10:31 PM: Don’t think that cut it for Mitt on what he’s done for conservatism.

From TPM Reader MF …

Despite this being a close debate, I don’t think it’s going well for Newt even if he still looks pretty good. Newt needs to run roughshod over the debates or his balloon deflates pretty quickly. His whole surge is predicated on the notion that he’s going to tell Obama he’s a foreign Muslim Communist to his face, so doing OK isn’t really going to cut it for him. In that sense Romney has an ongoing advantage even if he’s never going to look as self-satisfied as Gingrich does up there. Mitt just needs to expose a few chinks in the armor.

Newt’s biggest problem so far: no questioner has given him the chance for the big finger-pointing moment.

10:03 PM: I feel like Newt felt this was almost the chance for raging at the moderator with Beth Reinhard. But even he knew there just wasn’t enough there.

10:09 PM: Mitt’s policy is to let people “self-deport”? “If people don’t have a card and through a system determine they are here illegally they will find they can’t get work here. If they can’t get work they will self-deport to where they can get work.”