Here’s the video of the debate.

And some reactions below.

Jeff G. from Protein Wisdom:

First, let me say that I very much liked the format — and my wife, whom I made watch it with me (SEXUAL HARASSMENT!) said after that she learned a whole lot more than she thought she would. The format was far more useful for vetting a potential President than is the soundbite format the mainstream media prefers — the end result of the latter being that an activist press gets to shape both the debate and the field by way of their “moderation” and their control over the length and breadth of answers, and as a result, it has become more important for a candidate to learn 30-second canned answers and fend off gotcha questions than it is that he or she can offer and then defend ideas that require more time to explain.

[…]What most impressed me — and perhaps this is merely because it is something I’ve been writing on for years — was that the entire debate exposed a truly conservative / classical liberal governing strategy for the long term: solutions offered were not only practical, from the standpoint of economics and fiscal sanity, but as importantly they outlined in broad strokes a plan to change the political and civil culture, creating in the aggregate a paradigm shift away from statism and back toward individual ownership and autonomy, self-reliance, and limited government as an inevitable result of the rebirth of personal responsibility and economic accountability.

That is is to say, what Gingrich and Cain both posited repeatedly last evening were solutions that empowered the individual to make choices, to see clearly the flow of money for services and goods, and to feel the effects of big government by allowing them to recognize how the government’s centralized administration of programs through the bureaucracies is a poorly-run, wasteful, and largely unaccountable middle stage that, in addition to being ineffectual, is also completely unnecessary.

[…]So while others take away from last night’s debate yet another supposed gotcha moment — which of course plays into old paradigms and explains why election cycle after election cycle we in the GOP nominate polished career politicians whose most impressive attributes are that they can remain largely gaffe free and can effectively pander — what I took away is that, finally, we are seeing what conservatism means and how it can and should be applied to thinking through problems to their solutions, and how its reintroduction into the culture can, as a function of sheer momentum, turn back the tide of statism that threatens to turn the US into a post-Constitutional soft tyranny.

I don’t care how much a particular candidate has memorized to meet the demands of a thirty-second answer to a loaded question from Anderson Cooper or Chris Wallace; we give the media far too much power by allowing them to shape our political culture. Instead, I want to see a set of core convictions — adherence to the Declaration and Constitution and the unalienable rights of the individual — and an overarching strategy for its implementation.

Last night, I was greatly pleased with what I saw.

And John Hayward from Human Events:

As it turned out, Cain and Gingrich had substantially fewer disagreements than Lincoln and Douglas did.  In fact, they had only minor differences of opinion on how to go about implementing their reforms.  Both were firmly in agreement on the importance of block-granting Medicaid funds to the states, abolishing ObamaCare in favor of market-based health care reforms, and providing a way for younger workers to opt out of Social Security and into privately owned accounts.  Cain, of course, believes Social Security privatization will require his 999 Plan as a runway in order to achieve takeoff, as the 999 Plan does away with payroll taxes.

Neither candidate began a response with an express or implied cry of “You’re wrong!” or engage in the sort of verbal frenzy that ends with heated accusations about the sinister forces providing Mitt Romney with lawn care services.  These two were so collegial that I couldn’t help thinking they’d look great on a ticket together.  Cain had the most riotously funny line of the evening when, given an opportunity to ask a single question of his opponent, he thought for a moment and inquired: “If you were Vice President of the United States, what would you want the President to assign you to do first?”

[…]The most strongly emphasized Big Idea from Gingrich tonight was the fallacy of allowing Big Government to measure its own performance, and predict the future costs and benefits of tax and spending policies, when its predictions of cost and benefit have never come anywhere near reality.  (Cain buttressed this point by relating the amazing history of Medicare, originally sold to the public with a price tag of $6 billion, and projected to cost no more than $12 billion by 1990.  The actual cost of the program in 1990 was $109 billion.)

[…]Another major point from Gingrich was the absurdity of money-for-nothing welfare-state programs.  “Nobody should get something for nothing unless they have a very severe disability,” he declared.  “If you’re an able-bodied person, and you’re getting something for nothing, we’re pretty stupid for giving it to you.”  Among the tough-love proposals he suggested was attaching a mandatory training requirement to unemployment benefits.  As he noted with both acid and accuracy, people could be earning college degrees in the time they’ve been sitting around and waiting for Barack Obama to create jobs.

[…]Cain strongly believes in the importance of moving Americans from “entitlement to empowerment.”  Block granting both money and responsibility for programs like Medicaid to the states is part of this strategy, as is the creation of a private account option for Social Security recipients.  “People spend other people’s money recklessly than they spend their own,” he observed, brilliantly condensing much of the Obama disaster into a single sentence.

Looking back on his transition from private-sector business success into the politics, Cain made the interesting observation that it’s “dangerous” for businessmen to stay out of public debates, confident they can mitigate the damage from legislation with good lobbyists somewhere down the line.  When the government becomes as large and intrusive as ours has, politics must be practiced defensively.  It’s really not possible for a high-level businessman to declare himself uninterested in the affairs of government, because the government is most certainly interested in him.

I would like to see MORE debates like this – something more like what William Lane Craig does where people get 20 minutes for an opening speech. Cain and Gingrich both seem to have a dislike of the media, and that’s a good thing. I don’t like Gingrich as the nominee for president, because of his habit of trying to appear as a centrist by dealing with people like Nancy Pelosi. But I would be supportive of a Cain/Gingrich ticket. Heck, I’ve read Newt’s “Winning the Future” a half-dozen times. He’s a smart guy – he just needs to be in a supporting role.