I don’t even keep track of the debate schedule anymore.  Nor can I remember when the last time was that I regretted missing one.

Nice to see that Fred did well.  One could make the case that Fred has topped every debate he’s been in.  Regrettably, debates do not win elections, and they’re not getting FDT out of single digits.  How much less so this cycle, when substance looks more and more like it’s being abandoned in favor of emotion and symbolism (Huckles, Obama, and Hillary’s crocodile tears) and sheer mass amnesia (McCain).

I’m a little surprised that Romney is melting under the pressure.  But he should be scared, his modest, early delegate lead not withstanding.  There’s no way he’s going to “second place” himself to the nomination, no matter how wishfully the Romneylans think.  His entire strategy was predicated on winning Iowa and New Hampshire.  Now he has to win Michigan, or it’ll be perceived as strike three for his campaign.  And the latest polling composite there has McCain pulling slightly ahead.

I agree with Patrick Basham (or, since I posted the idea before he did, it may be more accruate to say that he agrees with me) that the ultimate beneficiary of Huck’s and McCain’s double-team on Romney will be Giuliani, who is poised to swoop in, take Florida and clean up on February 5th.  Not only is he better equipped organizationally, financially, and notoriatily to wage a national campaign than “Sailor” or the Rev’rund, but after the “near-death experience” through which conservatives are currently suffering at the spectre of the two least trustworthy, left-most Republicans in the field winning the first two “bellweather” nominating contests, even Rudy’s social liberalism will gain a whole new palatability if he can enable the GOP to avert both the complete evisceration of the Reagan coalition and total disaster in November.  Giuliani-Thompson, anyone?

Yeah, I’m the guy who spent the past year saying that “America’s Mayor” was unnominatable.  But I could never have imagined that the twenty-first century Elmer Gantry and Darth Queeg would emerge as frontrunners, either.  We do live in “interesting” times.  And that isn’t a good thing.

P.S.: D’ya s’pose that Fox let Ron Paul into this debate in order to vindicate their decision to exclude him from the last one?  Sounds like it to me.