US elections 2012

US elections 2012

CNN Arizona Republican debate – as it happened

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum squabbled in an ill-tempered Republican presidential debate in Arizona hosted by CNN
Video highlights of the CNN debate Link to video: Romney and Santorum clash at Arizona debate

7.00pm: Welcome to live coverage of the 20th and perhaps final debate between the GOP presidential candidates, this time in Mesa, in sunny Arizona.

In five days time the Republican voters of Michigan and Arizona will make their choice, and a week later comes Super Tuesday: less super than previous election cycles, but one that will decide if this contest is to end abruptly, with Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee, or if it is to drag on, as some fear it might, right up to the GOP convention in Tampa in August.

Tonight is the first real debate for almost month, offering perhaps one last bonfire of the vanities that has so far consumed Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman and of course Herman Cain.

For those of you who have followed the last 19 debates: we're thinking about striking a veterans medal. "For those who served in the 2012 GOP debates," or similar. For those of you for whom this is the first time: welcome, and be afraid. Very afraid.

All four of the candidates on stage are familiar, but let's run through what each one wants to get out of tonight.

Mitt Romney: Still the inevitable nominee and frontrunner, despite all that has been flung at him. Like Gulliver he has perhaps been worn down by the midgets he has faced, and tied up in knots, but he needs another solid performance tonight, as he did in the last two debates in South Carolina abut a million years ago. Today he released some detailed tax cut proposals and he'll be making the most of them here, to win over the wavering and put Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum behind him.

Rick Santorum: As he has risen in the polls, and won some eye-catching victories in Minnesota and Colorado, the focus has shifted to some of his more extraordinary positions in the past. Santorum is a better debater and has had some good performances so far – but tonight will be the first time he will clearly be occupying the number one challenger spot as the Anti-Romney. Will he stick to bashing Barack Obama, or will he needle Romney? On a good day he could cause Romney a lot of pain, being more fluent than the former Massachusetts governor, if that's the route he goes down – and avoids getting bogged down in discussions about theology or Satan's attack on America.

Newt Gingrich: The previous Anti-Romney, he has since slid down in the polls and is now all but out of contention. But he is also a better debater than Romney. His choice is whether he takes bipartisan potshots at Santorum and Romney equally, or whether he concentrates his fire on Romney alone. As always with Newt, though, he can be his own worst enemy: too much Professor Gingrich wibbling on about moon bases or "lean six sigma," whatever that is, and he loses. But he needs a big win tonight to remain a serious contender.

Ron Paul: The insurgent libertarian-leaning candidate has been a disappointment in the voting so far, for all his fervent base, money and organisation. He also seems to lean towards Mitt Romney – the two appear to be quite friendly – and Paul may muddy the water by attacking Santorum as a faux-conservative. He remains a rogue element, to be treated warily by the other three, who want to flatter his supporters while smacking down his more unorthodox ideas.

We will be following the debate from gavel to gavel (if they had gavels) right here, with contributions from our correspondents in the field and the redoubtable Ana Marie Cox, as well as the best of the Twitterverse.

And you can add to this: by leaving your comments below.

Rick Santorum  speaks during a campaign rally in Phoenix Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum speaks during a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Photograph: Joshua Lott/Reuters

7.39pm: Say what you like about Rick Santorum – and we will, given the chance later tonight – but he's not giving up on the scary God-talk. Just today he was telling the people of Arizona about the White House's "war on Christianity":

We're seeing very evidently what the president's moral codes and principles are about. We see a president who is systematically trying to crush the traditional Judeo-Christian values of America. We saw it with Obamacare and the implementation of Obamacare, where his values are going to be imposed on a church's values.

Yes, that's just the sort of apocalyptic talk goes down so well with independent voters in a general election.

7.45pm: For some real insight into the Republican debates – as opposed to this rubbish – and the questions that have been asked, then it is worth reading about our #unasked project.

This is a piece of compelling analysis about what topics have been covered exhaustively, and what questions have been brushed by in passing.


This great visualisation shows some of the questions that haven't been asked. Just two on climate change, for example.

And this interactive compares the media agenda with the priorities of voters.

After 20 or so debates, depending on how you count them, you'd think every topic under the sun has been covered? As it happens: no. Here's our study of the debate questions to date.

It's all part of our Citizens Agenda project, a collaboration with the students of the Studio 20 program at New York University.

