Last night's GOP Presidential debate

Rather than go play by play on the entire debate let me briefly discuss my impressions

• Except for Ron Paul, the tone with respect to foreign policy seemed bellicose.  This may work in South Carolina, but will it work in a national campaign?
• Obama caught some serious flak for economic and domestic policy.  This could be an advantage for GOP.
• Generally speaking, Romney held up pretty well on the Bain questions, yet the attacks did not get refuted nor discredited.  There was something of an explanation from Romney, but it is hard to say if this will be enough in the general election.
• As of this sentence, I am into the debate for over an hour.  Nobody has slipped badly, made no major gaffes, nor anything that seems very controversial.
• Romney got booed on the question about signing a recent bill empowering the detention of terrorists on US soil.  It is controversial, obviously.  He explained that a president with the appropriate character won't abuse that power.  That seems a little too weak a reed to lean on, in my opinion.  Santorum got the same question and he answered it quite differently.  Paul got a shot too, and got some cheers.
• Ron Paul made a distinction between military spending and defense.  He hoped to show that he wasn't weak on national defense.  It remains to be seen if that will work.
• I liked Gingrich's ideas on Social Security as opposed to Romney's.
• I preferred Santorum's ideas on international trade as opposed to Romney's.
• Gingrich hammered Romney on his super PAC ads.  It was quite effective, in my opinion.
• Romney says super PACs should be abolished.

Overall, my opinion hasn't changed much.  My opinion of Ron Paul and Perry may be improved somewhat.  If I were to rank the candidates, I'd say Paul is not on the bottom.  Romney is not on the top.

Update:

Limbaugh seems to like the debate.  He said it was the best debate yet.  He liked Newt's performance.

Update:

Scoring the debate.  I don't agree with everything here, and have some definite issues with some of it.  In general, the idea that Romney has it sewed up.  In particular:

This exchange was Paul’s second run at full spectrum incoherence in tonight’s debate. 

Actually, I think a more accurate assessment of Ron Paul is he's not in the same mold as the others, which may not be a bad thing.  Limbaugh says that is what the Twitter responses indicated, but Limbaugh attributes this to some type of Paulbot operation.