• Fred Thompson was really on fire tonight. Maybe a bit too much in fact. I hope that this splits the pro-war neocon vote more. He went after Huckabee which I think was the right thing to do. Both because he’s high in the polls but also because besides Rudy he’s the most liberal and is easy to attack.
• Huckabee I think did the worst of the bunch. Not terrible but I think he got beat up a bit because of his record and I think he deserves it. The religious question about the ad though could have been left out. I don’t think those that support him care much.
• McCain keeps getting more and more smug. It upsets me he was my Republican choice in 2000. A coworker said the same. He wasn’t particularly good or bad tonight but his smartass smirk and chuckle gets to me more and more. I don’t know how his donations are going but I hope he’s tight on money. It’ll be interesting to see this 3-4 man race go while they all are running out of cash.
• Romney… nothing to really mention. His pot shot at Paul about reading Ahmadinejad’s press releases was retarded. It was great however to see Paul respond: “Laugh it up”, “Keep laughing” or whatever it was.
• Rudy didn’t do much either tonight except laugh at Paul… again.
• Paul had some real spunk. Must be carrying over from the CNN interview earlier in the day about the newsletters. The other day after the results in NH someone made up a list of suggestions for the Paul campaign (and today he asked for suggestions.) One was to take off the gloves. The feel good policy ads in NH and Iowa didn’t appear to be worth the millions we spent on them. He needs to start pointing out how his opponents are wrong. Hold the voters hand a bit. It appears that suggestion was taken and I hope it continues. He needs to be careful not to come off as the grumpy old man (which may have already happened) but he needs to be firm and forward. Like when asked about 9/11 truthers again. The person asking the question said that many of Paul’s supporters where truthers. At least that’s what I recall. And that’s absolute bullshit and was done to further discredit him. I would have liked Paul to point that out but I thought his answer which amounted to: No I don’t agree with that, no I don’t endorse that, and while I can’t tell them what to do given that that association doesn’t help him that they not speak in his name. And immediately after saying that he asked to address the latest issue with Iran. Now Brit Hume seemed to be fishing for the answer that the captain of the ship acted incorrectly. That he was too passive. It felt like he was assuming it was self evident that the passive response was wrong and that the candidates were going to go all warmonger on the stage and call for the heads of the captains and the bombing of the Iranians. None of the candidates took the bate. Paul fully recognized what Hume was implying and correctly went off on the warmonger neocons who are looking for anything to start another war. He should have been more explicit in pointing out what Hume was implying but he was right on the mark. The panel very quickly realizes and tries to make Paul to be a paranoid fool by pointing out that the rest of the candidates were calm and had agreed with the passive response. Of course that’s not what Paul was referring too but much of the crowd fell for it anyway.
• Frank Luntz was Frank Luntz. “An idiot.” He had his regular group of undecided voters. He’s very good at apparently manipulating the crowd. Who thinks Thompson won? Oh yeah yeah he won. Who think Paul did the worst? Oh yeah he did the worst. I was very happy to see that not all of them raised their hands and even shook their heads no when he asked if Paul lost the debate and at the end when he asked if Paul should be allowed in the Republican debates just about everyone said yes and you could tell Luntz wasn’t exactly expecting that and passed it off to Hannity & Colmes without commenting on it.
• Oddly Paul was not interviewed afterwards like the rest of them. I’d like to know why and hope it was because of Paul and not Fox ignoring him. (Update: He had something else to do and declined.)
• By the time I shut off the TV Paul was winning the cell phone poll at 32% with Thompson at 21%. Text R4 to 36288.

UPDATE:

The NYTimes “Live Blogging the G.O.P. Debate“:

9:36 p.m. | Paul and Iraq Ron Paul does not seem to like being asked about the view of many of his supporters, that 9/11 was an inside job. He says he can’t tell his supporters what to do. In so doing, he passes up a chance to guide or lead them.

