it's Saturday night – and welcome to live-blogging coverage of the GOP presidential debate in Des Moines, as Mitt Romney takes off the gloves against Newt Gingrich.
That's our hope at least – although when Mitt Romney takes the gloves off it's usually to reveal yet another pair of gloves underneath.
But time is running out for all the GOP presidential contenders – tonight and next Thursday are their final chance to make an impact in a nationally televised debate before the phoney war ends and actual voters start casting actual votes in the Republican primaries.
In 23 days time voters in Iowa will take part in the caucuses, and seven days later voters in New Hampshire cast their votes in the first primary.
Several candidates have pinned their hopes on winning the Iowa caucuses – although Romney and Gingrich are not among them. That's why there will be a debate within a debate tonight, as the second tier of candidates – led by Ron Paul – desperately need to break out of the pack.
For Rick Perry, a praiseworthy performance is needed to revive a stuttering campaign. For Rick Santorum and Michele Bachman, the Iowa caucuses are their first and last hope.
All of which means that after this week there are no second chances for most of the candidates on stage tonight. So let's be having you.
We'll be following all the action here live as the debate kicks off at 9pm ET (that's 2am GMT for British insomniacs), complemented by asides from the Guardian's Ewen MacAskill ringside in Des Moines and Ana Marie Cox orbiting in cyberspace.
You can leave your own comments below – the best jokes will be shamelessly lifted – or follow me on Twitter at @RichardA where I will be posting pictures of kittens. Or whatever.
In case you missed it – and let's be honest, you probably did – here's my earlier preview of what tonight's debate means in the context of Mitt Romney's flagging campaign, Newt Gingrich's sudden catapult to the top of the opinion polls, and Ron Paul's grassroots Iowa push:
Romney previewed the tactics he is likely to use against the former Speaker of the House on Friday, poking fun at a series of Gingrich's more fanciful ideas, including a permanent moon base and paying children from improverished families to clean school bathrooms.
Meanwhile, prominent Romney supporters lashed out at Gingrich in harsher terms, calling him unstable and untrustworthy, and a brutal new ad attacking Gingrich as a flipflopper who would lose in the general election to Obama has been released by a political action committee that backs Romney through a site called newtfacts.com.
The other story of tonight's debate will be how the other candidates react to Ron Paul's surge in the opinion polls in Iowa – with strong suggestions that his grassroots support and organisation may see him win the caucuses on 3 January.
A supporter holds a copy of the Ron Paul Family Cookbook during a campaign event in Marshalltown, Iowa. Photograph: Jeff Haynes/Reuters
My colleague Ewen MacAskill has been watching Paul at work in the Hawkeye state:
His anti-war message, calling on America to stop acting as the world's policeman, is resonating, with more than 1,000 young people gathering in the Great Hall in Ames, Iowa, on Thursday night to cheer him repeatedly as he called on US troops to be brought back not just from Afghanistan but from Germany, Japan, Korea and 120 other countries round the world.
They cheered too as he opposed war in Syria or Iran, describing the nuclear threat posed by Tehran as overblown. More than 200 people, mainly students but also young people from round the state, including serving soldiers, stood in line afterwards to have their picture taken with him. It is one of the oddities of this campaign that the candidate attracting the youth vote is the oldest in the field, aged 76.
Ron Paul's campaign is even making in-roads among Iowa's Christian conservative voters. Ewen found some at a Ron Paul event in Boone:
Among them was Joany Gorman, 49, mother of four and a home-schooler. Asked why she supported Paul, she pointed to the Cookbook. "The reason I support Ron Paul is because I believe Jesus Christ is the one true God," she said. She had never heard of him before this election but will vote for him on caucus day.
Tonight's debate is being held at Drake University in Des Moines, and is being broadcast by ABC News and Yahoo.
You can follow live streaming video of the debate via Yahoo here.
Hello to the people of Slovenia, or at least one of them, Peter Vilman, who emails:
I'm still awake so I'll be following your comments on the GOP debate from a tiny town in the Slovenian Alps.
The Guardian's Ewen MacAskill has spent the day in Iowa – and went to an election meeting in Des Moines organised by a veterans group:
Only Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry turned up. Michele Bachmann cancelled just 20 minutes before, maybe wanting to spend the time preparing for the debate or maybe someone told her the event was sparsely attended: she sent her husband Marcus instead.
Having spent three days in Iowa at various election events, there seems to be little enthusiasm for any of the candidates and there did not appear to be much at this event either. I sat next to a WW2 navy guy exasperated with candidates on offer, muttering "God damn" at various points made by Gingrich, Santorum and Perry.
