Last night, CNN hosted the final Republican debate at the Reagan Library, and it was truly debating 101, and why having a message and sticking to it is so critical.  It was always an example of why repeating your opponents charges against you is a losing strategy every time.

Governor Romney was upset about Senator McCain’s characterization of his stance on a timetable in Iraq, and felt it was an underhanded tactic and referred to it as "the type of dirty tricks that Ronald Reagan would have found reprehensible."

Maybe a valid point, maybe not.  One major problem — the issue on which Senator McCain is viewed as being the stronger candidate — national security.  The issue on which Governor Romney has been campaigning fervently for the past week as being his key strength – revitalizing the economy.

Instead, the vast majority of this debate was spent as a running dialogue between the Senator and the Governor on what the Governor did or did not say with regard to Iraq withdrawal. 

To make matters worse for the Governor, his second biggest strength has been leadership, and his biggest weakness has been flip-flopping. While continually going back to the timetable issue, the Senator was able to pull out a quote the Governor used at the time of discussing the surge — "I can’t weigh in, I’m a Governor."  Not exactly a decisive comment and the Governor’s response was "That is a separate issue."

When debating, it is crucial to drive your message and spend the vast amount of time doing just that.  The last thing you want to do is spend all of your time repeating a charge that your opponent has made (which lends more credence to it) fighting the intricacies of it, and spending very little time on your strongest issues. 

It is often called "getting lost in the weeds" and forgetting that the idea is not to win the argument, the idea is to drive your message through, especially when this is the last debate forum to do so. This was a classic game of continually setting the trap, and the Governor fell for it last evening.