Picking apart Republicans

Watched the debate Saturday night among Republican candidates and thought it came off fairly well. And I have to say, after Mitt Romney has been sort of immune, or at least untouched by attacks from fellow Rpublicans or anyone else for that matter, he seems to be wearing a target on his back now.

Apparently the dems started running negative ads about him. Seems they assumed he would be the presidential candidate and they wanted to get an early start on their smear campaign.

And now it seems like Romney can't a break at all -- but not due to the dems.

During the debate, Rick Perry again brought up Romney's recommendation that the whole nation adopt the Massachusett's model for socialized medicine. Perry says the line was in the earlier editions of Romney's book, but has been deleted.

Romney swears the comment was never in the book and offered a $10,000.00 bet that it was not. Perry declined.

So since the rest of the debate (and even this part, from my point of view) was pretty civil, many in the press have now jumped on Romney, claiming that "$10,000.00 to him is like $10.00 to anyone else. He's out of touch with the American middle class."

No, actually, I think Romney was only naming a very large amount to emphasize the point that he would put his money where his mouth is. A LOT of money.

But nothing else really for the press to crank on, so they jump on Romney for that.

Gingrich also came under some criticism. The question came up about character and lying to your wife and all... turns out, Newt was the only candidate on the stage with multiple wives and a history of infidelity, etc. But Newt handled it with considerable grace, I thought. He probably doesn't make everyone happy, but at least he's not running away from it.

Funny, too, some key differences between Newt and Romney -- Romney is a sort of hard-core gentleman. Newt still is a bit inclined toward the controversial. But I agree with him when he says thre never really was a "Palestinian state." I looked that up myself not too long ago, and Palestine never existed except as a kind of region, in the same way you might refer to "New England" or "the Pacific Northwest." 'Course, Newt is not supposed to point that out because he might hurt some peoples' feelings.

Oh, and the Comrade was on 60 Minutes last night. I didn't see it. I'm sick of liars.

Save the Republic.