7.58pm: Tonight's debate summarised in graphic form: it's Man on Dog versus Dog on Roof (thanks to Melissa McEwan at Shakesville for this work of genius).

Santorum v Romney GOP debate An accurate summary of the GOP debate tonight between Rick Santorum versus Mitt Romney

"Man on Dog" is of course the social conservative Rick Santorum, who once famously compared gay marriage to bestiality. "Dog on Roof" is the managerial genius of Mitt Romney, who will strap the American economy to the roof of his car in the interests of efficiency, even if it makes it sick.

And that's it, really. What a marvellous choice for GOP voters, eh?

8.02pm: And here's CNN's John King with the now standard Deep Voiced Intro, like one of those movie trailers for a horror movie. Which is it, sort of. It probably feels like a zombie flick to Mitt Romney.

8.06pm: Now the four men are on stage. We've had the Pledge of Allegiance already, John King tells us, so it's on to the national anthem. In an unusual choice, CNN have gone with the American national anthem tonight. Apparently that star-spangled banner does yet wave, according to sources.

8.09pm: In tonight's debate, the candidates get to sit down, which probably helps Rick Santorum.

A brief flub there. "I'm here to talk about positive solutions for this country that includes everybody from the bottom up," says Rick. Yes, he said "bottom up". Snigger all you like, sniggerers.

8.15pm: Now the first question: and it's on the national debt. Rick Santorum is first up, and his concrete proposal is to repeal Obamacare. And all that defence spending? "You need to go to remedial math class," says Rick.

Asked to respond, Mitt Romney goes straight at Rick Santorum, slamming his record before saying what he really wants to do is answer the question. Apparently among Santorum's sins included voting for something called Davis-Bacon, which may or may not be a type of sandwich.

Santorum gives it back to Romney, talking about taxes he raised in Massachusetts and also accusing Mitt of wanting to raise taxes on the wealthy in his latest proposals today.

"There were so many misrepresentations in there it's going to take me a while," says Romney, his standard reply to debate criticism.

8.20pm: Sigh. Once again Newt Gingrich claims to have balanced the budget while he was speaker for four years, which is simply false. It was twice and that was on the back of tax increases and a bubbling economy.

John King asks Ron Paul: "You have a new television ad that labels [Santorum] a fake. Why?" Ron Paul replies: "Because he's a fake."

Santorum is stitting there with a grin on his face, and holds out his arm to Paul, saying "I'm real!"

8.22pm: Rick Santorum shows his ability as a debater in his response to the "fake" line from Ron Paul. He stays calm, reeling off the various conservative spending plaudits he has won, and manages to smack Ron Paul at the same time. Gingrich would have probably exploded.

"That's always the problem when you compare yourself to the other members of Congress," says Ron Paul, who is now defending himself.

Ron Paul supporters at the CNN debate in Arizona Ron Paul supporters at the CNN debate in Arizona. Photograph: Rick D Elia/Corbis

8.25pm: John King asks Mitt Romney to explain his silly "severely conservative" governor line from a recent speech. "I was without question a conservative governor of our state," says Romney, noting that he balanced the budget in Massachusetts four times – as if he had any choice in the matter since it was required by law.

Oh and here's Mitt's "you have to be a fiscal conservative in business" line again. On that basis Google would have gone out of business in year one, so that's just nonsense. Many businesses, especially start-ups, don't "balance" their budgets, sometimes for years. Aside from the fact that the government isn't a business.

8.28pm: Newt Gingrich is going on and on about his energy plan to do everything, including revolutionising government somehow. Because that worked so well for Rick Perry if I recall.

CNN And Arizona GOP Host Presidential Debate Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich participate in the CNN Arizona debate. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

8.36pm: Rick Santorum is now defending earmarks, the wacky American system whereby individual congresspersons can tack on unrelated spending to bills. Romney has been hitting Santorum on the matter, but Santo is giving it back, pointing out that Romney asked for earmarks as head of the Winter Olympics and as governor of Massachusetts.

"I didn't follow all of that," says Romney. Now that's just rude Mitt. Once again he comes across as a nasty piece of work. "While I was fighting to save the Olympics, you were fighting to save the Bridge to Nowhere," says Mitt, namechecking that bridge in Alaska.

Romney has got himself into a tangle here, as Santorum is running all over him on the minutae of earmarks (as if that will help his cause). Mitt even got some boos there.

