The Blog  Barnett: A Big Night For Huckabee  11:21 PM, Jan 10,
2008 • By DEAN BARNETT Widget tooltip Single Page Print Larger
Text Smaller Text Alerts  For the third time in six days, the
Republican candidates gathered for a presidential debate in
South Carolina on Thursday night. They say the presidential
campaign isn't a sprint but a marathon. This week, it felt like
a triathlon.  The pre-debate agendas for each candidate were
clear. Rudy, Fred, and Mitt had to do something to lift
themselves off the mat. McCain and Huckabee had to broaden their
appeal while avoiding any catastrophic errors that would make a
Mitt, Fred, or Rudy rebound more likely.  Oh, and Ron Paul had
to stop embarrassing himself and the philosophy of
libertarianism, something that seemed only slightly more likely
than John McCain going the entire evening without saying "My
friends."  So how did the contestants fare? In ascending order:
6) Ron Paul: Paul has become the Washington Generals of
politicians, assuming the Generals had thousan