Before last night's GOP debate ...

... I had planned on posting about it.

But, this post ain't gonna amount to much, because I didn't see any game changers there.

The two items that were closest (to me at least) both concerned Rick Perry ...

1) When challenged about his "Ponzi Scheme" description of Social Security and Karl Rove's assertion about how "toxic" such a characterization could be, he stuck to his guns there.

2) On being attacked about his record on Capital punishment, he came out swinging on his use of the death penalty.  The cheers he got from the audience were probably not what Brian Williams expected ( I suspect that he was thinking, "Texas barbarians", perhaps forgetting that the debate was in California and one might suppose most of the audience to also be from there).

What I found most encouraging about Perry is that, as a campaigner, he most certainly will not be a doormat to anyone.  If you cross swords with him, you had better be ready to fight.  (Of course, he is a Texan. Were you inclined to actually to go after him with a sword, you might want to recall the classic scene between Indiana Jones and a huge swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)  :-)

I'm going strictly by what I saw in the debate itself.

Upon seeing that the analysis (the first half of that word being particularly appropriate) would be conducted by such worthies as Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton, I figured that watching that would be an exercise in masochism I could forgo.

So, I did.
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