You had me at “weaselly.”

Santorum comporting himself pretty well, but Gingrich kicking some serious butt, though he’s still got plenty of “splainin” to do.

Ron Paul is losing it.  They need to have a guy with a tranquilizer gun loaded with psychotropics on standby for the next debate (Thursday in North Charleston, the ugly smelly place just north of Charleston).

Ed Morrissey:  “IMO, this was Jon Huntsman’s best debate ever!”

Why do you ask, is the GOP establishment elites and pundocracy members of the Trilateralists?

Frank Luntz said tonight that Romney won the debate. Yet, we’re supposed to believe the establishment GOP isn’t in the tank for Romney. In what bizarro world do you spin this debate as a victory for Romney and expect people to take you seriously?

Newt won the debate hands down, and clearly so. Yet, all he gets from Luntz is a tacit, grudging admission that he got the most applause, including one standing ovation. Then he spends the rest of his allotted time on Hannity talking about how great Mitt was. Fuck that noise.

Newt kicked butt- I love it

He wouldn’t be leading except for the clown posse he’s running against.

Didn’t catch the debate, but unless Romney made some kind of breakout, he’s in trouble.

With the exception of that Reuters/Ipsos Internet “poll,” he’s had Gingrich pretty much within the margin of error (unless something changed earlier today — haven’t been by RCP to look), and Romney’s been trending down, while Gingrich (and Santorum) have been trending up.

If he doesn’t change that trend in the five days between now and the primary, he comes in second, possibly even third. And he can’t afford anything less than not just a win, but a convincing win.

Yes, they didn’t highlight that it was an internet poll at first, sent out results like it was a normal poll – RCP doesn’t even list it.  But here’s the list of “real” polls for SC, judge for yourselves:  http://tinyurl.com/6wuc6b3

Romney didn’t do well, and answered a few things in such a way as to actually hurt him badly.  He won’t get much of a bounce off this (unless people within the media/the pundit class start preaching his inevitability).  Sorry, but he’s looking more and more phoney-dodgey the more the heat gets applied to him.

Right now we do see a split of the NR vote, which is causing the others to to poll as high in comparison, and if Perry doesn’t do better in SC he needs to get out (and he didn’t flub tonight, but his populist stupidity was out for display again — it gets pretty old, does he even have a platform? or does he just talk soundbits he thinks will do well?).  This is may be bad, but then again maybe not (I’m not convinced of Romney’s inevitablity, and I think 4 is a good number of canidates now); people need to have choices.

Gingrich did win the debate, Santorum was a close second, and as for Paul — well, despite what many like to say about him he once again brought up some very valid points (although that gun rights thing from Santorum did take him back a few).

What? Are you telling me that Ron Paul did not have a good debate? Ruh-Roh, according to Fox you must have been watching a different debate. According to them Ron Paul did so well in this debate he scored better on their blue bars than anybody, including Gingrich. Why, if one did not know better, one might be led to assume the establishment wants to encourage some undecided conservatives to support Paul so he could drain votes from one of the other Not-Romneys, might one not?

How about Nikki Haley, who’s bound and determined it seems to become an integral part of the establishment? What else explains her endorsement of Romney?

If you watched the debate, it would have been clear (well, to an objective viewer) that she seemed more impressed with Rick Perry than with anybody else. At one point I halfway expected her to take her panties off and throw them to Perry.

How about Jim DeMint, who may or may not be a member in good standing of the establishment, but who evidently doesn’t want to step on any toes regardless by endorsing a candidate who might not meet the GOP Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval?

Why else stay neutral? It’s not like endorsing a candidate besides Romney would cost him a lot of support in South Carolina. In fact, with his base among the conservative Christians he would probably be inclined to endorse Santorum. So why doesn’t he?

Kick Turkey out of NATO? How about kicking the motherfuckers out of existence, that would be even better. As for the Predator Drones on the border, is that supposed to be some kind of problem? They are used primarily for intelligence gathering, finding out where people are. In this case they would be used to spot people crossing the border. Just because they are used to see what’s going on that doesn’t mean you see a bunch of people and you start firing missiles at them. And he was always an advocate of strategic fencing, there was nothing new here on that score. He just doesn’t believe in trying to build a massive multibillion dollar boondoggle fence over the entirety of the Mexican-American border, which by the way would entail building a fence in the middle of the Rio Grande. I happen to agree with him.