Liveblogging the bloodletting

The GOP may not care much about women’s rights, but at least they don’t rape the Star Spangled Banner at their gatherings. Very nicely done.

Newt is making his opening remarks, but I can’t hear him over my brain yelling “Moon Base! Moon Base!”

Rick Santorum fields a softball from the audience. Bottom line: Obama is bad. Yay! Santorum is also going to cut entitlements to the bone. Entitlements-reliant crowd of working poor and pensioners eats it up. You have to give the audience points for non-critical thinking. “Pretty white man who is not Obama is speaking. Clap hands!”

Romney has been “attacked” by Li’l Rick, so he gets to speak next. Then the question is thrown to Moon Base! Gingrich, who bloviates endlessly based on his questionable mastery of American history.

The evening’s marginalization of Ron Paul has officially begun.

Wait, now it’s Ron Paul’s term. And the first thing he says is that Rick Santorum, sitting immediately to his left, is “a fake.” Without rancor or apology. If his ideas weren’t so damned crazy, he’d be a paragon of virtue.

Okay, this first part is all budget shit. Not only do I not understand it, I don’t care and I don’t believe them.

I don’t believe Obama either. I don’t see how the economy is anything but hopelessly fucked. We’re inextricably tied to the world economy which is—us oh!—fucked.

Any time spent making promises about the economy is time that is never coming back that could have been better spent telling lies on any number of more interesting topics.

Newt Gingrich. He sounds like the angry professor whose students never do the reading. And whatever it is he’s saying, the crowd is loving it.

Now the CNN guy (where are you, Larry King?) is trying to turn the candidates on each other. He’s successful, but it’s all about earmarks, so szzssnnnzzzzzzkkttt…

Kudos to Romney. He just admitted he didn’t follow Santorum’s anti-earmark rant either. Then he opened up a can of bridge-to-nowhere on Santorum.

The crowd is booing, but politely. It’s not the deep South, after all.

Yay! Ron Paul was just criticized by name, so he is required by CNN’s own rules to be allowed time to to speak. Moderator looks disappointed, then throws the question to Gingrich.

Polite crowd becomes just a little less polite. Apparently some believe First Amendment protections actually extend as far as to Ron Paul.

Newt lectures us some more, then rhapsodizes again over  the good old days when he was Speaker of the House during the Clinton administration.

Finally it’s Paul’s turn. Aaaand, he defends earmarking. Don’t blame him for not wanting to be President. I wouldn’t either.

CNN guy invites candidates to piss all over government bailout that benefited local crowd. Nice.

Santorum: Takes opportunity to remind crowd that Romney is a nogoodnik. Romney’s frozen spastic smile becoming more sad, less hilarious.

Romney responds, opening with a limp-wristed rhetorical slap at Santorum for his impertinence. Has talking-points in order, though. OS seems to be running at maximum efficiency. Hum and joints clicking barely audible.

Then it’s Newt’s turn for some crazy talk, which the crowd loves.

It’s been another ten minutes Ron Paul-free. Just because he can’t win doesn’t mean he isn’t valuable at advancing an honest, wide-ranging conversation. Marginalizing him makes for bad TV, CNN guy!

[Pair of oral surgeries earlier today really beginning to take their toll. Must. Hang. On.]

Ooooh! Crowd turns ugly when CNN Guy tries to turn conversation to recent birth control brouhaha that Santorum, for one, has been flogging daily on the campaign trail. Since when is the hot-button issue of the day off-limits? Can’t wait to see who jumps in to vilify the media first…

Thank God for DVR. Let’s go to the zeroes and ones…

Oh, it’s Newt. This is his wheelhouse! He uses “Elite Media” in his third sentence, and accuses Obama of killing babies in his fourth.

Now Romney is accusing Obama of religious intolerance, another popular talking point-du jour.

Please don’t get me started on religion.

Now Li’l Rick is asked about “the dangers of contraception,” and his first answer is to refer to the problem of teens giving birth out of wedlock. Audience response? Hushed reverence.

Palms get sweaty and I can feel myself getting angry.

But it’s only politics. Right? The problem with Santorum is, he really seems to believe the nonsense he is espousing. Cynical calculation is the name of the game in politics; wide-eyed ignorance is downright dangerous. The last Bible-based, easily-manipulated tool we had in the White House got us into a war with the wrong country. It was a plot straight out of a Marx Brothers movie.

Santorum still speaking. Facts sprinkled in along the way to his Draconian, 19^th-century solutions. Naturally, the crowd thinks he is a fucking genius. Me? I want to buy Girl Scout cookies from his daughters.

