This debate made FOX News seem fair and balanced. CNN lost a lot of respect in my opinion. First of all, they allowed McCain to go on forever, while cutting other candidates off after a minute. Secondly, they allocated the questions and answers to the candidates whose opinions are already known; what good is that? Of course Tancredo is against the immigration bill and McCain is for it.

The most memorable comment was Huckabee's stance on Creationism.  He is right - why are they asking him this, AGAIN?  He answered with such elegance and honesty.  The next best comment was when Tancredo said that Carl Rove told him that because he criticized Bush that he would be a dark mark on the White House.  He replied that he would say to Bush what Rove said to him.  Good!  Bush is a disragace to Conservatism.  Huckabee also agreed that the Bush administration is corrupt and that Republicans deserved to lose in 2006.  Duncan Hunter's direct answer of "NO!" in following the example of Schwarzenegger to attract independents was great.  He was dead-on in accusing the McCain, Romney, Bush factions of the party of being led by Ted Kennedy.   Thompson was right - we were elected in 1994 to change Washington, but Washington changed us.
It's true - Republicans have become Democrats, but Democrats are the professional spenders; we are amateurs and have to get out of the spending race.  Republicans are supposed to cut spending and cut taxes, yet the Bush administration has failed miserably on the spending side of the coin.

The most ridiculous comment was McCain who said that he didn't want to write the bill the way it was written.  What?  He wrote it!  That's like Hillary on making English "official"; she said it is already the "national" language.  But guess what: both she and Obama voted AGAINST making it the "national" language last year.  So, if it wasn't for the fact that a majority of Senators other than Hillary and Obama had voted for it, it would NOT be the "national" language.  I hate when Politicians try to take credit for something they are clearly against.
"I voted for it before I voted against it."  When will we ever learn?

The best question was definitely the guy who asked Romney why he was running his campaign in Spanish.  That probably caused him to lose all respect, since he didn't actually answer the question.  He went off on defending the border and supporting legal immigration.  The problem is that most Americans understand the fact that the majority of LEGAL immigrants do speak English, it is the ILLEGAL immigrants who do not speak English. Therefore, if he is being honest when he claims to be against illegal immigration, he would not be running his campaign in Spanish.
I think I'll run for President and campaign in German or Byelorussian or French or something, then my grandmother will vote for me.  Oh, wait, she learned English the second she arrived here.  Eisenhower didn't need to speak any language other than English to get my grandparents' votes, and they had literally just gotten off the boat, LEGALLY after waiting YEARS, even with a sponsorship from an American relative, for approval from the American government.

Regarding this concept, Tancredo actually lost respect when he said that a true American gives up all cultural ties to their homeland.  He is dead wrong on that.  In fact, I think one bad thing about America is that many European descendents have lost their cultural morals and values.  He is right that our current immigration policy lets so many people in so fast that it has led to a sort of Balkanization in which those communities don't assimilate into the general popluation.  It is true that we used to go in cycles, one generation would have a high number of immigrants enter, then the next would have a low level of immigration and the immigrants could settle into the American fold.  Now so many people enter all the time that they just sort of get lost.  But giving up your cultural identity does not make you an American.  My mother grew up in an all European community here where there were numerous European languages spoken and there were all sorts of European eateries, but everyone learned English and everyone belonged to a church.  The churches ended up being the personal ethnic centers for each nationality, where (at least in my church) the people tried to overthrow Communist regimes back in our homelands.  But outside of church everyone eventually spoke English.  Maybe it's because most Europeans already spoke numerous languages (my grandparents spoke 4-5 each before English).  But my mother went to an American public school and by the time she was a teenager she looked more like Annette Funicello than a Polka dancer.  Actually, her generation became so American that everyone moved away and married Americans, so there is almost no one left under age 50 in our church.  My mother's biggest complaint is the lack of community in our area; everyone is very private and daisies creeping over the property line lead to major community disputes.  She blames it on the loss of church community; I think she is right.

Ron Paul said our offensive military spending is so out of control, and our troops spread so thin that just bringing them back here to DEFEND our country would save many lives and trillions of dollars.  It truly would save enough money to fix things like social security and medicare.  Paul was the only one willing to say that overhauling our foreign policy would not only make us safer, but also lead to alternative energy innovations (by not fighting for M.E. oil), and help improve our domestic financial problems.  That is the role of the federal government: Defend the country, but do not spend the People's money to fight offensive wars and spread "Americanism."

Most of the second-tier candidates who opposed the liberalizing of the Republican Party were dead-on.  Too bad the debate was so skewed to the Bush-mongers among the candidates.

All this debate did was ensure that Hillary will be our next President.  That was probably CNN's goal.  Yeah, you can argue that the Bushies in the base will vote for a McCain or Rudy because of their "offence, not defence" stance, but that is guaranteed to give the White House to the Dems.  Yet again, by not acknowledging WHY the rest of the world hates us and wants to attack us, Rudy and McCain and Romney aim to gain votes through fear. 

