Inaugural Post; The Presidential Primary Debate

My first post here on the new official weblog - The Everyday Republican.

Last night, Thursday May 3, it seems certain that the television sets of Republican primary voters were attentively tuned into the MSNBC/Politico.com/Reagan Library Presidential Primary Debate in Simi Valley, California, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Apparently there is great demand among Republican primary voters to see the 10 Republicans standing next to each other and speak in 60 or 30 second clips about the multitude of complex issues facing America today - 256 days before the first Iowans cast their votes. The Democrats went last Thursday though, so at least this desire is bipartisan.

If you missed it, you can read over the debate for yourself.

For having thought it was hard to make much of a judgement in such an abbreviated exercise, I learned something when visiting the websites of the '08 Republican contenders today: Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won the debate, U.S. Senator John McCain won the debate, Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani won the debate (I guess - Senator Vitter seems to think Rudy was great, but he doesn't explicitly declare victory), and U.S. Senator Sam Brownback - well, his people liveblogged the debate, but they didn't declare victory - someone surely will be fired over it.

It is an understandable modern phenomenon to declare victory after this sort of event, but funny nonetheless. The other Republican candidates didn't declare victory - some haven't updated their websites, so we'll have to wait and see if they won, too - but they made cogent remarks to the debate and added quality to the event.

For an opening debate, with - inevitably - many more to follow, the field of Republican Presidential candidates will surely become much more recognized and distinguishable figures. With the omnipresent shadow of President Reagan cast long over these '08 contenders, this first debate served as an introduction to attentive Republican primary voters and a fine waypoint in the national dialogue about the future of the United States.

Note: Connecticut Republicans is officially neutral in the Presidential Primary campaigns.