McCain Holds Up in South Carolina

Jonathan Martin over at The Politico argues that John McCain held up well in last night South Carolina debate:

Largely untouched after 90 minutes, John McCain left the stage here Thursday night with the same designation he had upon arrival: front-runner.

For the third debate in less than a week, no candidate not named “Mitt Romney” aggressively went after the ascendant McCain, who leads now in polls taken in both Michigan and South Carolina.

And with Romney apparently not airing negative ads in Michigan, it appears that McCain, whose vulnerabilities in a GOP primary are well documented, now could go into the next two pivotal primary states largely untouched by his intra-party rivals.

Romney took after McCain at the outset of the Fox News-sponsored forum, criticizing the Arizona senator for his statements in Michigan Wednesday that the jobs lost in the economically struggling state were not coming back.

“I disagree,” Romney said. “I'm going to fight for every single job - Michigan, South Carolina, every state in this country.”

But McCain parried the question, citing his willingness to dispense hard truths and adding a sharp reminder that it was this trait that enabled him to defeat Romney in New Hampshire.

It was the only notable exchange where McCain was really forced on the defensive.

Later, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson both offered only the most glancing shots at McCain – Giuliani on the Arizonan not being the only one to support the surge policy in Iraq and Thompson on McCain’s immigration stance. And they did so with a dose of honey, beginning their salvos by describing McCain as their “friend.”

McCain was helped further by the emergence of a feister Thompson. The former Tennessee senator came prepared to go on the attack – but not against McCain.

Rather, it was Mike Huckabee he targeted, underscoring that the two are competing for the same vote share here in what is a must-win state for each.

Portraying Huckabee as soft on foreign policy, immigration and unions and with a weakness for a nanny-state government, Thompson cited a trove of opposition research to declare of the former Arkansas governor’s background: “That's not the model of the Reagan coalition, that's the model of the Democratic Party.”

After the debate, McCain supporters seemed thrilled to have seen Thompson weakening the candidate they believe is shaping up to be their top rival here.

Also helping McCain was the decision by Fox to, after much discussion in previous debates, to downplay the immigration issue. It’s McCain’s most significant vulnerability in the primary, and it only it came up in the last ten minutes of the forum, at nearly 10:30 at night.

With immigration absent from the discussion, McCain was able to press his national security credentials — the other most important issue to the GOP base and one where McCain is on much more solid terrain. When the topic of the incident with Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf this week came up, McCain declined to second-guess the decision of the U.S. Navy boats and reminded voters of his own military background.

"And for those of us who are not in that situation, to second guess is a little bit presumptuous," McCain said. "It's a long, hard process to become the commander of a Navy ship."

South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson said afterward he was surprised that nobody on stage really took after McCain.

“It was very respectful tonight,” Dawson said. “It wasn’t a rough debate.”

Yet South Carolina is known for its bare-knuckled politics and Dawson predicted that McCain would not enjoy a glide path to next week’s primary.

But with Romney moving to pull out of the primary here and Thompson, Giuliani and Huckabee indicating again Thursday that they’re not comfortable attacking McCain in person, he’s on track to enjoy the precise opposite of what he experienced in the South Carolina in 2000.

Fred Thompson's looking for the winner's mantle coming out of the debate (Fred's not dead).

Both the New York Times and ABC News have given him glowing coverage, and the right blogosphere got some amphetamine with the jump start of the "red pickup truck" campaign (see Flopping Aces, for example).

See also my post-debate analysis,"The GOP Debate From Myrtle Beach."