What a bunch of bullshit. Paul doesn’t want to lead them. He doesn’t agree with them, he would prefer them not associate him with those beliefs, but he’s not going to tell them to bugger off. He’s not going to tell them to change their opinion. These pundits simply don’t get it. They don’t see that this question has nothing to do with Paul. They don’t see or they agree with the implications in the question. As if these hundreds of thousands of supporters are all truthers. Then you have:

Mr. Paul goes on a tear, suggesting his rivals want to start World War III over Iran. Brit Hume, one of the moderators, points out that all of the rivals have said they would react passively, to which Mr. Paul replies, “I’m very sorry, I can’t hear a word you said.” Mr. Romney takes a slap at Mr. Paul, drawing boos from the audience.

Brit Hume is retarded and didn’t actually listen to the candidates answers. Nor did this blogger. They all said clearly: “No, I think the captain did the right thing, but if they mess with us again we’ll make them see their god real quick.” In some cases they were more aggressive than that. Paul was pointing out that they are making a mountain out of a mole hill. The administration and Fox News especially. I would have preferred Paul to say: “Well, if they make an aggressive move against the United States than absolutely we would retaliate. However, in this case, I do not believe any true threat was posed and to get all worked up over a half dozen speed boats is silly. I’m getting the impression from the administration that they are just looking for a reason to start something with Iran.”

And as for who was being booed. Romney was definitely the one being booed after making the remark about Ahmadinejad.

I have to say that many of the comments are entertainingly ignorant. This is the typical NYT reader?

UPDATE2:

You can find what appears to be the whole debate here.

http://www.concordmonitor.com/…

Ron Paul won the support of about half of the undecided voters gathered in a Manchester house yesterday, when he spoke about how he could save hundreds of millions of dollars by scaling back America’s overseas empire. But many left with concerns that Paul lacked the leadership ability necessary to work with Congress.

“How could anybody vote for somebody who could not describe one buck-stops-here leadership step?” she [Christina McKinley of Nashua] said. Earlier, she had asked Paul what experiences had taught him to lead.

“I don’t care how many wonderful ideas you have,” she said. “If he had demonstrable leadership experience, the door would have been kept open for me.”

Several audience members raised concerns that Paul sounded like an isolationist. Ken Murray asked Paul how involved America should be in the world, and was satisfied with his answer.

“He proposed open relations with all countries,” Murray said. “I wanted to hear that, so we weren’t walled off.”

But Murray was among those who remained undecided. Both Paul and Romney acted and looked presidential, he said. After Paul’s hour-long discussion, Murray would say only that he was “more inclined” to lean toward Paul. Sean Doherty, of Bedford, decided yesterday that he would support Paul over John McCain. He said that he had reservations, though, because he did not expect the Republican establishment to back Paul if he rose in the polls.

“I don’t think they’d support him,” he said. “I think they would depth-charge him.”

Across the room, Jim Sheehan seemed to symbolize Murray’s concern. Sheehan said that Paul was correct that we were headed for a financial collapse, but that he did not offer practical solutions.

“I believe in his ideas. I just think that they are not viable,” he said. “We have gone down the path too far to change, unless we have a total economic collapse. Then bring in Ron Paul.”

I’ll give McKinley that Paul doesn’t have a lot of leadership experience but how does one evaluate someone’s leadership ability? Does being the head of a successful business translate to being a successful president? Plenty of our presidents where from legislative positions. What would be considered leadership in those professions? Usually you get to well known positions through compromise of your principles. Right now that’s not really what we need. We need a strong direction for the executive branch toward stability and reasonable expenditures and let the Congress fight out the details to get there. Leadership is telling people how it is. Working with them to deal with the hardships that are coming down the road instead of ignoring them like just about everyone else does.

Then you have the complaints about the GOP not backing Paul. Well what would they do if he rose in the polls? Start backing the Democratic candidate? Create a new party? Not likely. If Paul does well than they will back him. People gravitate toward the winner (or perceived winner). Even if they do it grudgingly at first.

And for his ideas no being viable till after “total economic collapse.” Is this guy a sadist? I would rather try to stop the meltdown even if it hurts because prolonging the inevitable rarely results in less damage. We need to face facts and start working toward fixing these problems or else we are all going to be in deep shit and history shows those times usually result in larger government not smaller.