Debate Night Impressions

Chris Wallace is quite the provocateur as the main questioner in tonight's GOP debate. He asked questions designed to create newsworthy responses, and certainly should be loved by Rupert Murdoch for creating an entertaining evening.

I'm just looking for a candidate.

Strictly based on debate performance, I'm ready to go with my personal rankings from tonight:

1. Santorum

2. Gingerich

3. Bachmann

4. Cain

5. Paul

6. Pawlenty

7. Romney

8. Huntsman

I admit to having a positive predisposition toward Rick Santorum, but even so, his sincere fealty to social conservatism mixed with economic conservatism are closest to my own perspectives. But even though the panel relegated him to the background by assuming he's destined to be an "also-ran", when he did get his chances, I thought he communicated very well.

Gingerich was also strong and brought down the house with his challenge to Chris Wallace to get away from "gotcha" questions and bring serious questions. He also did his best to bring in specific solutions to the conversation, even though it's nearly impossible to communicate anything specific in this format.

I like both Bachmann and Cain, and could very easily have flipped their positions. Even though I thought some of the Wallace-bating negative comments from her fellow Minnesotan were rather petty, I also thought they still stung her a bit. It was interesting to see her get a bit uncomfortable with the question about wives submitting to their husbands.

I hesitated to rank Ron Paul as high as I did, because some of his libertarian ideas are beyond the pale for me. There are lots of attractive ideas from Paul, but also some very uncomfortable ones. Even a bit frightening when he tosses aside Iran's nuke program as inconsequential and scoffs at the notion they might use them against Israel.

Pawlenty I've honestly wanted to like, but find that I don't. He took Wallace's bait to go after Bachmann but was a bit softer when later offered the chance to go after Romney. It made him look petty. He never showed the slightest personal appeal over the course of the evening, and to me increasingly seemed the generic shallow, pandering politician. Ron Paul may scare me at times, but at least I know he's genuine.

Romney remains too smooth and tries so hard to stay above the fray that he doesn't seem like a real person. There's no connection, no identifiable personality, and I just don't feel I can trust him.

Huntsman is the worst of the bunch and deserves his last-place ranking.

If Romney's indeed the party's choice and they foist him on the rest of us, I'll vote for him. Although more enthusiastically than when I pulled the lever last time for McCain, not because I think he's that much better than McCain, but that Obama's that much worse.

My ranking is about my perception of the debate performance. It certainly doesn't mean I've picked my candidate. This post I made sure to write without seeing or hearing anything from anyone else, just to make sure my impressions aren't influenced by anybody.

Then again, if we could move the election up to tomorrow, I'll gladly pull the lever for any one of these 8 just to get a merciful and much-needed end to the awful reign of Obama.