This has run into the sand but Romney is now under fire from Gingrich and Santorum, with Gingrich getting off a zinger at Mitt, pointing out that when Romney asked for earmarks it was right but wrong for everyone else.

8.35pm: I'm not sure anyone came out of that last skirmish on earmarks very well. Somewhere it turned into a circular firing squad, with the members of the firing squad also blindfolded. In conclusion: it ended.

8.43pm: Now the candidates have to explain why none of them wanted to bail out the auto industry, an important topic in Michigan, which votes in its primary next week.

First off, Santorum accuses Romney of a double standard in not wanting to help Detroit but being happy to bail out the banks of Wall Street.

"Nice try but now let's look at the facts," sneers Romney, who promptly tells fibs about his position on restructuring the auto industry. "Nice try," is a staple Romney retort in these debates, so perhaps he'd like to try "I know you are but what am I?" for a change.

John King asks him a serious question about how there were no banks around to manage the bankruptcy of the auto industries, but Romney entirely ignores the question and blames the unions.

Santorum smacks Romney for comparing bailing out the airlines after 9/11 and the Wall Street bail out.

8.46pm: The Guardian's Ewen MacAskill is at the debate venue in Arizona and sends his view:

Ewen MacAskill

Mitt Romney looks strained tonight compared with the start of the campaign or even in Iowa at the start of January. His wrinkles are more prominent, his eyes seem tired. Maybe his campaign is in trouble? Maybe he is worried about losing the Michigan primary next week?

Romney has opted to battle in this debate on the economy, the main issue of importance to voters. It would be hard for Romney, as a Mormon, to tackle Santorum over his remarks about Satanism but probably will not be too unhappy if King or someone in the audience raises it.

Santorum much more relaxed than Romney. He dealt pretty well with his weak spot, his record of voting for earmarks. He pointed out that Romney had come looking for an earmark to help save the Salt Lake Olympics. Romney replied that yes he had but Santorum had also voted for the infamous Bridge for Nowhere. I am not sure what Romney's logic is: it is okay if he is asking for an earmark but wrong when an Alaskan senator does it?

Yes I thought Mitt looks like he has a few more gray hairs tonight.

8.51pm: We're back after the ad break with a question about birth control – and a huge negative response from the audience. "Look we're not going to spend a lot of time on this," John King is forced to tell the unruly mob that is waving pitchforks.

Newt Gingrich quickly seizes control of the debate and turns the question around to make it about the government.

Yes, infanticide. Apparently Barack Obama is all in favour of it. Why has the liberal media kept this quiet?

8.54pm: To further curry favour, moderator John King basically tells the candidates to just go nuts and attack the government. This leads to Rick Santorum explaining himself thus: "Just because I'm talking about it doesn't mean I want a government programme to fix it."

Anyway, the next several minutes are devoted to bashing Obama.

9.01pm: I'm sure this long and disturbing discussion on the evils of birth control – a gateway drug to abortion, according to Ron Paul, and I'm not kidding – will do wonders for boosting the Republican party's share of the women's vote.

I've lost track of what exactly is at issue here, I think it's a discussion about how many angels can dance on a morning-after pill.

9.04pm: So far this debate is like watching three drunks trying to start a fight and falling over.

Larry Sabato appears to agree (more politely).

9.09pm: Here's a flavour of the current debate, from Rick Santorum aimed at Romney, rightly taking him to task for boasting about balancing the Massachusetts budget when he was legaly obliged to:

Michael Dukakis balanced his budget for 10 years. Did that qualify him become president of the United States?

It would take to long to explain why, but in summary: zing.

Now Romney and Santorum are shouting over each other, with the audience joining in.

Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney at the CNN Arizona debate Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney at the CNN Arizona debate. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

There are two things here. One is – like the joke about wrestling with a pig (you get dirty and the pig likes it), Mitt Romney is rolling in the mud here with Santorum. That probably doesn't help either of them, but it certainly doesn't help Mr Presidential Inevitability, Mitt Romney.

Number two is: if anything helps along the tentative calls for a new GOP candidate and rejecting all of the candidates on stage tonight, then this debate is doing a fine job.

Even Republican voters are fed up of it:

9.13pm: Finally: immigration. And John King manages to refer to "illegals", nice touch.

Basically, the candidates think that any employers who hires an illegal immigrant should also be deported. Or put to work building the fence along the border.

