Talk about it here. Watch it live on FNC or (better yet) at
YouTube.
5:57 PM PT: So....welcome to the party! The crazy party...the Republican Party. The debate starts in about 5 minutes or so...and to give you a flavor of what to expect, I just saw an ad before the start of the debate railing against the idea of government-funded bridges. Which I guess are almost as bad as government-funded fire departments.
6:00 PM PT: Tonight Gary Johnson will be back on the debate stage, I hear. As will Jon Huntsman. Thad McCotter also withdrew from the race today, endorsing Romney. Of course, the big question in tonight's debate is whether Mitt Romney's plan to turn himself into Mittens Delano Romney works...or whether Rick Perry's retort — that Romney is "Obama-lite" — carries the day in crazy town.
6:02 PM PT: Ron Paul wins the award for the ugliest tie. Michele Bachmann wins the award for the loudest dress. Newt Gingrich wins the award for most likely to knock over the podium.
6:03 PM PT: Brett Baier says that thanks to complaints from dog owners the "time's up" signal won't sound like a doorbell. (I thought he was going to say Mitt Romney had been banned for strapping his dog Seamus to the top of his station wagon on a long road trip.)
6:06 PM PT: First question is what will the candidates do to give small businesses an incentive to hire people. Rick Perry starts out by comparing himself to Medicare fraud kingpin Rick Scott, but his basic answer is to "free" small businessmen up to do whatever the hell they please. (Problem is, they're already free to do whatever the hell they please...but there's not enough demand. And without demand, there's no reason for businesses to expand.) Brett Baier follows up and asks Perry for more specifics. Perry's basic answer: TBD.
6:08 PM PT: Baier asked a long question about criticism of Romney's plan. Romney's answer: Obama sucks. Then he proves he count by listing six of his 59 points. It was pretty impressive: Romney got all the numbers right: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Baier's follow-up: What's your definition of rich? Romney says he doesn't have a definition of rich...but he wants everybody to be rich. And Obama sucks.
6:10 PM PT: The feedback/echo is really horrible. The question is to Michele Bachmann comes from a submitted: "Out of every dollar I earn, how much do I deserve to keep?" Bachmann says the questioner deserves every single penny of every single dollar. In other words, she just endorsed a zero percent tax rate. Awesome.
6:11 PM PT: Rick Santorum, at the Google debate, is surprisingly not asked about his Google problem. Basically he's asked whether he supports a Federal right-to-work law; his answer is that he doesn't think there should be any public employee unions at all. (Which wasn't the question.)