ANN ALTHOUSE WILL BE live-blogging the Republican debate.

Plus, there’ll be Drunkblogging from Stephen Green.

UPDATE: Althouse’s summary:

My overall impression? The moderators tried to provoke a war amongst Republicans, and Gingrich was the hero of the evening by calling them out. I thought Huntsman did himself some good, and Bachmann for some reason didn’t find a way to stand out. The main focus was on Perry and Romney — in part because the moderators made that happen. And I think Romney looked better than Perry. As they say, he seemed presidential. He had a lot of poise and he made plenty of sense. Perry seemed rough, but it was his first go round.

And Stephen Green’s:

Maybe that has more to do with Obama than any of candidates themselves — and I suspect that it does. But I’ll take this opportunity to quote Robert Heinlein, who said that the difference between bad and worse is much greater than the difference between good and better.

And most any of these candidates — even Santorum, whom I despise, and Huntsman, who I think is useless at best — rises above Heinlein’s level of “bad.”

Yeah, they’re all better than Obama. But that’s setting the bar pretty low.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Ira Stoll.