Ron Paul’s Reaganesque Moment

Except for one brief exchange, last night’s Republican presidential debate was something of a yawner as far as debates go. There were few winners and probably even fewer losers.

Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul fared reasonably well while Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann most likely exceeded expectations.

While Romney, the party’s presumptive frontrunner, emerged from the debate virtually unscathed, the Minnesota congresswoman, possessing a little more depth than some of her critics probably expected, proved that she clearly belonged on stage with the other six candidates.

“She was clearly one of the best-prepped candidates here,” said CNN senior political analyst Gloria Borger.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, whose candidacy came perilously close to collapsing late last week when 16 staff members abruptly abandoned ship, probably impressed a few people with his depth of knowledge and grasp of the issues facing the country.

His succinct opening line — “When 14 million Americans are out of work we need a new president to end the Obama Depression’’ — might have been the best one-liner of the evening.

Surprisingly, nobody asked the former Speaker about last week’s mass exodus from his campaign.

As usual, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul — who’ll turn 76 in August — came off as highly principled and provided one of the few sparks in the debate when he vigorously challenged Romney on the issue of withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Romney said that he would rely on the advice of generals on the ground in Afghanistan in determining when troops should be removed, prompting a quick rebuttal from the fiery Texas congressman.

“I wouldn’t wait for my generals,” retorted Paul, a longtime noninterventionist. “I’m the commander in chief. I make the decisions. I tell the generals what to do. I’d bring them home as quickly as possible. And I would get them out of Iraq as well. And I wouldn’t start a war in Libya. I’d quit bombing Yemen. And I’d quit bombing Pakistan. I’d start taking care of people here at home because we could save hundreds of billions of dollars.”

It was the closest thing to a Reaganesque moment in the entire debate.

Ex-Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum arguably held his own during the two-hour debate, but demonstrated little appeal beyond his party’s splintered social conservatives, many of whom have already gravitated toward other candidates.

Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, probably disappointed some viewers by his unwillingness to go on the attack against Romney, particularly since he showed no such reluctance a day earlier when he said that President Obama had based his national health plan on Romney’s health care model in Massachusetts, derisively describing it as “Obamneycare.”

Pawlenty has yet to excite his party’s conservative base.

Meanwhile, Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, almost seemed out of his league, awkwardly defending his initial support for the $700 billion TARP bailout and then stumbling on his clarification of a statement made in March that he wouldn’t appoint Muslims to serve in his cabinet — a controversial comment that drew criticism from frontrunner Mitt Romney, who said that he would welcome Americans of all religious persuasions into his administration.

Cain, a Tea Party favorite, offered little in the way of substance during last night’s debate.