The Republican big tent

THE VARIETY of opinions expressed by the Republican presidential candidates in last night's New Hampshire debate made for an engaging evening of aired differences. On Iraq war strategy, immigration, abortion rights, health care, trade, and English as the official US language, the ideological diversity on stage in Manchester last night was far broader than what the Democrats displayed two nights earlier. At one point Representative Duncan Hunter of California even accused the three top-tier candidates -- John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani -- of being "from the Kennedy wing of the Republican party," because of their more moderate stances on certain issues.

The Republicans are fighting a steep uphill battle to hold on to the White House in 2008. Perhaps that longshot status frees them to be more candid in expressing their views, unlike the play-it-safer Democrats. As the field narrows into fewer candidates and more is at stake, the refreshing variety may not last. But last night about the only things all 10 candidates agreed on was that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military should remain, and that they believed in God.

McCain, a senator from Arizona, had several good moments: when he walked to the edge of the stage to speak directly to a Bedford, N.H., resident whose brother has been killed in Iraq, and when he refused to engage in bashing even legal immigrants. "Spanish was spoken in my state before English was," he said, responding to the bluster of Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who pledged never to allow Spanish to cross his website.

Mitt Romney did not have a good night, speaking of non sequiturs and null sets and finding himself on the defensive for signing a healthcare law some of his opponents called a big government mandate. His attempt to play the Reaganesque role of optimist looking to a bright future fell flat.

Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked the Democrats on Sunday how they would use Bill Clinton in their administrations. He tried for parity last night, asking the Republicans how they would use George W. Bush. It made for some awkward moments, as when former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson tried to quip, "Well, I wouldn't send him to the United Nations" and Tancredo scowled that he would tell him not to darken his door.

But the candidates also used that question, and another one later, to do some soul searching about why the Republican Party took such a beating in the 2006 elections. They lost credibility, they all said, by becoming more like the Democrats -- big spending, interventionist, corrupt. It was a mea culpa to the Republican Party's base, but strikingly, did not mention Iraq, and in that way missed the most important message of 2006.