Ron Paul was dead-on when he attacked them for wanting to NUKE Iran before they even try to attack us.  That is not the answer.  The answer is to work with our enemies and negotiate a peace agreement, and that will only happen if we pull out our forces and stop forcing our morals and values on them.  I do not want any Muslims or anyone else telling me how to live my life, so why should they accept us telling them how to live?
Ron Paul was right - we cannot enforce goodness through the barrel of a gun, we can only hope that by actually living by our Constitution and preserving our liberties that we will set an example for the rest of the world to aspire to.  He was also the only one to point out how un-Christian this war is; it does violate the Christian concept of a Just War.

We are repeating the mistake of the Crusades, a war we lost.  We lost because Europe was invading the Arab lands.  But, when the Muslims were trying to take over Europe, Poland and Russia defended the borders and kicked the Muslims out.  That was a Just war - defending Europe against Muslim invasion was the right thing to do; invading Muslim nations in the name of Christianity was not Just.  That is why Chechnya is so controversial - it is not an Arab country - they invaded Russia and stole it, not the other way around.  Listen, I'm Orthodox and there is nothing more annoying than the fact that the Ottomans stole the Hagia Sofia and turned the Byzantine Capitol of Constantinople into Istanbul.  That land, without question, is European.  Greece and Russia had every reason and right to fight for it.  It is separated from Anatolia (Asia) by the Bosphorus Strait.  It was rightfully returned to Greece (having finally won freedom after hundreds of years of Ottoman control) after WWI by the Treaty of Sevres, only to have the Americans steal it from Greece and give it to the Turks in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.  America was pro-Turkey and violated thousands of years of recorded history by giving Greece's historic Capitol to the invaders who sacked it in 1453 AD.  Historical documents prove that it had been a Greek city since the year 668 BC, yet America came in and overturned the fair treaty that returned it to the Greeks who had suffered under Ottoman rule for 450 years.  No one disputes that that little city is the only part of modern-day Turkey that is on the European continent, so why did we overturn the Treaty of Sevres that our European allies had signed with the Ottomans?
The citizens of France and the Netherlands refused to ratify the EU Constitution when it was brought to a referendum vote because of the Turkish question.  Turkey is not European, it never has been.  Just because America waltzed in and overturned almost 3,000 years of history does not make us right.  We allowed most of Greece to keep its independence after 400 years of Ottoman rule, by why did we not  allow Greece to keep its most important historic city?
This is a very important question right now, not just in the EU, but between America and Russia as well.  Putin is a true Orthodox Christian.  We (Orthodox) do not go around trying to covert others to our beliefs, but we are very offended when others come in and tell us that we have to change.  Orthodox Russians are very wary of anyone telling them what they can and cannot do because for 70 years they were forced to practice their religion underground or else face prosecution from the Communists.  My grandfather was very active in supporting the underground movement in Byelorussia to keep the language, culture and religion alive.  After the Coup we celebrated; unfortunately our people back there no longer have any knowledge of their true history and culture.  They have been brainwashed into believing that they are Russians (historically we were never Russian, we are White Ruthenian, a dinstinct ethnicity whose monarchy was always Lithuanian and language Byelorussian, until we joined with Poland and then were annexed by Catherine the Great).  Byelorus (modern-day Belarus) is a perfect example of what happens when a nation forgets its historical origins and culture.  200 years of oppression from first the Russian Czars and then the Communists led to the death of a language, the loss of a religion and the acceptance of a Communist Dictator.  I have no reason to defend Russia's stance since Russia destroyed my grandparents' homeland, but I do undertand why Russians are wary of American influence.  After hundreds of years of imperialism and then Communism, I believe that the Russian people have finally realized that it is not worth it, that it is just better to defend your own people, not take over other countries.
America screwed Greece and Constantinople.  Russia is the country that fought to set the Greeks free from Turkish rule.  Of course Putin is pissed off at us, of course he sees our missiles in Poland and Czech as a threat to Russia.  We won't allow Russia to defend itself against the Chechnyans, but we don't even understand the reasons for those tensions in the first place.
We (Orthodox Christians) are not fighting to restore Constantinople to its rightful status as the Capitol of Orthodox Christianity.  We have conceded defeat and given it up.  But we are not willing to give up anymore of our rights.   
Turkish control of Constantinople is not Just.  The Ottomans controlling the Greeks was not Just.  America controlling the world is NOT JUST!

Blitzer totally ingored Ron Paul, especially right at the end. They allowed the top 3 to go off on the "We must take over the world and enforce democracy through war" rant and then Blitzer ended the debate. He should have allowed Paul to knock them off their pathetic tyrannical horses.

Huckabee won hands down in my opinion because he stood his ground and proved his knowledge and conservatism.
Ron Paul wasn't even given a chance.

Rudy was on happy pills, McCain was on some sort of mellow drug, and Romney seemed uneasy.
The top three failed, but since the debate focused on them it was a futile waste of time.
CNN sucks!