Tonight's GOP debate

First off: ho-hum. I agree with the 29 GOP voters in the Fox focus group. None of them were impressive, but John McCain won by sounding the most presidential. He did himself a lot of good tonight, I think.

Secondly, I think it's been a bad night for Giuliani. He bombed. He seems incapable of answering any question without incessant and insufferable reference to his having saved turned Sodom into the New Jerusalem. Some college kid just asked a weird, clumsy family values question of him -- basically saying, "Family values are important, and you don't seem to have them, Mr. Mayor. What about that?" Rudy took the opportunity to ... talk about all the fab things he did in New York. Hell, if you asked that guy what he had for dinner, he'd tell you that he throttled squegee men.

Third, gosh I want to cheer for Ron Paul, and he does make some very good points. I'm very, very glad he's there. But the more he talks, the more of a crank he seems. Best thing he said all night though was about Iraq: "All we're doing is saving face. Bring [the troops] home now."

Fourth, gosh I want to cheer for Huck, because I think he's a good guy, and a wise men for the most part. The most valuable part of the evening for me was the heated exchange between Huck and Paul about the war. But he's wrong on the war, and that's a big, big deal.

Fifth, and this is the main thing I want to say -- is this: Paul excepted, these guys are pathological about the surge and Iraq. Our own top military leaders have said for some time that there's no military solution here -- that unless Iraq's leaders work things out politically, any military success we have in the surge is meaningless in the end. Yes, we've had some significant military success, but no political success. The General Accounting Office report made that crystal-clear. Even the White House has admitted that Iraq's government has not met the benchmarks the White House set when it announced the surge ("I think we have said they have not met the benchmarks," [White House spokeswoman Dana] Perino said. "I don't see how it would be news for them to come out today and say they have not met benchmarks. We have said that.")

And yet, the GAO report about the missed benchmarks, all the bad news -- it was as if none of it mattered. They didn't allow themselves even to touch the topic. When Romney suggested that it was an open question whether or not the surge has worked, McCain jumped on him for his faint doubt. How can you not even deal with the GAO report? Perhaps they sense that the GOP base is not dealing with it, I dunno. It's bizarre.

How depressing, the lot of them.