While overall I’d say tonight’s Republican debate was probably the best of MSNBS’s efforts, it was still characterized by some pretty slanted questioning. Tim Russert asked each candidate, and I’m paraphrasing here, are you excited about running on the record of the party that has screwed up everything? Mostly the candidates handled the question with far more aplomb than Russert hoped. On several occasions Russert pontificated at length in the form of a question, promoting such issues as global warming.

For the most part no one make any mistakes and gaffs tonight. All acquitted themselves pretty well. The general consensus of the panel on MSNBC was that on the economic issues Romney came out on top. I’m not sure I agree with that but he did do well. McCain seemed to be in a daze at the beginning but he warmed up as he went along.

At the outset, the MSNBC panel seemed to think the candidates would take the opportunity to gang up on Romney since he’s the front runner going in. I thought they might gang up on McCain. Ultimately, however, no one was ganged up on and it might have been the most civil of all the Republican debates to date.

Little was said tonight about border security or the war against Islam fascism. The primary focus of the questioning, after Russert asserted how bad the Republican Party has been, was on the issue of the economy. Huckabee pointed out that of all the candidates on the stage, he was the only one saying there was a problem back in New Hampshire. He said that all the other candidates claimed the economy was sound then.

On the question of whether the candidates agreed with the stimulus package that has been agreed upon, most said they did but they’d go farther. Only Huckabee questioned the package, asking where the money would come from and assuming we’d borrow it from China. He said he wondered whose economy would be helped the most. Romney even followed up on that later and gave credit to Huckabee for bringing up the question of China as a competitor to America. Paul also took issue with the stimulus package but he takes issue with virtually everything.

To be fair, Paul did make some good points tonight. He pointed out yet again that the Republican Party used to be for the elimination of the Department of Education but now they work to grow it. I’ve said the same thing many times. On most domestic issues I’m in agreement with Paul but on foreign policy I still think he’s plain dangerous.

An interesting portion of the debate was when the candidates asked question of each other. Only Romney used the opportunity to make a speech in the process of asking a question. In fact, it appeared for a minute or so that he didn’t understand what he was supposed to be doing. Interestingly McCain chose to ask Huckabee about the FairTax. Specifically he asked what Huckabee’s response was to critics who claim that the FairTax would unfairly hurt those at the bottom of the economic ladder. That’s about as softball a question as I could imagine anyone asking and Huckabee handled it easily. McCain listened like he really wanted to understand. I still wonder whether it was a blunder on McCain’s part or whether he deliberately set Huckabee up to give a good answer in the hope that he would gain points over Romney.

Ron Paul asked McCain a very esoteric question about a panel of economic advisors. It was tedious and seemed intended to make McCain look ignorant on economic issues. McCain managed to answer the question without dealing with the panel Paul mentioned and, indeed, I’m sure not one in 100 in the audience had any idea what Paul was talking about.

The unifying theme of the evening was opposition to Hillary Clinton. Most of the candidates had something to say about Clinton and several were specifically asked about campaigning against her and Bill if they became the nominee. Probably the best line of the night was Romney’s response to that question when he said he didn’t want to think about Bill Clinton in the White House again with nothing to do.

One of the most interesting moments actually followed the debate when Chris Mathews was questioning Giuliani about the second amendment. Mathews was incredulous that Giuliani would actually believe the second amendment means what it says. He seemed to think that Giuliani didn’t really believe that but was just saying it because he was running for the Republican nomination. One could easily see how Mathews might fell that way considering Giuliani’s approach to guns as mayor or New York City.

I don’t think there were any big winners or losers tonight. My candidate, Huckabee, did pretty well I thought, but so did the rest. I don’t expect this debate will have changed a lot of minds, though it might influence some in Florida who have yet to make up their minds. As I said above, it was probably the best MSNBC debate to date and i enjoyed watching it. They made a good decision in excluding Chris Mathews from the questioning.