Tim Pawlenty just left office after his second term as Governor of Minnesota. He is popular with the Republican Party establishment and has a successful record as governor, although many of his positions are outside of the norm of the party and unpopular with fiscal conservatives. He has been a supporter of unions and socialized medicine and combines fiscally moderate positions with strongly socially conservative views. He has earned praise for successfully balancing his state budget and for his pro-business policies as governor.
Rick Santorum served two terms as Senator from Pennsylvania and two terms in Congress representing suburban Pittsburgh. He is Roman Catholic and has a reputation as an extreme religious conservative. He tried to legislate the teaching of intelligent design at the federal level and has made controversial statements on a variety of social issues. He is known for his aggressive and confrontational style and for not shying away from controversial positions.
For another view on the debating candidates see The Washington Post.
Where are the Frontrunners?
Several potential candidates who are viewed by many as frontrunners in the GOP primary did not qualify for the debate or chose not to enter. Some of them have not officially filed exploratory committees or are not polling over 1% in recent polls, or just didn't want to pay the $25,000 entry fee. They include Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump who have relatively high poll rankings and others like Mitch Daniels, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich. Huckabee, Romney and Trump have high media profiles but there are serious questions about their electability in the primary or in a general election against President Obama.
Watch While You Chat
The debate will be broadcast live on FoxNews starting at 9pm. If you don't have cable then you can watch the broadcast through the live stream on the Fox Website. The chat application is below. It will also be accessible through several other sponsoring websites. You can even embed it on your site if you like. You can also download the client App and join the chat on your smartphone. Search for CoverIt Live.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Heidi
I'm excited to see Gary Johnson spread the sanity tonight! Hopefully this will boost his name recognition, because I think a lot of Americans will relate to his ideas.
2 - RJ
Rick Santorum is "aggressive and confrontational?" His views may be outside the mainstream on some social/religious issues, but he always struck me as a pretty nice-seeming guy.
3 - zingzing
"he always struck me as a pretty nice-seeming guy."
other than the whole bigotry thing. i'm surprised no mention of dan savage's santorum came up. wonderfully filthy mind, that dan savage.
4 - handyguy
Santorum = scarifyingly anti-gay.
And intelligent design too? Just what we need. The voters of Pennsylvania declined to reelect him, and I think they had the right idea.
5 - RJ
Leftists believe disagreement with their social agenda = evil. I got that. But he comes across as a fairly nice-seeming guy.
6 - zingzing
until you uncork the boiling cauldron of shitty hate and lubed-up rage. (the cork's on his bloody butt.)
7 - handyguy
Log Cabin Republicans -- and Dave Nalle -- differ with Mr. Santorum's unpleasant homophobia too, without being leftists.
In an April 2003 interview with the Associated Press, Santorum stated, "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery." Santorum further stated that he believed consenting adults do not have a constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts.
In response, Dan Savage, as zing alluded to above, created what Wikipedia calls the sexual neologism ‘santorum,’ for a "frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.”
No reason Dan or myself have to be any more 'fairly nice-seeming' to Mr. Santorum than he is to us.
8 - zingzing
heh. i just googled santorum (both the last name and the full name), and savage's speadingsantorum website comes up #1 in both searches.
if ol' sticky is stupid enough to throw away his (donor's) money, he can give it what for, but if i were him, i'd pull out before things get messy.
oh, it's too much fun already. such a pleasure. anal sex.
9 - RJ
Dan Savage sounds like a classy guy.
10 - zingzing
he is.
11 - tim
I agree that there are lots of people who can realte to gary johnsons idea, some of them may be even out of the blue but they make sense after you hear his explanations.
12 - handyguy
Mr. Savage has a savagely satirical sense of humor [especially when he's pissed off], but he can also be spectacularly sweet and caring: witness the "It Gets Better" campaign to reassure potentially suicidal young victims of anti-gay bullying. Even portrayed in a commercial, as it currently is for Google Chrome, this is a guaranteed feel-good tearjerker.
13 - Baronius
Dave - I'm curious about your description of Pawlenty. Could you flesh that out a little?
14 - Heloise
Why does Ron Paul have such a dufus look on his face? I no like him. But I think I like Pawlenty.
15 - Heloise
While Santorum looks Kennedyesque and is a Catholic his dad was born in Italy. And I ain't voting for anyone who does not have natural born citizen parents, both of them. My new voting rule. Obama is excluded only because he slipped in under the illegal radar LOL. I do think he is was born in Hawaii but the problem lies elsewhere.
16 - Heloise
I couldn't care less that Ron Paul may be outed as a racism ala his newsletters, but others will care and that will make him an albatross around the neck of potential independent voters.
He got press and buzz last time around, thanks to one of my posts "Sign of the times" and folks started getting on the band wagon but I would never vote for him or his son. They love Ayn Rand and who knows what else. Stupid.
17 - zingzing
from the fingertips of heloise, much wisdom spews forth in a crazed torrent of words. bonkers.
18 - handyguy
No one could ever make you up, Heloise. You are a true original.
19 - Baronius
I just noticed that Dave makes the claim that the Ron Paul campaign launched the Tea Party movement. I've seen other people make the same claim, but I sure don't remember it that way.
20 - Dave Nalle
Dave - I'm curious about your description of Pawlenty. Could you flesh that out a little?
Not sure what I said about Pawlenty, but he comes off rather like a robot. He has strange jerky hand movements and a kind of robotic style - probably delivering memorized answers. He's not terribly engaging.
But what really did him in here was having to defend his terrible record as a Governor. At least terrible as far as most Republicans are concerned. The Fox panelists had done their research and they hit him with questions for which he had no good answers, just excuses which exposed him as an opportunistic hack.
He's basically a less good looking Romney and it's not surprising that he was universally rated as the loser of the debate.
I just noticed that Dave makes the claim that the Ron Paul campaign launched the Tea Party movement. I've seen other people make the same claim, but I sure don't remember it that way.
They weren't as widely publicized as later events, but the first tea party events were associated with the Ron Paul campaign starting in 2007 with the very first one which was held in Boston. This is now pretty much common knowledge though at the time you kind of had to be tied into the libertarian and liberty republican community to be aware of them. Other groups picked up on the theme and the rest is history.
Dave
21 - Dave Nalle
For those who are interested in such things, this live event drew a huge crowd. There were over 1200 watchers and over 80 people commenting at one point.
Dave
22 - Heloise
zingzing I have MANY #1 posts on all the major search engines...enough said?
23 - Heloise
may the best looking candidate win. They always do.
24 - handyguy
Wonkette had some typical snarky fun with last night’s “terrible debate”:
Frank Luntz [interviewed people who thought] Herman Cain didn’t just win the debate. He mopped the floor with them all. And it makes absolutely no sense.
We watched this debate too. Herman Cain didn’t say anything special. He sounded like pretty much any other Republican, though his grasp of the issues was a little weak at times.
So what does this all mean? Americans love pizza, obviously, and would love to elect it president. Unfortunately, as much as everyone loves the Constitution, it says pizza is not eligible for the office.
Also: this was a sample of white South Carolina Republicans. Do they think showing enthusiasm for the token black guy after the first, pointless debate will make up for all the things their state has done to black people over the years? Probably.
25 - Baronius
Dave - Yes, Paul's supporters had tea parties, but you can't really say that they led to the Tea Party movement. That's just not honest.
How does the libertarian gang deal with Cain's Fed background?