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freerepublic.com is the standard for this country. It represents the best political commentary from the public that there is in America.

Though not JimRob's fault, sadly, a forum with multiple members calling a Republican candidate a "bitch" and talking about superficial things like hair, makeup, and clothing will give the RNC elites (as well as the totalitarian left) a poor reflection of the character of FR. We deserve better.

IMHO...

I took a look here hoping to find more dispassionate analysis. For example, I was looking for comments regarding Kelly's question on the courts. IMHO, it produced the first real clear separation between the canidates, and I thought that question yielded answers that were very useful to contrast their principles and could have been a discussion in and of itself.

Sadly, perhaps some who supported Sarah resent Michele being in the race. This thread, unfortunately, was reduced largely to a fairly mindless cheering section for whichever candidate the poster supports. One can only presume that all this effort is expended in the hope that it may influence people reading it. Of course, praise and vitriol thrown around too much is seen right through by most people.

Though Sarah would not have been my number one pick in this race if she had declared, I certainly would not resort to saying distasteful things about her appearance like has happened about Michele Bachmann on this thread in in so many other places. Those types of comments reveal both desperation and a willingness to abandon propriety that reflects poorly on the writer. When I resort to calling my opponent ugly, I'm no longer debating but using the age-old propaganda tactic of demonizing and ostracizing.

Michele and Newt did have a real go at it but, if you notice, neither one insulted the other's appearance. They did both push vigorously to support their statements, which was healthy - it's ok to disagree on facts during a debate. In her summary in the post-debate converstation, she noted that Newt did walk back his statement - but he did it so deftly that few would notice. Fox chose to have her post-debate conversation last, when viewership would have tailed off the most. Also, Sean was very cool towards her compared to Newt, though he tried to mask it as best he could. One could really detect through his demeanor that he would have rather that she had not said anything confrontional with Newt.

Mittens actually came across in the debate as very magnanimous, IMHO. My speculation is that though he once thought he was the "chosen" candidate of the party, he's obviously seen the remarkable backlash against him burning up the internet on his not being conservative enough for a large number of Republicans and conservatives who are not Republican party leadership but simply either registered Republican or even just self-described as conservative. Personally, no matter how well he does in debates I don't think he will ultimately win this primary, as any equivocation on conservative principles sends a large number of today's conservatives into a tizzy.

This biggest takeaway I found in this debate is that up until now Newt has gotten a perfect score on every test. He has soared in the polls because so many would love to see Obama taken to school in a debate on national TV. And I must confess that even if Newt does not win the primary, I'd like to see that debate anyway. But back to the perfect score, it was a watershed moment, IMHO, when Newt appeared taken aback early on in the debate. I'll have to look for the video to get the exact replay of what I'm talking about, but it was the first time we could see that Newt was not scoring 100% on every question. As debating is the foundation of much of his success, while it is by no means a big loss, we certainly did see a small chink in the armor of our previously undefeated champion.

Obviously the mainstream Republican establishment now has it's heart set on reviving the known-quantity Newt, who would bring a rebranded version of his political skills back to DC using the standard playbook. With this rebranding being at once smart and brash, and Newt appearing to have had enough time in the bottle to smooth the edges a bit, the establishment must envision Newt capturing a sufficient number of voters in the voting groups which are typically up for grabs to beat the incumbant.

So all in all, the candidates, for the most part, tonight, were forced by all the ruckus that's been floating around the internet to swing towards conservative positions. Even Ron Paul tonight felt the need to qualify his foreign policy stance at times as not just being anti-war but trying to inject some of the details of his ideas into the record, for what that's worth; this was Ron Paul in the most conservative posture he could muster.

If I could add one other thought (why do I feel like Carnac ?) it would be that even some establishment pundits - and certainly all of the candidates - are fairly certain that your local dog catcher could run against Obama and win next November, so IMHO every primary voter should vote for the candidate they feel will do the best job to lead America to success on every front, on every issue - the voter's ideal out of this field, not the "most electable". IMHO, they're all electable next to Obama. If your favorite candiate is very far back in the pack - the primary results will nonetheless set the tone for the winner and how they develop their message for the general election. If it looks like conservatives don't care about conservative issues, the nominee will shift more to the center in the general election, thus setting a tone for their Presidency.