Santorum said he had served ... for eight years on the Senate armed services committee. As Santorum was leaving, the vet blocked the aisle and told him if he wanted bloodshed in Iran, he should put on a uniform and go there.
That suggests all is not well with the crop of GOP contenders.
OK here we go, Diane Sawyer of ABC is introducing the candidates, it's the usual stuff.
I'm preparing for this debate by drinking very fine Kickapoo coffee. Kickapoo seems appropriate tonight.
First question: what is your "distinguishing idea" about creating jobs. As the front-runner, Gingrich is first up:
"As Speaker of the House I worked with President Clinton..."
Oh, you worked with President Clinton did you Newt? Would that be the impeachment or the shutting down of the federal government?
Mitt Romney is looking particularly tanned tonight. He reels off a seven-point plan for creating jobs, which sound like they would create about seven jobs total.
Ron Paul is next up, who embarks on a "Ludwig von Mises for Dummies" economics lecture. It's the Federal Reserve's fault, basically.
"I can diagram on a map the problem we have in America today, it's a direct line from Washington to Wall Street," says Rick Perry. Vote Perry for a man who can find places on maps.
Michele Bachmann's refers to "one of my win points". Or is it "wind plan" It sounds like wind, that's for sure.
Bachmann also makes a naked grab for Herman Cain's remaining 12 supporters.
Rick Santorum's answer appears to be an attempt to win some sort of bet about who can mention the largest number of small towns in Iowa.
Diane Sawyer says that of the candidates only Romney answered the question in terms of jobs created in the first four years of their presidency. Santorum jumps in to blather on about petri dishes, something.
Politico's Juana Summers wonders about the absent Jon Huntsman, who is boycotting this debate to hang out in New Hampshire:
Tivo it, dude.
So, asks George Stephanopoulos, "Who is the most conservative of you all?" (I paraphrase.)
Offered the chance to take a shot at Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney flops and opts to attack Barack Obama instead. But then: "Speaker Gingrich and I have a lot of places where we disagree..." says Romney. Why don't you name them? asks Stephanopoulos. "Er..." pauses Romney uncomfortably, before the software kicks in and he names some batty idea of Gingrich's about building bases on the moon.
Gingrich narrows his eyes and shoots back:
Let's be candid the only reason you didn't become a career politician is you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994.
Ouch! "Just a second, just a second," wibbles Romney. But Gingrich keeps going and smacks down all of Romney's points. And wins a big round of applause.
If this was boxing fight the ref would have stepped in by now.
In his response, Romney falls back on babbling about numbers.
"With regards to the idea that if I had beaten Ted Kennedy I'd have been a career politician, that's probably true," says Romney, making a joke that if he had been good enough at football he would have been in the NFL.
But that "that's probably true" line is just made for an anti-Romney attack ad.
In summary: awesome.
Plus, I now know how to spell Stephanopoulos.
All the other candidates are now queuing up to take shots at Gingrich, notably his "lobbying" work for the likes of Freddie Mac.
Michele Bachmann coins a hybrid creature, "Newt Romney," in showing how similar their positions are. This is smart stuff by Bachmann.
"Michele, a lot of what you say simply isn't true," says Gingrich. "It's important to be accurate when you say these things."
My colleague Ewen MacAskill enjoys the Romney-Gingrich fisticuffs:
Great riposte from Gingrich. It is about time someone pointed that out: the only reason you did not become a career politician is you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994. That will have gone down well in Iowa where people do not like Romney much anyway.
Bachmann has done her homework, saying that Gingrich backed the individual mandate in healthcare from 1993 onwards.
This stuff hurts Gingrich, no matter that the source is Bachmann.
Romney gets a reply:
I know Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich is a friend. He and I are not clones. This Newt Romney thing we've got to get it out of our minds.
Right. Newt Romney, not clones, get that out of your mind by rebooting your software, the way Mitt would.
Of course Romney is not a clone. He's a cyborg. Big difference.
Tonight's GOP debate, directed by Tarantino
If you want an image of this debate so far, think of the final scenes of Reservoir Dogs, with all the principals aiming guns at each other. And you know that everyone is going to get a lead injection.
Now it's Rick Perry versus Mitt Romney going at it – with at some point in there Mitt Romney offering to make a $10,000 bet with Perry over his accusation that Romney was "for" individual mandates for healthcare.
