"Let him die?" "YEAAAHH!"

So, the thing I think is really odd, is that the teabaggers are applauding letting someone die in the same state where a long watch over the letting die of Terri Schiavo was made very much a thing. Does the difference over whose life matters really boil down to who is paying? This is of course, after the cheer from the previous debate, over the 234 executions performed during Gov. Rick Perry's tenure. But even the conservative governor was taken aback, here, and also over some of the crowd reaction to his somewhat more moderate position regarding immigration. For that matter, I think Rep. Ron Paul, to whom the question was asked, was taken aback by the reaction of the crowd, as he tried to explain how other means (churches) sometimes filled in the gap to cover for human decency and support life.

The debate last night was a weird one--being specifically a "Tea Party"-centered debate, it would appear to favor radicalism--but I'm not sure it did. Romney's criticism of Perry's (former?) stance on Social Security was pointed and on-target, and Michele Bachmann's pile-on re: Gardasil is both charmingly weird and uninformed and also conspiracy-driven, but probably effective for all that, amongst weird, uninformed, conspiracy-driven folks.

(Bachmann intimated that the "little girls" of 12 shouldn't be injected with the government like that. At 12, I wasn't little, to my own recollection, and I already understood what VD and vaccinations were about. I had the standard measles/mumps/rubella booster actually administered in my public school, once. Is the HPV vaccine so different and government-intrusive because it might involve one's, erm, pee-pee parts? When I hear "little girls"--I don't think of my busty, awkwardly pubescent self so much as a six year old clutching a stuffed bunny: "Oh noes! You are injecting away my puriteeeee!" She dismisses my reality and makes me hallucinate her own. How bizarre.)

If I thought I didn't understand the audience of the last debate, I understood this audience still less. Also, too, we are one step closer to the Romney/Pawlenty ticket that I have already called. I will even stop taking bets at this point.

I do not think your Perry/Jindal ticket is going anywhere, and actually--you people should seek help with your betting issues.