Republican Debate Recap: What Went Down In NH

College gals are busy these days so I wanted to take a moment to review all you need to know about last night’s debate. It’s hard to squeeze this puppy in because I know you were working your hostess job to pay for yet another unpaid internship or actively note taking in your Monday night class.

By Julianne

Wait a second, you were watching The Bachelorette instead? Well the voting isn’t for a long time anyway… Read on to get your quick fix (nobody will ever know you opted for a roses and vacations to Thailand over the future of your country).

Last night, Republican candidates had the chance to address the American public on a variety issues. Seven potentials attended the event, but save your Palin hating, she wasn’t one of them. Our players, in no particular order, were: Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. The biggest problem of the evening, Presidential candidates COULD NOT limit their answers to 30 seconds, (which is honestly kind of unreasonable anyway), and lead to constant interruptions by moderator John King all night long. Awk.

The winner from the evening (This is America after all, winning is far more important than the ideas) seems to have been Mitt Romney. The front-runner emerged from the evening, amazingly unscathed. Pawlenty had attacked his Massachusetts health care calling it, “Obamneycare” a few days before, but when asked to discuss his attack decidedly fumbled to create a response during the debate, to-to-today junior! Pawlenty chose instead to focus his answer on the problems with plain old ObamaCare.

On just the second question in the debate Bachmann said, “I will not rest until I repeal Obamacare.” She started the evening off with a band as she continued to explain that Obama’s healthcare will kill more than 800,000 jobs.

In fact, criticizing Obama seemed to be the only consistent theme for the evening. The boys (and token lady) played nice last night, their mommies should be proud. It seemed the republicans didn’t duke it out for a top spot in the race but rather presented a strong, anti-Obama front, because our soaring debt, faltering economy, healthcare and recent (dismal) job report provided far too much bait. Despite probing questions aimed to start the attacks, the candidates seemed pretty happy to sit back and be, well, friendly.

Another interesting topic that came up during the debate is the impact of the Tea Party. The Tea Party has been outspoken about their disapproval of Romney (and it the last night debates didn’t seem to win him any extra points with the group) and during the debate, questions about the affect of the Tea Party surfaced without really definitive answers

Totally relevant, CNN decided to spice up the evening with a “This or That” section. Because I don’t know about you but I definitely couldn’t vote for a president who thinks Dancing with the Stars over Idol, or thinks Pepsi is better than Coke. Really.

Bottom Line: We still have a long way to go. And by the way, Ron Paul is pretty hilarious. He lightened up the evening. YouTube him.

Check out some other highlights here.