'This Ain't The Beanbag!'

Relive the highlights of Sunday's debate, all in only 100 seconds. Warning: contains "pious baloney" and beanbags.

Headline of the Debate?

Romney: Don't run for office unless you're independently wealthy and don't need a salary.

The Hangover Debate, Live-blogging Pt. 2

9:49 AM: It kind of slipped by before. But did everyone notice that Gov. Romney essentially said that you shouldn't run for public office unless you're independently wealthy and don't need a salary?

9:50 AM: Another point on Romney, the idea that Romney's 1994 run against Ted Kennedy was a suicide run is preposterous. Since Kennedy reclaimed some of his legendary status after 1994, it can seem that way in retrospect or if you weren't there at the time. But that's not at all how it was at the time. It was the nadir of Sen. Kennedy's political career, perhaps his personal history as well. And remember, it was 1994, a blow out year for Republicans. The final result was a sizable victory for Kennedy. But that's largely because Romney muffed it in the stretch. He was in that race to win it. Make no mistake.

9:57 AM: Just out from the Suffolk daily tracking poll ...

For the fourth day in a row, Mitt Romney has fallen in overnight tracking, and Rick Santorum has dropped into fifth place among likely voters in the Jan. 10 New Hampshire Republican presidential primary, according to the latest Suffolk University/7News two-day tracking poll.

Ron Paul is gaining on Romney, while Jon Huntsman has rallied into third place.

Romney dropped 4 percentage points overnight to 35 percent. The former Massachusetts governor still holds a 15 point lead, but his margin has declined by 8 percentage points since last Tuesday, when 43 percent of likely Republican voters backed Romney.

The Hangover Debate, Live-blogging

9:17 AM: I think maybe Jon Huntsman woke up this morning and said WTF, I might as well give this a shot.

9:18 AM: I must say that Gregory is becoming a bit of a caricature of Washington insiderism with these jangling demands for middle class 'pain'.

9:21 AM: With David Gregory vamping it up about spending cuts, wouldn't talking about painful tax hikes make him look manly too?

9:29 AM: Okay, I'll give him some credit. He finally got to taxes.

9:29 AM: Mitt ducks a chance to pledge fealty to Norquist.

9:32 AM: That was a surprisingly commonsensical answer from Gingrich on partisanship and one term presidencies.

9:36 AM: From a Republican perspective, Santorum's point is actually a good one. Paul's economic agenda he'd have no ability to push through; his foreign policy he could get to work on on day one.

The Debate In 100 Seconds

Missed the debate? Or want to relive the moment Jon Huntsman completely misjudged his audience by speaking in Chinese? Or when Rick Perry threatened to re-invade Iraq? TPM's got your back - and it will only take 100 seconds.

Ron Paul Slams Gingrich As Draft Dodger

One of the few moments when sparks genuinely flew in tonight's debate: when Ron Paul repeated his attacks on Newt Gingrich for being a "chicken hawk" who evaded service in Vietnam.

Watch.

Quick Reax

This debate was a very weird exercise. Mitt Romney looks to be on the verge of wrapping this race up pretty early. He won(*) Iowa; he'll almost certainly win New Hampshire by a big margin; and he now looks positioned well to pull off a convincing, if not overwhelming, win in South Carolina. If so, he'll be the first Republican to do that in like forever. And he'll have gone a long way toward showing he can compete with GOP electorates in three key regions of the country.

And yet, Mitt Romney was almost totally absent from this debate. Yes, he said a few things. And he got his core messages across pretty well. But Romney himself was totally absent from the discussion. It was the individual candidates (besides Romney) attacking each other; or the individual candidates getting distracted by moderators' questions which -- whatever their merits -- didn't take the argument back to core issues relating to Romney; or the individual candidates making passable but not terribly effective arguments for themselves.

If you're Eric Fehrnstrom or the other folks in the Romney operation you just love that. Because Romney is far in the lead. And this kind of result is really the best you could hope for. The entire evening read like the other candidates are either resigned to Romney's expanding lead or were simply unaware of it.

Debate Live-Blogging Pt. #3

10:32 PM: If I were an anti-Mitt Republican watching this debate, I'd be so depressed.

10:37 PM: Can I really ask our reporters to keep covering this thing if the candidates don't even want to try? Eeeesh.

Perry: I'll Send Troops Back to Iraq

Watch the video.

Debate Live-Blogging Pt. #2

9:40 PM: One of my colleagues, correctly, said Romney's basically just coasting now. But I think he's getting a bit too cute by half on this refusal to answer the contraception (i.e., Griswold) question.

9:47 PM: Watching this debate, it's hard not to think that everyone's basically given up and giving this to Romney.

9:50 PM: Shorter Newt: Can we get back to some friggin' culture war stuff here?

9:52 PM: John Adams wrote the constitution? Really? I don't think he was in the country in 1787. #fail. (Readers think Romney was referring to the Massachusetts Constitution, not the federal one.)

