Last night's debate - some expected friction but eventually tiresome

Last night's Republican debate followed the expected script, more or less, and Santorum received the most attention from other participants, much of it combative.
Interesting in spurts, the debate eventually began to seem like a television series that has gone on for one or two episodes too long.

Some quick thoughts on the candidates:

---Gingrich described himself as cheerful, and that he was. He made his usual points clearly but was not strident or grandiose at any point. His plan must be focused on Super Tuesday and its many Southern states, without any lingering hangover from this debate.

---Romney was well prepared and on the Santorum attack. As expected, he did not take any risks and made sure his comments stayed on the right, even if not right.
The big look into his soul(if George Bush can do it why not me) was when the candidates were asked if there was one main misperception that voters had about them that they wanted to point out. Romney ignored the question and went on with his usual self promotion, even sparring unpleasantly with the moderator when asked again to respond to the question.

That was eye-opening to me as Romney has often reminded me of a top executive that I had to work with in one of the many iterations of my employer. He looked to be in perfect shape and was always sharp looking with his hair just right Wall Street. Despite being socially awkward and out of touch with normal reality, he had done well with the help of consultants and image makers. One of his traits was that he could never, absolutely never, be wrong or have any flaw. He was somewhat delusional and dense but he had no sense of that. If someone disagreed with him, it merely meant that they didn't have the capacity to understand him. He could be relentless in his self promotion and vicious if it did not work.

While Romney is presumably smarter than the man that I refer to, this encounter showed the same characteristic. He could think of no misperception. How could there be one?

---Santorum looked as if he wished he had a fly swatter and could get rid of Ron Paul. It is almost impossible to describe the pained mocking smile he wore as Paul took him to task for inconsistencies in his story line. Romney would have been ok, but this was playing a relentless two on one. Other than that, Santorum toned down some of his more outrageous comments of recent weeks, and those were the types of comments that Romney and Gingrich really did not want to get into anyway.

---Paul was his usual Constitution supporting self, as he interprets it. He did focus on Santorum because, one could think, Santorum is the opposite of a libertarian. He wants the government to not intervene in welfare or business or education but he does unequivocally want the government to get involved in the personal issues of our lives.

It does seem somehow that Dr. Paul has aged somewhat before our eyes as this campaign goes on. His comments were mostly the routine Paul that one would expect rather than some thoughtful unpredictable answers.

That's it. Now to the voting and who knows if there will be more debates?