Not shown: Crazy audience members egging these clowns on.
Join us: Daily Kos will be liveblogging tonight's Republican debate starting at 8 PM ET.
The battle for Republican votes continues tonight in the Nation's Scariest State. The last South Carolina debate was a panderfest to the far-far-right, most notable for (1) an audience that had apparently been recruited from the parking lots of local bars and (2) for Fox News pundit Juan Williams getting the snot hammered out of him for asking questions that involved black people. Standing up to uppity black person Juan Williams has been credited as one source of Newt Gingrich's South Carolina surge, which should tell you something very, very significant about South Carolina Republicans.
So what should we expect from tonight's debate? I have no idea. It couldn't possibly be worse, could it? Among the issues that we may or may not see brought up:
- The sudden absence of Rick Perry, who bowed out. This will be most notable because it offers one less candidate for Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to attack in lieu of taking on Mitt Romney, thus forcing them to spend more time interacting with Mitt Romney. Santorum has had precious little luck in his Romney attacks, mostly because Rick Santorum looks like a petulant, angsty teen during every attack, which allows Mitt to appear calm and sensible in response. Newt has had better luck, primarily because his own positioning is that of know-it-all genius schooling the young whippersnapper Mitt (oh, how I love campaign season... sort of... well, not really).
- According to today's polling, Newt Gingrich may be in the lead, in South Carolina. That changes things, right? Romney is losing his luster of invincibility, which is pretty much the only thing Romney has had going for him. That means Mitt actually has to go on offense during one of these debates, to take Newt down. Can he do it? It's a serious question: So far, Mitt has coasted through these debates in stealth mode, content to stand with a smug grin while ridiculous candidate after ridiculous candidate self-immolates around him. He avoids fights. When he gets into them, he is spotty at best: He's got the demeanor down, but sooner or later moderators, the other candidates, the audience and the wider public are going to start getting irritated at the way Mitt Romney cannot straight-up answer a question to save his life. That guy dodges questions like he's on jet-powered roller skates.
- For some reason, Rick Santorum is still in the race. No, I don't know why. Maybe at some point the moderators will ask him. But as the officially appointed Holier Than You candidate, he continues to get the lukewarm endorsements of far-right religious figures who can't stomach endorsing the suspiciously Mormon Mitt or the world-renowned philanderer Newt. Hey, it seems to have won him Iowa, so who are we to judge? Stay in as long as you want, Rick.
- Will the moderators bring up Newt's ex-wife attacking him? I hope so, because I think we all want to see the family-values South Carolina crowd applaud Newt's courageous pro-adultery stance yet again. Will the moderators bring up Bain Capital again? I hope so, because I have a bet riding on whether Mitt Romney will declare them to be freedom-haters if they do. Will the moderators bring up issues of racism and suspiciously racist statements uttered by the candididates? Ha ha ha ha—no. No, I think they've learned that lesson. Special GOP debate moderators tip: Never bring up racism if you think your audience will applaud racism.
- Ron Paul, the Republibertarian. It seems like we've well established at this point that Ron Paul will get a significant percentage in every primary, but that it won't make a difference, he'll never get majority support, and nobody will ever treat him as a serious candidate. His anti-war stance is a large reason for that; his being quite prominently batshit insane is, perhaps, another.
You weren't really reading this to get actual debate information, were you? Of course you weren't. Nobody does. We have no idea how these things will go before the fact, other than "it will in general be as boring as all crap, but maybe somebody will screw up or something so we have to pay attention anyway, so we might as well mock these people openly for an hour or two." Before every debate I predict a candidate will be eaten by a bear; every damn time, it stubbornly refuses to happen. I'm beginning to think that they screen for bears when they let the audience in, because they're prejudiced against bears and/or don't want candidates getting eaten on live television. Or perhaps bears are just much, much rarer than I had been led to believe. In any event, during some future debate, some candidate will get eaten by a bear, and I will be able to ride my prediction to national fame and glory.
What is a bit more obvious is that, as the number of candidates dwindle, the personal attacks between the remaining candidates will heat up (just by virtue of having to engage each other more seriously, and for longer periods). So these next few debates have at least the potential for sparks and/or hilarity.
Go, Newt!