9.15pm: It's an ad break, and John King warns or threatens us that the candidates will be asked "to define themselves in one word, and one word only".

I could do that: one word for all four of them.

9.16pm: Finally, Mitt Romney has been exposed for the fraud he is: a thousand 40-something journalists have fact-checked his abuse of a quote from Seinfeld, forgetting that no one cares.

Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich Due to an unfortunate mix-up between metric and imperial measurements, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are forced to sit at tiny desks during the CNN debate. Photograph: Jae C. Hong/AP

9.23pm: And we are back with the compulsory stupid question: "sum yourself up in one word". Really.

Ron Paul: Consistent

Rick Santorum: Courage

Mitt Romney: Resolute

Newt Gingrich: Cocaine. No, no - Cheerful.

Now, none of those was the word I would have used.

9.27pm: The Guardian's Washington DC bureau chief Ewen MacAskill is back with his summary of the debate so far:

Ewen MacAskill

This may be the last of the debates, the end of a chain going back to South Carolina in May last year. There is one scheduled for Portland, Oregon, in March and the organisers insist it will go ahead, though doubts remain.

This one has been much better in some ways than the early ones, which had too many candidates. The downside is that the remaining candidates know each other too well now, and are arguing about extremely detailed and ambiguous points. There is also a lot of dissembling. Romney manages to present himself as both opposed to earmarks and in favour, in favour of bail-outs and opposed to them. It has reached the point of ridiculous when Romney can accuse Santorum of being the originator of his healthcare reform in Massachusetts. Santorum is just as guilty in dissembling, especially over the earmarks. So what do we end up with? A very muddy and near incomprehensible debate.

Twitter appears to agree with Ewen's description.

9.35pm: Students from the Studio 20 program at NYU have been monitoring the breakdown of debate questions so far. There's been one on government (a question about debt), two of them could be classed as being about the economy and jobs, four that fell into the national security/foreign policy category, two on the candidates' conservative credentials, one on the candidates' record, two on contraception, three on immigration and one that they classed as "fluff". (Obviosuly some questions were classed in more than one category.)

In our #unasked project, no-one asked for a question on contraception; while 27% of the desired questions were about the economy and job creation.

Looks like the viewers aren't very happy about the questions, either:

9.36pm: Foreign policy, leaving the best until last. Well, leaving something until last anyway.

In between Rick Santorum defending his strange comments about women being too emotional to serve on the frontline for the US military, the non-Ron Paul consensus is that war with Iran is basically just waiting on Israel to give the US the green light.

Hamas is going to smuggle dirty bombs over the border into the US, says Mitt Romney. He repeats his line about if he is president, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon, but it will if Barack Obama is president. If this was a limbo dancing contest, Romney could easily fit through a letter box. Only the laws of gravity are stopping him from stooping any lower.

9.37pm: After the "bomb Iran" section, Ron Paul is allowed to speak. "We're worried about one nuclear weapon. Think about the Cold War, the Soviet Union had 13,000 of them and we talked to them," says Paul, who wants Congress to be consulted before a declaration of war.

"We talked to the Soviets during the Cuban crisis, we could at least talk to someone who there is no proof has a nuclear weapon," says Paul. The crowd erupts in silence.

After that outbreak of common sense, Rick Santorum tells us that Syria is a puppet of Iran, showing a firm grasp of Middle East politics.

It's enough to make you want to turn to religion.

Michael Salman, Abigail Salman Michael Salman, right, and his daughter Abigail Salman, 8, both of Mesa, Arizona, hand out religious literature outside the CNN Republican presidential debate. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

9.43pm: Rick Santorum's brain is losing its grasp on language, based on his description of Iran as a "the world's most prolific proliferator of terrorism". But after this debate, that's no surprise.

Everyone bar Ron Paul is fixating on Iran and the current president's fecklessness, which includes such statesmanlike arguments as this from Gingrich: "As long as you are America's enemy, you're safe".

I'm sure Osama bin Laden would agree with Newt that America's enemies are safe. If he wasn't so dead, that is.

9.45pm: So after all that sound and fury, signifying sod all, none of the Romney-Santorum-Gingrich triumvirate will even contemplate military intervention in Syria, despite what's going on there, and despite all their rhetoric about it being a puppet of Iran.

Oh and they appear to think that Osama bin Laden died in his sleep, of natural causes, since none of them would even mention his name.

