Some quick reactions to last night’s GOP debate:

  •  Perry and Romney’s little cat-fight was tiresome. These guys might as well be the same candidate. The Texan vs. the East Coaster is a fight I could not care less about, though I’d be tickled to see either get his (truly impeccable) hair mussed.
  • It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Michele Bachmann doesn’t have a real platform, aside from being “the mom who raised 23 foster kids.” Is that an accurate statement? Because it seems like there’s a path that high-profile conservative women often follow that involves parlaying their election bids into a win in the conservative popularity contest.  Or let me put it this way: Bachmann and Palin ain’t no Margaret Thatcher.
  • Newt Gingrich needs to go home. He’s a technocratic Buffalo Bill wearing the stitched-together skin of several conservative ideas. (Yikes, how’s that for an awkward analogy? Mental image: “Would you… vote for me? I’d vote for me. I’d vote for me hard.”)
  • Welp, that about wraps it up for Huntsman and Santorum.
  •  Money quote: “My next door neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration.” #FullOfWin.

Did anyone else notice how the moderators punted the 10th amendment question to the two libertarian candidates? Paul and Johnson, and only those two, were both asked to answer a youtube question about states’ rights. Was the assumption that Romney, Perry, et. al. wouldn’t be able to answer a meta-question about the constitution on national television? That they don’t really understand the 10th amendment? You’d think Romney would want to jump on that, with his whole “Romneycare was a state program” defense. Did he miss that opportunity, or did he not even recognize it? Either way, consider the “top tier” candidates’ silence as yet more evidence that there’s only one party in Washington: The Big Government Party.