test.

We discussed whether the format worked or didn't during the liveblog, and in the end I feel like it did. Blitzer wasn't exactly judicious in handing out the time, the setup really allowed for the candidates to mix it up, especially the front-runners in Edwards, Clinton, and Obama. PS. Bill Richardson is the governor of New Mexico.

While every news source reports this morning that Iraq seems like it might be a big deal in the presidential primary, Republican organizations are finding that the illegal immigration bill is a salve for many of their grassroots woes. Motivating issues for the GOP turnout machine are bad issues for Democrats, because they just make the hill steeper — not insurmountable, but steeper. Burka's take is that a Hillary Clinton candidacy in the general would mean bad things for Texas Democrats, due to the potential motivating factor; a GOP motivated by both Clinton and a need to send a strong message against illegal immigration legislation they hate is an unsettling possibility nationwide.

Speaking of the general election, the Mikal Watts train rolled out of the station on Friday, leading to this article by Jaime Castillo from the San Antonio Express-News. He outlines the essential feeling: looks good, long way to go. I still think the trial lawyer thing isn't as big of a deal as everyone makes it out to be anymore, but I have been wrong before.

Oh hey, remember SB 792, on the toll road moratorium? Not only is Governor Perry going to sign it, but now his office is openly stating there's no moratorium in the bill at all. So that's not very nice of them. Mr. Stern says I told you so.

State Senator Ken Brimer released the Sunset Advisory Commission report yesterday, just shy of when delaying any longer would have been against the law. At issue between Committee member Howard Wolf and Brimer, the Commission's chairman, are TABC legal protections for wholesale booze distributors. This probably won't turn into much, but obviously, waiting so long and having a contentious process on the Sunset Advisory Commission is less than ideal for the elected official leading it.

Lastly, Roger Simon has a few funny things to say about this cycle's debate trend: the show of hands question. My two favorite jokes about this were: 1) "raise your hand if you reject the premise of raising your hand." 2) "Everyone with telekinesis, raise my hand." The second one is a Steven Wright joke.