Well, the Czar grabbed a couple of frosties and put his feet up on the couch to watch this evening’s debate, accompanied to his delight by the Царица (who thought that Michele Bachmann had an awesome hairstyle) and the Цесаревич (who favors Tim Pawlenty). The Царевич was too preoccupied to watch the debate: he just received a light-up caboose for his model railroad, and was far too busy watching it circle around in ovals.

Perhaps there is irony there.

Overall, there was no winner in this debate; the only loser was, of course, the President. By curious coincidence, his absence in the debate was just as indicative of his entire presidency. In fact, it was almost as if he was invited to attend.

Some thoughts on the individuals.

Rick Santorum came off as a bit stiff and wooden, even hesitant in his answers. By the end, he loosened up quite a bit but said nothing particularly exceptional or unexpected. While the people got to see him up close for probably the first time, they will likely have a hard time remembering his name in about three hours.

Michele Bachmann did very well. Her announcement of her candidacy, her looking in the eyes of the questioners, and—perhaps most subtly—her refusal to loiter on the stage after the debate in order to meet Mrs. Gingrich in lieu of walking to the questioners in house and shaking hands was a very smart move. She is clearly a committed candidate, and understood this debate was not so much a seminar on Obama’s mistakes as it was a chance to be noticed. The Czar has few hopes for her, but wagers that she will well-remembered after tonight.

Newt Gingrich, whom the Цесаревич kept calling Nute Gunray, managed to avoid looking like the doomed candidate he is. No, the Czar agrees with the rest of the pundits, he failed to right himself or convince anyone that he can be President. Rather, he very much looked like he just got off the yacht from 1996 and asked everyone to catch him up.

Mitt Romney was CNN’s favored candidate, getting way too much time to talk, sparkle, and smile. He came off as Chuck Woolery. While the candidates seemed settled on his pro-life beliefs, as well as his Mormonism, it is very hard to believe that—despite the spotlight given to him by CNN—that he can shake off Tim Pawlenty’s right cross over “ObamneyCare.” He did okay, and had quite a few good comments, but probably will see his popularity drop at the others’s gain. Yes, the Czar should point out that he is the most vanilla and mainstream of the candidates, and the least threatening to the Progressive agenda, which is why the media so desperately needs him to be the candidate to run against Obama. He supplies the most ammunition to the Democratic campaign machine; the others are quite scary to them. Even now, the mainstream media is declaring Romney the winner. He wasn’t, by a long shot.

Ron Paul managed to squeeze about 60 years of campaign speeches into the few minutes cumulative he actually spoke. As a result, he came off as someone rambling slogans and dropping political science and economics topics without managing to get a full sentence out. At least he didn’t use his shoe to start pounding on imaginary podium spiders; however, he could barely managed to conceal his disdain for the other candidates. Sigh. Look, the Czar knows Dr. Paul gets about a million votes each time he runs, but the guy lives in a libertarian fantasy land. We cannot privatize everything overnight, nor should we, and his 1910 notion of eliminating the military outside of our borders no longer works in the 21st Century. Folks, we need bases all over the world because we need to deploy against our enemies in hours, not weeks. And Dr. Paul seems oblivious to the fact that our enemies proved almost ten years ago that they can and will strike us within our borders (something Pawlenty cleverly attacked him on); let us bring the fight to them, rather than wait for them to come here.

Tim Pawlenty knew this was his best chance to shine—he walked on egg shells on the ObamneyCare reference, but sorry CNN, you weren’t going to get the dust-up you hoped for. See, Republicans are not anywhere as divided as the New York Times thinks. But overall, Pawlenty hesitated a bit at first, but then was not afraid to be forceful and over-the-top. He came out ahead on this one, with Michele Bachmann pretty close behind. T-Paw still needs to get some of his past decisions behind him and be just a bit more polished if he hopes to push aside the unctious but soft-smelling Romney. Tonight helped Pawlenty a lot; but the questions about his past are going to get tougher.

Herman Cain is always a joy to watch. Unfortunately, he was lobbed terribly easy questions by CNN (you can guess why), which is a shame because he looked totally prepared and on his A-game. But the Czar takes exception to Mr. Cain’s frequent deferral to future experts. That may work in a corporate boardroom, as he insists, but very often (and too often for our current C-in-C) the President has to make the tough call, from the gut, with incomplete information…and he has to be right every time. Cain will find the job of President extremely different from running a company or a radio show.

Finally, how about a nice shout-out to CNN’s John King, who punctuated every response by practicing his consonants. Did anyone else catch his annoying verbal tic? He makes these annoying grunting noises as the candidates answered. It was like this: “And one of the [hrrm mng] hallmarks of my record [brrn fthg] was to establish a [rnnf bnf] conservative coalition of advisors, [mnkh mnkh] who were quick to identify our [hrrp gnff] strength and weaknesses, and [hrrnf grrrnf] for the love of God, John, turn off your mic!”

In case you missed Robert Gibbs’s Democratic response, here was the answer to every question asked of him by the CNN panel: “Everything they said here is what they said in 2006, and this is why Bush ruined the country.” It very evidently got to the point that the pro-Obama people on the CNN staff were getting annoyed with him. The Czar laughed out loud when Gibbs accused one of the panelists of misinterpreting her own poll results about whether Bush is responsible for the current economy. He was yanked off the air seconds later.

In conclusion, the Czar realized that any one of the people on that stage could do a better job than the President. And that includes CNN’s John King.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.