CNN Undercard Republican Debate: Live Coverage

Less glibly: I’m curious why Mike Huckabee has made so little impact on this campaign, because he’s probably the only one of the four candidates on stage who had more than a 1 percent chance of winning the nomination when the race began. I don’t have a good answer to that question about Huckabee, but it’s an interesting question. He was a pretty good candidate in 2008 and started the race with reasonably high favorability ratings.

I agree with Leah — the candidates clearly wished they could argue with people other than each other. Instead they competed to sound the most hawkish and the most mawkish about protecting their descendants and yours.

Well, this debate didn’t do much to ease Americans’ fears about Islamic State — we had several allusions to attacks being planned at this very moment. I think it mostly just added to the general atmosphere of paranoia that’s dominating the GOP primary.