Reconsidering Romney (II)

Jim Fallows, man from Mars:

As soon as this evening's Florida debate ended, the MSNBC TV commentators were wondering how it would have looked to "someone who was seeing these candidates for the first time."

Why didn't they just ask me?

This is the first debate among the Republicans that I've seen at full length and in real time. So factoring in all the expectations I'd gathered from coverage (Romney too weaselly, McCain really the strongest one, Huckabee a charmer, etc), how did it look?

Romney by a mile. More precisely, the only candidate you could imagine putting up a plausible general-election fight. Again, I'm not handicapping the GOP race, which I know nothing about. I'm not saying how each candidate did relative to previous appearances. I am telling you how this one debate looked if you had never seen these guys on the same stage before.