romney dominates. santorum refudiates. paul undersells.

After the New Hampshire debate, where the GOP candidates losing hope for the nomination took their final jabs at the front runner - aka Mitt Romney, it was clear that Mitt Romney has come a long way since 2008. He has mastered the skill of handling and responding to direct attacks. As a result he did look like the strongest candidate to be able to take over the calmness of president Obama during the presidential debates later this year. He clearly dominated majority of topics by taking his time to respond and bring his points across.

While Romney was busy solidifying his top spot, Santorum was busy refudiating the claims that some of his previous support to bills proposed by Obama administration were totally non Republican and anti American values. The highlight was the fact that Santorum supported legislation which had no underlying funding mechanism. No plan whatsoever of how the legislation would be paid for except by the government (tax payers money).

Ron Paul is not good at debates. Period. He is the good school boy who always follows the rules of debating (never go above the allotted time, never jump in a conversation even when he is being attacked by his opponent, etc.). He always undersells his ideas and then tries to explain them over and over again. Paul has some great thoughts and ideas on how to bring this country back up, but until he is able to communicate those to the voters clearly, he will not be in a position to execute the same. And if he uses the word liberty more than once in any of the remaining debates, his popularity is going to fall down the charts much faster than William Hung's.

While Huntsman does look like the Ron Paul for the thinking Americans, he has a Herculean task in front of him if he has to overcome the Romney/Santorum/Paul lead. Perry has done himself, his supporters and his campaign a disservice by spending most of his time in TX than campaigning as hard as the other candidates. And for Gingrich, shout and cry as much as he may, the superPAC successfully sealed his fate in Iowa and will continue doing so in the coming weeks and states.

The only good thing that came out of the New Hampshire debate as compared to the Iowa debate was that the candidates talked a lot more about the real issues and how President Obama has failed on the real issues as compared to Iowa where they were busy attacking each other.