Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

Tonight marks the first Republican Presidential debate where all the major candidates will be on stage together. It will be broadcast from Dearborn, Michigan at 9 PM ET.

The debate will mark Fred Thompson's first official debate and his "debut" on the national stage. Thompson, who yesterday picked up the endorsement of one-time Presidential candidate George Allen, has taken hits from the national media, and even SNL, but continues to draw positive local coverage at his events across the country.

Surrounding the debate is a developing/ongoing labor dispute between the United Auto Workers and the major auto manufacturers. It will be interesting to see if any of the Republican candidates even acknowledge or pay lip service to it. The Republican Party has never been one to cower to unions which have become a waning Democratic interest group. RedState has more...

Another brewing controversy is Chris Matthews, the rabidly partisan Democrat, who also happens to be the host of the debate. Matthews has a way of asking questions that make grand assumptions about how the world should be, and it will be interesting to see how much of that comes into play in his questions and how much of it the candidates put up with.

That said, it's important to realize that debates are hardly "make or break" events. Campaign Debates aren't really debates in the classical sense of the word. The candidates don't discuss issues in depth, but rather they try to stay on their message and hammer home their three main selling points. The focus is on the story in the papers tomorrow and the sound byte clips which will be shown on the major networks and viewed on the Internet. 

More following the debate...