South Carolina GOP Debate a Homerun!

Leave it to my state of South Carolina and the good people at Fox News to produce a substantive and interesting debate among the 2008 Republican presidential hopefuls.

A couple of quick reflections:

• Funniest line: Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee: "Congress spends money like John Edwards at a Beauty Shop."
• Second funniest line: Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo discussing some of the flip flops of the other candidates: "I support conversions on the road to Damascus, not the road to Des Moines."
• Idiot of the Evening: Texas Congressman Ron Paul claiming that we were attacked on September 11th because we enforced UN resolutions and no fly zones in Iraq.
• Best Smackdown: Rudy Giuliani interrupting the debate and demanding Congressman Paul withdraw that remark.
• Not Afraid of the Left Award goes to Mitt Romney, who suggested that we don't need to close the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility, "we need to double Guantanamo."
• Shot in the Foot Award goes to John McCain who seems to believe that waterboarding in interrogations is torture, but he would do it anyway if it would save lives.
• Common Sense Award goes to Kansas Senator Sam Brownback who responded to McCain's belief that our image in the world would be improved if we did not use aggressive interrogation. Brownback said "I care more about protecting U.S. lives than our image."

I thought California Congressman Duncan Hunter also performed well, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson and former Virginia Governor Gilmore mostly left me yawning. Romney's repeated call to reform the way Washington works also struck me as little more than words.

Fox News did a fantastic job producing the debate, researching the questions and conducting the debate. Certainly the questions were more substantive than those posed earlier by Chris Matthews at MSNBC.

What a shame Democrat presidential candidates refused to participate in a similar debate produced by Fox News in Nevada. What are they afraid of?