Rick Santorum Wins CNN Florida Republican Debate

Life and work has kept me from watching the 20th Republican debate held in Jacksonville, FL on Thursday until today (contrary to what some may believe I don’t blog full-time). You may have missed me since I haven’t written anything since Wednesday. Just how busy have I been? Both my oldest daughter and son watched this debate before I did. (My daughter watched it for her U.S. Presidential Elections class, and my son watched for his traditional logic class – got to love homeschooling!)

Three quick takeaways from watching this debate:

Gingrich has just been flat in the recent Florida debates and this particular debate may seal a Florida Primary loss as recent polls seem to indicate. Romney was able to turn the tables on Gingrich with his Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae criticism. His criticism of Wolf Blitzer fell flat. He needs to change up his debate strategy; attacking the moderators has become predictable.
Romney while he certainly performed better than he did in South Carolina; Santorum got the better of him in several exchanges in particular with health care (see the video below).
While Gingrich and Romney have been sniping at one another over trivial matters. Santorum scored when he said, “You guys should leave that alone and talk about the issues.” Santorum looked the most Presidential.

The clear winner of this is Rick Santorum. The clear loser was Newt Gingrich. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul both had a good debate (Paul better than Romney), but Santorum had the best moments and took the opportunity to demonstrate he is the full spectrum conservative running.

Here was one of the better moments of the debate where Santorum clearly got the better on Romney on the subject of health care.