What’s-his-name speaks. The Suit.

Man, I’m tired.

Wow, Newtie’s tie is severely purple. What up with that?

We’re a little more than half-way through, and so far it’s about a draw. No one has delivered a killing blow, or a viral moment. Bordering on boring.

Wow, the crowd is turning on Santorum!

Of all of them, Newt’s tie is having the best night by far.

Once again, however, Romney has his talking points down well. He just used them to give Santorum a nice little spanking. The crowd approves.

Now Santorum is browbeating Romney with his own set of carefully-selected facts.

CNN Guy is forced to intervene and change the subject. Members of the crowd begin to twist lengths of rope into lassos.

Oh man, now it’s Newt’s turn to throw red meat to the base. He makes it so easy to hate him. He’s like a George Lucas character that is supposed to be cute and cuddly but is instead irritating and insulting, like the Ewoks, or Jar Jar Binks.

Now it’s all about immigration. I’m so sick of human beings being referred to as “illegals.” Didn’t I read somewhere that everyone is endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, not just Americans?

I don’t recall the term “illegals” appearing anywhere in any of our foundational documents. But “freedom?” Freedom is absolutely everywhere.

Question from the audience: Describe yourself in one word. Ron Paul: (with authority) “Consistent.”

Crowd, and this reporter, goes nuts.

Santorum and Romney: bla bla.

Gingrich: Cheerful.

Very funny. Point to Newtie, round to Ron Paul.

Now they’re trying to paint Obama as weak on foreign policy.

Oh, do bring it on. This shit may fly with the base during the primary, many of whom don’t even believe Obama was born in America, or on Earth; but it will be a road to ruin in the general election. It’s hard to argue that the guy who got us out of Iraq and killed the mastermind of 9/11 doesn’t know his ass from his elbow about foreign affairs.

The GOP finally lost their deathgrip on The War On Terror.

How many strikes is that? I’ve lost count, but that could just be the oral surgery this morning muddying things up.

Yay! Ron Paul comes out against unnecessary foreign wars. Have I mentioned that I love this guy, especially when his crazy ideas happen to dovetail nicely with mine?

Oh, now it’s getting serious. The holy price of gas has just been brought up. And surprise, Romney has the right answer! He points out that the important issue is the possibility of Iran with fissile materials… then he follows up with a boilerplate list of Obama’s alleged failings. It was a beautiful pop fly that just did not make it to the fence.

And now Santorum just licked Romney’s balls. I’ve said for a couple of months that Santorum is playing for number two man on Romney’s ticket, and this makes me think it’s still Li’l Rick’s backup plan.

And now he’s just preaching. Yawn. Somebody get this man a pulpit, a good analyst, or both.

Now Ron Paul is demanding legal declarations of war for future extended military engagements. What the hell? Goddamn, he is one crazy motherfucker. If his poll numbers ever made him a serious contender, he’d be dead within a week.

Things are winding down and we’re back to “Obama is bad.”

Ooh, Santorum just accused somebody of being a “prolific proliferator” of terror (probably Iran, but I was laughing so hard I missed that part). Dear Santa, please get little Ricky a teleprompter for Christmas—wait, that will be too late. Do you think you could hook me up with the Easter Bunny?

Now Newtie is rhapsodizing about eliminating the EPA. It seems like all these guys want to burn the fucking country down because they think there is money to be made in rebuilding the place afterwards. It’s a pretty chilling calculation.

Thank God, it’s almost over. Santorum is defending an unpopular vote on No Child Left Behind and is [gasp!] admitting a mistake. Style point to Santorum. On the facts? Please.

Romney’s last pitch, also on teaching to the test. I don’t understand the issue well enough to know exactly how full of shit he is.

Newtie throws Obama a splinter before he goes after him with a thigh bone, then goes on to bore everyone with a bullet-pointed list of institutional failings that he is trying to tie to the guy who has been the titular head of the public education program for the last three years.

Ron Paul? Burn down the Department of Education. Next stupid question, please.

Final question. What is the biggest myth about you?

Ron Paul: “That I can’t win!”

Newt Gingrich: That people actually appreciate all the hard work he’s done for them. (No one appreciates poor Newtie!)

Romney: Ignores the question and proceeds with his stump closing statement, this after chastising the moderator for trying to get him to answer the question. The crowd is not impressed.

Santorum: Obama is bad. (Yawn…) Well, at least he inadvertently admitted that this canard is a myth. This guy is not the sharpest Exacto® knife in the crafts kit.

But then neither was W. Let’s hope the country isn’t in the mood for another cheap date this soon.