Orlando debate, reaction roundup

Taegan Goddard:

Romney easily deflected Rick Perry's attempt at calling him a flip-flopper by stating he stood by everything in his book, No Apology, while Perry has already backed away from proposals in his book, Fed Up! Romney was the clear winner of this debate. In contrast, Perry looked tired and was barely able to finish a two hour debate. He stumbled badly over his attack lines on Romney -- almost as if he never practiced them. Not looking at Romney while attacking him was a big mistake. If this was Perry's chance to convince the GOP establishment he could win the nomination and defeat President Obama, he didn't come close to sealing the deal.

Josh Marshall:

Perry was clearly prepped with a series of attack lines. But he stumbled over them like you'd woken him up in the middle of the night. Or maybe he was a punch drunk heavyweight at the end of the 14th round. Then Romney comes in -- an amazing flip-flopper if there ever was one -- and manages to just run circles around Perry. It was almost sad. Romney was on fire. And yet, Perry's clearly this audience's guy. He's got the positions they like. Romney basically doesn't. He says he does. But people don't really buy that. So how far does the complete debate mastery go?

David Weigel:

With every debate, the arrangement seems weirder and weirder. Almost no one wants to attack Mitt Romney. No one attacks him effectively. This would have been unimaginable a few months ago, but as long as Perry rides high, it's true. Romney was focused when he needed to be about a foe he showed utter contempt for. His gauzy answers on specifics -- well, nothing new there, nothing out of the ordinary for debates.

Paul Begala:

As happened in previous debates, the audience in the Fox News/Google debate stole the show—and shocked the conscience. When a gay soldier asked a question, the audience booed. They booed a man who is risking his life for their freedom. Rarely have I seen a more unpatriotic public display. Not long thereafter, Mitt Romney gave a sappy paean to cheap patriotism, saying we’re the only country whose citizens put their hands over their hearts during the National Anthem. Fine. But shouldn’t someone have spoken up for that brave soldier? That would have taken real courage and shown real patriotism. 

Jonathan Chait:

Perry probably emerged with the stronger meta-theme. His overarching condemnation of Romney is as a slippery, quasi-Democratic figure. Romney has nothing anywhere near so strong to deploy against Perry. He has tried, elliptically, to paint his foe as unelectable. But the deeper Romney expresses contempt for Obama — tonight he accused him of never having held a job — the harder it must be for Republican voters to imagine that any nominee would actually lose to this unemployed, socialist, America-hating failure.

James Fallows:

So, yes, that's the ugliness that will last from this "Fox/Google" debate. (This whole event was not Google's finest moment.) But here's the line that truly deserves pondering upon: It came when each of the candidates was asked to suggest the ideal vice presidential candidate if he or she were the nominee. And Rick Perry -- who also said that he would "always err on the side of life," an interesting counterpoint to the cheers he got earlier for having overseen more executions than any other governor -- answered thus: "I would like to take Herman Cain and mate him up with Newt Gingrich." Reflect on that for a while. In all its ramifications. And, good night.