God is Mitt Romney awful.  I always tell people that John Edwards reminds me of a sleazy used car salesman.  Well, I think he and Romney are in business together.  The guy is just phony, phony, phony.

I don’t think anybody in particular stood out tonight.  I think Fred stumbled over a lot of his words.  Rudy wasn’t at his best.  McCain gave good answers I thought, but he didn’t seem very excited to be there.  It’s time that Tancredo and Hunter call it quits.  It’s obvious being so close to Iowa that they aren’t going anywhere so for them to continue to be involved is just wasting time that could be used on the competitive candidates.  I would throw Ron Paul in with that as well except he has actually raised a good sum of money and has gained some ground.

The highlight of the evening of course was when Romney and Giuliani got into a tizzy with each other and for a moment I was ready for them to have a physical confrontation.

Oh, and Bill Bennett just said on Fox News that he thought that Romney came across the best tonight as the clear, concise conservative.  He must have watched a completely different Republican Youtube debate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the Iowa caucus finds former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee with 28% of the vote, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney with 25% support, and everyone else far behind. National frontrunner Rudy Giuliani gets just 12% of the vote in Iowa at this time while former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson is the only other candidate in double digits at 11%

Rasmussen Reports

Oh God, help us.  I never thought I would hear myself say this, but the social conservatives are ruining our party.  There needs to be a balance between social conservatism and limited government fiscal conservatism and for the past six years it’s been extremely lopsided in one direction.  What’s more frightening is not that Huck could be our candidate, but according to recent polls, could actually end up being our President.

Top Republican lawmakers on Tuesday called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a “fiscal crisis” to deal with California’s looming budget problem, but administration officials said such a move would be premature.

Sen. Bob Dutton, a Republican from Rancho Cucamonga who refused to vote for the current budget because it spent too much, said the governor should use a special authority voters assigned him during the last budget crisis to tackle a budget deficit forecast to be nearly $10 billion.

Under Proposition 58 passed in 2004, the governor could declare a fiscal emergency if he determines revenue is “substantially below” what was anticipated in the budget and summon the Legislature into special session.

“If we don’t do something now … to deal with this crisis, we could find ourselves right back where we were five years ago,” Dutton said following a Senate budget committee hearing in the Capitol on Tuesday.

The Sacramento Bee

I think Arnold has actually been worse than Gray Davis.