- Donald Trump has continued his long-standing tradition of outlandish and insane statements. The crowd was strongly divided between constantly booing and applauding.
- Chris Christie's strategy seems to be vomiting up as many statistics as possibly and hoping they sound impressive.
- I'm actually impressed so far with the quality of the questions coming from the moderators. Theyr'e fairly hard hitting. More so than I thought they would be, at least.
- So far, Rand Paul has only spoken twice. Coincidence? I think not.
- Marco Rubio so far has made the most coherent statement about the problems of immigration policy, but like everybody else doesn't actually detail any reforms.
- Ted Cruz desperately trying to bridge the gap between his "rebel" image and his "reasonable conservative" image, like some kind of weird hybrid between Scott Walker and Rand Paul.
- The exchange between Christie and Paul lit the stage on fire. Christie relied almost entirely on emotional arguments (based on 9/11) to try to justify violating the Fourth Amendment, while Paul set up a fiery defense of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
- Everyone is jumping over themselves to change the subject to whatever quip they thought of the day before (looking at you, Scott Walker).
- Jeb Bush can't seem to get out of the shadow of Common Core, no matter how much he tries to slip out of it.
- Ben Carson continues to push a flat tax, but spends 45 seconds introducing it under the pretext of it being "God's tax plan" for some mysterious reason.
- It genuinely frightens me that everyone cheering for Donald Trump can vote.
- I wonder if fifty years from now Republicans will still blindly cite Ronald Reagan as a justification for anything they do.
- This stage needs about five less people on it.
- Ben Carson has the most long-winded answers of any person I've ever seen in a debate.
I give up. I'll summarize something later.
