Who Won the GOP Debate?

The Washington Post has highlights of last night’s GOP debate. (Lucianne says it’s for those who watched Desperate Housewives instead.)

But maybe the GOP race is becoming more interesting than DH! Byron York writes that we’ve just been through “the most revealing three-day period in the Republican presidential race so far.” Rich Lowry gives last night to Rudy and McCain.

I detect a lot of depression in conservative circles. But if they cheer up, they might realize, as Michael Barone notes, that it’s no longer 2006:

“Mainstream media types tend to think that, while rising casualties from Iraq are legitimate news, falling casualties are not. But even so the word got out: The surge strategy was producing results. Anbar province, given up for lost in 2006, turned peaceful and cooperative in 2007. U.S. casualties and Iraqi civilian casualties were down. Brookings scholars Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, no fans of the administration’s conduct of the war, announced on July 30 (in the pages of The New York Times, no less) that this was ‘a war we might just win.'”

Your tax dollar at work: But preening maneuvers in Congress may have opened a new front on the war.  It has already cost 17 Turkish lives.