About last night’s GOP presidential debate in South Carolina, I have a few notes for you, just a few. Nothing earthshaking. Just some minor observations.

‐Bret Baier is incredibly cheerful-looking. All-American, Rockwellesque — almost Opie-grown-up. (I mean this in a complimentary way, trust me.)

‐Everyone — questioners and answerers — kept saying, “This is Martin Luther King Day.” Yes. And it was also Monday.

(I’ll switch to the present tense now, if you don’t mind.)

‐Newt insists that he has merely “raised questions” about Romney, “giving him an opportunity to answer them.” Well, how nice of Newt, what a peach! Actually, he hasn’t raised questions, he’s leveled charges.

Nothing wrong with that, necessarily. It’s just so.

‐“I wasn’t mauling you in that back alley. I was giving you a chance to test your defensive skills.”

‐Romney seems determined to be chipper, come what may. He’s a little too polite tonight, for my taste. Innocuous, anodyne. I wish he’d fight back a little more.

‐Ron Paul has this funny move, or position, like he’s sucking his right cheek.

‐Habitually, after he completes an answer, Romney gives a little forced smile and nod. It’s his coda, or period. Grows wearisome, in my opinion.

‐Jerry Seib looks like one bad-ass questioner — a Grim Reaper of a questioner.

‐The debate becomes a ridiculous piling-on, with Romney as the piling-on-ee. He’s like the guy in the dunking pool. Are the other candidates so inconsequential that they are not a focus of attention or debate?

‐Santorum keeps the whininess and petulance to a bare minimum. He is damn near statesmanlike tonight.

‐He does have the same disease as everyone else: With the verb “advocate,” he uses “for,” as in, “I advocated for a right-to-work bill” (or something).

I’m afraid this disease is here to stay. It has burrowed into the language. Blech.

‐Romney, slipping, says “Democratic legislature,” when the approved boobish Republican way of saying that is “Democrat legislature.” He’d better get back on track if he wants the nomination.

“Democrat wars!” said Bob Dole, famously, in the 1976 vice-presidential debate.

‐As a rule, Romney is better in positive mode than in negative mode. He does not go negative in a natural, persuasive way, it seems to me. (I still wish he’d fight back — though ably.)

‐Did Rick Perry say South Carolina is at war with the federal government? Déjà vu all over again?

‐Man oh man does Newt know a lot about policy (and much else).

‐When Newt’s really rolling — when he’s at his best — the other candidates enjoy his remarks too. They can’t help it. They just smile and nod.

‐I have said Mitt is better when positive. That goes double — triple, quadruple — for Newt.

‐Romney is more platitudinous than usual. Also, he says the same things over and over, in these debates — all of them. I notice no tailoring to South Carolina. That’s good, in a way. Consistency. (The biggest rap on him is inconsistency.)

‐A couple of times, Paul says something like, “I thought we were all supposed to be conservatives.” But Paul is not a conservative, is he? He’s a proud libertarian, right? Why should he appoint himself arbiter of the conservatives and conservatism? Let him speak for libertarianism, you know?

‐The debate is getting so boring, I wish Huntsman were around to throw in some Chinese.

‐I’m a little confused: Will Romney release his taxes or won’t he? Is there a principle behind releasing or not releasing? Romney is all muddled here. Clarity would be welcome.

I had an easier time understanding Huntsman’s Chinese . . .

‐Romney gives a pretty good answer on why his immigration policies are not anti-Hispanic. But I wish he’d say this: that Hispanic citizens are as much in favor of the rule of law as any other Americans. Probably more so.

‐When pronouncing the word “route,” do you say “root” or “rout”? Romney says “rout.” At least he did on one occasion tonight. (I say both, depending. I imagine that’s true of most Americans.)

‐At one of the New Hampshire debates, Paul expressed three of the standard grievances of the Left: that blacks are targeted for drug arrests, targeted for execution, and targeted for war service. A questioner leads him to express the same grievances here.

Hmmm — a way for Paul to wash himself clean of the racism in his newsletters? Is that why he goes in for this stuff?

‐He likes to say that white millionaires aren’t executed. If white millionaires commit crimes that would get a poor black person the chair — they escape frying? Really?

If a Rockefeller goes on a murder spree, he dies in bed?

I dunno. Seems to me the “system” would be especially eager to zap ’im. Maybe I’m wrong.

‐On this, I’m not wrong, I know: When Newt’s on, he is thrilling. I keep saying that in these debate notes, I realize. But it’s true. The best thing that can happen to Newt is a journalist’s decision to tangle with him, especially from the left.

Suggest he’s a racist because he talks about the dignity of work and the indignity of food stamps? He’ll clean your clock. At least in my book.

Thrilling.

‐About 8 million times in 2004, John Kerry alleged that American forces had Osama bin Laden trapped in Tora Bora, only to let him go because George W. Bush wanted to pursue Saddam Hussein at the expense of everything else. He had no interest in capturing or killing bin Laden.

And if you believe that . . .

Well, Ron Paul makes the same, or a similar, Tora Bora point. Transported me immediately to John Kerry and ’04.

