... but, tonight I stumbled across Right-Wing Facebook, one of their productions.

I strongly encourage you to check it out. There are two reasons for this.

First, it's pretty funny (see items like Thompson's status: "napping," Rudy's political views: "9/11" Romney's interested in: "conservative voters with short memories").

Second, it offers an interesting insight into the kind of themes on which liberals seem to be trying to reach out to voters who can be persuaded by funny stuff on the internet (so, then, probably 18-35 year-olds, fairly independent, but probably inclined to read this stuff because they have a problem with Bush, even if they're not Nancy Pelosi clones). Take a look at every candidate except for Giuliani's page. Virtually all the actual issues, and many of the personal qualities, that are highlighted, and designated for parody, relate to what I'd put under the broad heading of "social issues": abortion, gay marriage, intelligent design teaching, and generic religiosity. Nowhere that I can see (and please someone email me if I've missed this) do the "facebook" pages mock the GOP frontrunners on the basis of their stances on economic issues, items like education (bar where intelligent design is involved), health care, or the environment. They don't even really touch on foreign policy matters. Nope, it's all social issues.

This should tell anyone paying attention something important. Whoever the Right-Wing Facebook is designed for (and I think my description above is probably pretty close to the mark) are people who get pissed at Republicans over their stances on things like abortion, gay marriage, and separation of church and state-- and perhaps, where Giuliani is concerned, constant 9/11 references. Their "anti-GOP" button is evidently not pressed by things like Republican support for lower taxes, lower spending, privatizing Social Secu...

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I was unable to live-blog last night's Republican debate on FOX due to a migraine, but I did tune in-- and am offering my thoughts, belatedly.

First off, I'm declaring joint winners: McCain and Giuliani.

McCain had a number of great lines last night (my favorite being about Woodstock being a cultural and pharmaceutical event), and won me over by hitting the nail on the head in relation to Russia. What really did it for me, however, was his willingness to charge Romney with flip-flopping in front of the audience, and hit out at him about efforts to deceive voters vis a vis McCain's own record (which, I hasten to point out his team were actively doing quite a bit earlier this year, and no doubt have continued to do, perhaps just more subtly, since). The only place where McCain lost me was on his reference to "Czechoslovakia." Since my brother lives in the Czech Republic, I'm a little attuned to that kind of screw-up. However, as my husband pointed out, it's not nearly as bad as Fred Thompson's bizarre reference to "the Soviet Union" a few weeks back.

Frank Luntz's focus group clearly didn't agree with me that McCain was a winner last night. But they clearly felt that Giuliani did a great job-- something that I wouldn't have concurred with halfway through the debate, but something I felt was clearly the case by the end.

Personally, I didn't think Giuliani diverting from Thompson's "guns, abortion, sanctuary cities, Cuomo" attack by shifting to talking about crime was the way to go (at some point, he's going to have to address the guns point, specifically, in detail). But looking around the blogosphere and talking to others who watched the debate, evidently, my sentiment there is not shared. Most people seem to feel ...

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Interesting.

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