FOX Republican Debate Focuses Heavily on Hillary Clinton

(News Analysis) The Republican Party might as well just invite Hillary Clinton to its presidential debates.

In a Sunday night forum in Orlando, Fla., moderated and broadcast by FOX News Channel, GOP candidates spent a full 15 minutes of the 90-minute session on a direct question about how they would handle the Democratic front-runner.

FOX even ran a graphic with poll numbers on potential one-on-one match-ups with
Clinton.

“At this point, all of you are losing to her in the polls,” Fox News interrogator Chris Wallace said.

With Wallace serving as something of a drawbridge operator on the deep and long-running GOP canal of Hillary-hating, the one-liners, scripted or spontaneous, sailed from the stage to a crowd with an edge-of-their-seat eagerness to hear it.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said Clinton, a U.S. senator from New York and the former First Lady, has no executive or significant business background – and added that he believes she is flat out not competent enough to be commander-in-chief.

“She hasn’t run a corner store,” Romney said.

When FOX’s Wallace suggested that some of Rudy Giuliani’s more socially liberal positions may put him in company with Clinton, the former New York mayor, using pitch-perfect timing, shot back: “You gotta be kidding.”

Hizzoner suggested that under Hillary, the U.S. government would be overrun with expensive bureaucracy.

“Hillary, America can’t afford you,” Giuliani said.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had the best and classiest response.

He prefaced his remarks with officer-and-gentleman chivalry, noting that, “I know and respect Hillary Clinton.”

Then he ripped her for supporting a Woodstock museum and deadpanned that folks at Woodstock in Bethel, New York, in 1969 may have had high times, with pharmaceutical frivolity, but that he didn’t have firsthand knowledge.

“I was tied up at the time,” McCain said in reference to his well-chronicled experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He received a standing ovation. If Republicans can’t win on this war, they may as well try the last one.

Here is the Washington Post on the Woodstock museum:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Senate colleague Chuck Schumer thought they had safely placed a $1 million earmark for an upstate New York Woodstock Museum in a health and education appropriations bill — but then the GOP pork patrol caught wind of it, and now the party’s over.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has displayed the best sense of humor of any of the GOP candidates, and anyone in either party running for the White House for that matter, said Hillary is no laughing matter for the Republicans.

“There’s nothing funny about Hillary being president,” Huckabee said.

Outside of the Hillary round of the debate, Giuliani and Romney dominated.

Romney, attempting to portray himself as a builder of the old Reagan coalition, clearly won points with conservatives with his comments on gay marriage.

Romney said that if one state allows gay marriage, it “spreads” to the rest of the nation.

He also supports adoptions in which heterosexual couples are given priorities.

“I want to make sure that our kids have a mom and a dad,” Romney said.

Giuliani got off an effective one-liner here after saying he had presided over more than 200 marriages as mayor of New York City.

“They were all men and women – I hope,” Giuliani said. “You have to give me a little slack here. It was New York City.”

Earlier in the debate, Giuliani made the spectacular claim that he brought down crime more than anyone in history. Not just in New York City but in history.

“I drove pornography out of Times Square,” he said.

Giuliani added, “I think I had a lot of conservative results.”

With crime and gays out of the way, Giuliani then took after public school teachers, a favorite whipping boy for conservatives in all seasons. He touted the benefits of school choice. “We should empower parents.”

When asked how this plan would help public school teachers do their jobs, Giuliani said, “I really care about the kids more.”

Just the mere mention of the term “home school” brought significant applause.

In the foreign policy arena Giuliani was asked if a nuclear-armed Iraq was more dangerous than a war with Iraq.

His answer: “A nuclear-armed Iraq is more dangerous.”

Former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee started the debate with attacks on the conservative bona fides of Romney and Giuliani.

Are they conservatives?

“We’ve got an hour and a half,” Thompson said. “Maybe they can work on it.”

Questioned about the growing tensions between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Iraq, Thompson lacked heft with his answer.

“It’s one of those situations where we’ve got friends on both sides,” Thompson said.

As with many episodes of “Law & Order,” the NBC series in which he starred in a role as a Southern-accented New York City district attorney, Thompson had the final line of the debate. He answered a direct question about whether he is in fact lazy.

He rattled off his resume, noting that he had won two elections overwhelmingly and served in special roles for leading national figures.

“If a man can do all that and still be lazy, I recommend it to everybody,” Thompson said.

For his part, McCain identified himself as the “reliable conservative” in the race.

He took a direct shot at Romney for his answer in a recent debate to a question about congressional authority to declare war. In the previous debate, Romney said the president should consult his lawyers on such an issue.

“Those are the last people on Earth I call in,” McCain said.

He then suggested that Romney changes his mind with his license plates, with one answer for Iowans and others for Massachusetts.

“Governor, you’ve been spending the last year trying to fool people about your record,” McCain said. “I don’t want you to start fooling them about mine.”

While serious about the Clinton questions Huckabee showcased some of his wit in talking about health-care. And as with all who effectively employ humor, Huckabee knows his audience.

With more Baby Boomers aging and entering government medical programs, there are reasons for worry, Huckabee said.

“When all the old hipsters find out they get free drugs just wait and see what that costs,” Huckabee said.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul espoused a number of small government, libertarian positions, arguing the United States needs a decidedly less adventuresome foreign policy.

He also made the case  that marriage is a religious ceremony in which the government should have no role as a sanctioning entity.

“The state really shouldn’t be involved,” Paul said.

Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo and California Congressman Duncan Hunter also participated in the debate but fielded only a few questions while positioned literally as human bookends on the stage.