Image by Getty Images via @daylifeOK, so the primary season isn't for another six months, the nominating conventions are next summer, and the election is in November 2012. But the Republican presidential candidates held a debate anyway Monday night in Manchester, New Hampshire.Seven hopefuls--Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain--went before the CNN cameras and an audience packed with supporters. This was the first real debate of the campaign, if you don't count the one that Fox News did with only Pawlenty showing up among the wannabees.
It was your typical early-season made-for-TV political debate. For two hours, all the candidates took potshots at President Barack Obama's record, and were in complete agreement on the major GOP talking points while routinely ignoring moderator John King's pleas to keep the answers brief.
Front-runner Romney won the debate just by showing up. Nobody on the panel dared to contradict his record as Massachusetts governor to his face.
Congresswoman Bachmann stole a little thunder at the outset when she announced that she had filed papers with the Federal Election Committee, making her a candidate. (The next day, it was also announced that Bachmann would not run for re-election in Minnesota's Sixth District.) She impressed a lot of people by going through an entire debate without messing up, and messing up is usually what she does best.
Former Minnesota governor Pawlenty did not fare so well, looking like he didn't belong there. He backed off of trying to explain his comment about "ObamneyCare", an assertion that Obama's and Romney's health care plans (which all the candidates, including Romney, vow to get rid of if they're elected) were similar. Pawlenty also had to defend leaving a $6 billion budget shortfall to the new Democratic governor, Mark Dayton.
There were also the silly questions that were posed prior to the commercial breaks, intended to 'humanize' the candidates. Who knew Bachmann had an Elvis Presley Christmas album on her iPod, Pawlenty preferred Coke to Pepsi, and Gingrich watches "American Idol"? And the questions coming from Facebook users and ordinary folks were a lot more to-the-point than King's were.
If you missed the debate and watched something else instead (like, uh, Game Six of the Stanley Cup Finals on NBC?), don't worry. You'll be seeing plenty more of these get-togethers as the campaign goes along, with the same candidates giving the same answers to the same questions from various news anchors. Who knows? One of those might actually end up in the White House instead of Barack Obama.
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