9:59 PM: Shorter Mitt: I've so got this thing.

10:09 PM: I have to agree with virtually everyone who says this debate is awful. But it's not really the questions -- or not entirely those. It's the candidates. It seems bizarre because the only question looming over this campaign is Mitt Romney. And the debate has almost entirely ignored him. That's a failure of the candidates.

Round One

Round one of tonight's debate is a good example of why Mitt Romney is doing so well. Romney is set for a smashing win on Tuesday. And yet almost everything in round one was everybody else attacking each other. Mitt had almost nothing to do with it. And if you're up by 20 points, that's just fine.

Steppin' In It

I think Mitt's going to have some problems with this jobs answer. Mitt Romney just insisted that his 100,000 jobs number includes both jobs gains and jobs losses. But in fact his own top advisor said only a few days ago that the 100,000 number came from the jobs created from three companies and did not include the losses.

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post finally pressed the Romney campaign on this. And Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom gave Kessler this ...

Fehrnstrom says the 100,000 figure stems from the growth in jobs from three companies that Romney helped to start or grow while at Bain Capital: Staples (a gain of 89,000 jobs), The Sports Authority (15,000 jobs), and Domino's (7,900 jobs).

This tally obviously does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved -- and are based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain. (Indeed, Romney made his comments in response to a former employee of American Pad & Paper Co. who says he lost his job after Bain Capital took it private.)

So when pressed Romney spokesman said it's the gains of three companies -- not the losses.

And what did Romney himself just say in response to Stephanopoulos? Here's the exchange ...

Romney: In the business I had we invested in, over 100 different businesses, and net / net, taking out the ones where we lost jobs and the ones where we added? those business have now added over 100,000 jobs. I have a record of learning how to create jobs.

Stephanopolous: There have been questions about that caluclation of the 100,000 jobs, so if you could explain a little more, I've read some analysts who look at it and say that you're counting the jobs that were created, but the jobs that were taken away. Is that accurate?

Romney: No, it's not accurate, it includes the net of both, I'm a good enough numbers guy to make sure I got both sides of that.

How can these two statements be reconciled? Ferhnstrom's statement clearly contradicts Romney's.

Late Update: TPM's Benjy Sarlin caught up with Ferhnstrom at the 'spin room' after tonight's debate. And Ferhnstrom backed up Romney's explanation. To work around the apparent contradiction he said in so many words that even with the layoffs, the total amounted to more than 100,000 jobs. See the Late Update in this piece for Ferhnstrom's full response.

Debate Live-Blogging

9:02 PM: A smiling Newt. Did everyone see that "I Got Nuthin' to Lose, MoFo!" thought bubble over Newt's head?

9:05 PM: While this debate is going on, there was some big news today in the weeds of the campaign financing game. Sheldon Adelson, an ultra-hawk casino mogul who has virtually limitless money, has given $5 million to a Newt-backing Super PAC for carpet-bombing in South Carolina.

PPP Poll: Romney Leads In South Carolina

The new PPP poll gives Mitt Romney a 30-23 lead over Newt Gingrich.

Here's the latest TPM Poll Average of South Carolina:

So Far, All Mitt in New Hampshire

As we get ready for tonight's New Hampshire debate, let's look at where the New Hampshire race seems to be as of this moment.

Wag The Dog

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, on Ron Paul: "The Republican Party has clearly made a decision to embrace extremism and that's been clear from their political activity as well as their caucus and conference in the House and in the Senate. They've allowed the Tea Party extremists to take over, it's the tail wagging the dog."

Debate Marathon Alert

A schedule oddity has the GOP presidential contenders debating this evening from 9-11 ET for ABC /Yahoo/WMUR then turning around and debating again 10 hours later, at 9 a.m. ET Sunday for Meet The Press/Facebook.

Remember: No Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain this time around. We'll be hearing a whole lot more from Rick Santorum and Ron Paul.

TPM will be here for all 3 1/2 hours of dead-on-their-feet debating.

Watching the Lions v. Saints playoff game tonight? Multitask with TPM.

Am I All Wet?

From TPM Reader MW ...

For somebody as politically knowledgeable as yourself, I was quite surprised to see you assert so strongly that things look good for Mitt Romney.

Romney could win every primary between now and Super Tuesday and it wouldn't make a difference when it comes to what really counts, namely winning delegates.

Where Are We Now?

Over the last two days we've gotten a heap of new polling data out of New Hampshire and South Carolina. And the story those numbers tell is pretty much all good for Mitt Romney.

We knew -- at least since the Gingrich collapse -- that he'd be strong in New Hampshire. What's really put him in a dominating position is his strength in South Carolina, a state which I think pretty much everyone thought would be a challenge for him even if everything was going well for him.

So without further ado, here are the TPM Poll Averages and trend charts for these two key races.

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