9.48pm: Asked about the federal government's role in education, Rick Santorum doubles down and says he doesn't think that individual state governments should be involved in education.

Newt Gingrich is now on a tear about the failings of the education system, to the extent that it's a miracle anyone under the age of 30 can even read in this country.

Ron Paul says there is no constitutional authority for the federal government to be involved in education, but grudgingly concedes that the constitution is regrettably silent on the subject of states, who might be allowed to run the odd school.

9.53pm: The Guardian's Ewen MacAskill is being forced to watch this live, and he picks apart Mitt Romney's bumbling answer on Syria:

Ewen MacAskill

Romney's dubious grasp of foreign policy is exposed again. He suggested reaching out to the Allawites, the religious grouping that keeps Assad in power and persuade them to drop him. The problem with that is that Assad is just a puppet, a Western-educated son of a dictator, the front-man for a small, corrupt group that is largely drawn from the Allawites. Romney would be putting the US on the wrong side of history. The Allawites make up only about 12-15% of the Syrian population, and are opposed by Kurds, Sunni Muslims and even Shia Muslims: the Allawites are a break-away from the Shias.

Never mind, Mitt will deny he ever said any such thing.

9.56pm: Last question, and it's an election-ish question about the biggest misconception the public has about each candidate.

In Romney's case, there is no misconception, and so he ignores it and just makes a straight pitch for votes. When King politely enquires why he's not even pretending to answer the question, Romney replies: "You get to ask the question you want and I get to give the answer I want."

And people wonder why Mitt Romney comes across as an unloveable robot.

10.05pm: And that is it. Thank god that's over. A couple more hours of this and the Republican party could go the way of the Whigs. (Some of you may think that's not a bad thing.)

So 20 years from now we'll find that all these Republican debates were secretly funded by the Obama campaign, code-named "Give them enough rope".

Here's my one-word summary right now: beer.

10.18pm: Our community co-ordinator Ruth Spencer has been monitoring the comments below the line and has picked her top three.

1. NatashaFatale: Mitt: "Syria is their [Iran's] only ally in the middle east."
Wow. What was the name of that other majority Shiite country...begins with "I"...don't tell me, I'll remember...

2. mope When is the box set of the debates coming out? I will buy it.

3. ClaudeIvan Newt fairly waddled on stage.
America will never elect a fat president. I'm talking to you, Chris Christie.

Live blog: recap

10.45pm: Conclusion: Since we've used the gag about the real winner of these debates being Barack Obama, for a change let's suggest that the real winner was Chris Christie or Rand Paul or whoever the 2016 Republican nominee is going to be.

I have long since given up trying to predict what is going on in this Republican contest. That aside, this debate did no one any good, not the candidates and not the Republican party's chances in November, I would wager.

Perhaps because the candidates have done this so often, there was no pretense at offering any wider vision. Instead all viewers got was some microscopic discussion about arcane matters, like earmarks and Title X. The overall tone was brittle, passive-aggressive and macho blustering at the same time. To spend so much time and energy arguing about contraception provision veers towards the repellent. The beating of the war drums over Iran is similarly unlikely to attract moderate or undecided voters.

The effect of all these debates has been to shift the centre of the Republican presidential platforms to the right, with even Mitt Romney sounding at times like a mildly crazed member of an obscure Tea Party sub-faction.

In terms of the Republican nomination, the consensus seems to be that Rick Santorum blew his chance on the national stage, and that may be true: he talked with too much gusto about the likes of earmarks. But Romney didn't do much better: he did nothing to put to rest conservative fears, he bickered endlessly with Santorum to no end. Romney should have been talking about his new tax plans but he couldn't shift the debate in that direction, and instead wasted his time mud-wrestling with Santorum, who landed a few zingers on him.

Because Romney has a greater margin of error, he could afford a weak performance here. Santorum, lacking money and organisation, needed a better outcome tonight and for that reason he came off worse, not because he gave a measurably worse performance than Romney.

Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul did okay, and Paul predictably attacked Santorum (it is uncanny how he attacks the latest anti-Romney). But the real winner was: anyone who didn't watch this debate?

But let's look on he bright side: this could be the last debate until Barack Obama goes head-to-head with surprise GOP presidential nominee Nancy Reagan in October. But never fear: we'll be live blogging the primary results from Michigan and Arizona next Tuesday.

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