‐In a previous set of debate notes, I remarked on Paul’s pronunciation of the word “entitled” — it was pure Pittsburgh, pure Ohio Valley. I hear the same thing tonight in “people.”

‐I hear it from Rick Santorum too, in two words: “fiscal” and “liability.” Those little w’s sneak in, a hallmark of Greater Pittsburgh speech. Beautiful.

‐Paul says that we must respect other nations’ sovereignty. For example, we can’t just go over to Pakistan and start killin’, even when the killee is Osama bin Laden, killer of thousands of Americans.

I’m reminded of an instance at Davos. A journalist egged on Pervez Musharraf, wanting him to say how awful it was that Americans had conducted a strike in Pakistan without first informing him. What about precious, holy Pakistani sovereignty?

Musharraf answered essentially as follows: “Yes, it is true that we would have liked to know about the strike. And it is true that we are a proud people, jealous of our sovereignty. But what about al-Qaeda? They are all foreigners — from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Chechnya, and all over. They have no right to be on our territory. They are violating our sovereignty. How come no one ever mentions that? And the Americans are helping us get rid of these foreigners.”

‐Romney, it seems, goes about a half-hour without talking.

‐Does Santorum ever get a question meant to discomfort him? It seems that only Romney and Paul do. Newt too, come to think of it. (He swats them away so well, you kind of forget about it.)

‐I believe the audience should be told to shut up, with its cheering and booing — especially its booing. If they want to boo, they should do so, figuratively, in the voting booth.

‐Romney nails Obama on one thing — the political timetable he has applied to Afghanistan. It is not war-related, but election-related. A disgraceful act, really.

‐So, Romney has a foreign-policy adviser named Mitchell Rice? How many Rices are there in this line of work? First there was Condi, then there was Susan (currently our ambassador to the U.N.). Now there’s Mitchell?

Are the Rices some special caste that advises on foreign policy?

‐Romney says, with all the forcefulness he can muster, “We should not negotiate with the Taliban, we should defeat the Taliban.” A little pat — but hard to disagree with.

‐Perry says, indignantly, that the Turkish government does not have “America’s best interest in mind.” Well, I should think not.

‐He says, “There should be no space between the United States and Israel, period.” Well, they’re both sovereign countries, for Pete’s sake. They are not twins or clones.

But I know what he means: When one country is threatened with annihilation, “space” is unsporting. Space can come once mortal danger is passed.

‐Perry says one thing incontestably true: Demilitarization is a disaster, at least in the American experience. You just have to scramble to build up again, in desperate circumstances.

“I lived through a reduction of force once, and I saw the result of it in the sands of Iran in 1979. Never again.”

Excellent, excellent.

Let me quote Gen. George C. Marshall, who spoke of “the rapid disintegration between 1945 and 1950 of our once vast power for maintaining the peace”:

“As a direct consequence, in my opinion, there resulted the brutal invasion of South Korea, which for a time threatened the complete defeat of our hastily arranged forces in that field. I speak of this with deep feeling because in 1939 and again in the early fall of 1950 it suddenly became my duty, my responsibility, to rebuild our national military strength in the very face of the gravest emergencies.”

I have quoted his Nobel lecture, in 1953. It was the most unusual Nobel lecture ever given, along with Mother Teresa’s, in 1979. (“I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing — direct murder by the mother herself.”)

‐Ron Paul says that the Taliban has one great concern: that its country, Afghanistan, be free of foreigners. “Their main goal is to keep foreigners off their land.”

Gee, you never would have known, when they were hosting and sheltering al-Qaeda. That’s why we went into Afghanistan in the first place — after giving the Taliban an ultimatum. (Give up al-Qaeda, or else.)

(People forget that: Not only was Saddam Hussein given an ultimatum — comply with U.N. resolutions — but the Taliban was too. Rumsfeld used to point this out, but no one listened.)

‐Romney can be robotic. Better than histrionic? I think so, yes, in a president. Still not ideal.

‐When Romney talks about American citizens as enemy combatants, I wish he would say one thing: They have joined the other side. When they go over to al-Qaeda, when they go over to the Taliban, they have joined the other side. In those cases, all bets are off (in my opinion).

They have taken up arms against us! Who cares whether they were born in Akron, rather than Jeddah. Same diff! The American who’s killed doesn’t know the jihadist who killed him was born in Akron.

Am I making sense or doing the War on Terror equivalent of Red-baiting?

‐I smile when Newt says, “Well, as a historian, a fact-based model . . .” In a few words, he has included two of his biggest things: the phrase “as a historian” and the word “model.”

Newt compacted!

‐He talks about “reducing income inequality in America by 50 percent.” Okay. But, like you, dear readers — I’m sure — I hope the rich get richer and the poor get richer. And if that widens income inequality, so be it.

Does that mean I eat puppies? (Only when they’re properly sautéed.)

‐Romney has his worst debate, I think — too low-key for his own good. Kind of limp. I still like his basically gentlemanly and decent demeanor. Santorum is strong. Perry is . . . Perry. Paul is Paul. Newt rocks the house.

Still would be a seriously problematic president, and nominee. (Fun, however, in a way.)

Catch you later, cool ones!

#JAYBOOK#