That $10,000 bet line might be Mitt's biggest mistake tonight: $10,000 to Romney – personal assets of about $250m – is like a fiver to you or me. And he just reminded voters of that.
It started with Perry to Romney: "I read your first book, and it said in there that your mandate in Massachusetts, which should be the model for the country ... I'm just saying, you were for individual mandates, my friend."
Romney shot back: "You've raised that before, Rick, and you're simply wrong. Rick, I'll tell you what: 10,000 bucks? $10,000 bet?"
Perry responded: "I'm not in the betting business."
Now Rick Santorum attacks Michele Bachmann – and no one cares. A big hook should come out and whip Santorum out of there.
OK so Rick Santorum has made a convincing case why he's a better candidate ... than Michele Bachmann. Whee.
Ad break! But not before Diane Sawyer gives the candidates a more-in-disapointment-than-in-anger telling off for breaking the rules.
Here's an ad for Fred Thompson, the comedy candidate of the 2008 GOP race. Now he's touting "reverse mortgages". Rick Santorum, that could be you in four years time.
Ewen MacAskill on the Perry-Romney business:
It would have been a good move for Perry to have accepted the $10,000 bet. Or was he unable to back it up and knew he would lose? Or is it some sort of Christian evangelical opposition to gambling that made him back off?
No idea but the obvious answer would have been "Like most people I don't have $10,000 to throw away on gambling, Mitt."
And lo, there is already a #romneybets hashtag trending on Twitter.
Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich at the Iowa presidential debate. Photograph: Jeff Haynes/Reuters
And we are back! And... the first question is whether voters should take marital fidelity into account. Now then who would that be aimed at? Hmmm? The thrice-married Newt Gingrich perhaps.
The moderators tee up Perry, Santorum and Paul – all monogamously married for a million years – to answer first. Sadly no one wants to mention the Three Mrs Gingrichs, although Perry comes close:
Individuals who have been in fidelity with their spouse, I think that sends a very powerful message. If you will cheat on your wife, if you will cheat on your spouse, then why wouldn't you cheat on your business partner? Or why wouldn't you cheat on anybody for that matter?
Ron Paul manages to turn the question into fidelity to the Constitution, and wins applause.
They are leaving Gingrich till last on the marriage recidivism question.
"People ... have the right to ask every single question," says Gingrich. "In my case, I say openly, I've made mistakes."
So that one died like a lead balloon. Gingrich hurdled that easily. Slightly uneasy silence in the hall though.
An hour in and we're on immigration – but there doesn't seem much oxygen in the issue.
Jose Antonio Vargas is watching the debate in Iowa and he sends in these observations:
No real news out of the immigration question, except that Newt Gingrich manages to sound both soft and hard on immigration, saying that "we should make deportation dramatically easier," while arguing that folks who have ties to the US should be given a path to legality determined by "citizen review panels." (Sounds quite Orwellian.)
Possibly the most interesting thing about the immigration segment: the Rosetta Stone commercial that ABC played after the segment.
Now Newt Gingrich's comments about Palestinians being an "invented" people comes up.
Ron Paul uses it to make a point about America's global ambitions and says that soon it won't be a problem. Gingrich uses it as an excuse to pivot to a defence of Israel, and says he was just "telling the truth" about the Middle East:
They [the Palestinians] have textbooks that say 'If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews get killed, how many Jews are left?' and we pay for those textbooks.
Romney says: "I think the Speaker [Gingrich] made a mistake saying the Palestinans were an invented people." Gingrich violently shakes his head. Some chins wobble.
Gingrich actually cites the League of Nations for historical precedent. There's a big vote winner.
But this is a vey revealing and interesting mini-debate between Romney and Gingrich over Israel, with Romney saying that he wouldn't presume to speak for the people of Israel. "I didn't speak for the people of Israel, I speak as an historian," chunters Gingrich.
Romney comes back at him, and drops the mention that he worked with Netanyahu at Boston Consulting. "I'm not a bomb-thrower, rhetorically or literally," says Romney. Gingrich smiles like someone who has been offered a large plate of shit to eat.
That was Romney's best play: subtle but underlined his differences with Gingrich: that he's got a big mouth who says dumb things and then claims he's just got the big ideas.
I want to see the transcript of that exchange because this is hard to capture. Gingich did claim that "an amazing number of Israelis" liked what he was saying. Maybe he should run for president of Israel then? Just kidding.
The Guardian's Chris McGreal – a former Jerusalem correspondent – disputes Gingrich's fanciful Palestinian textbook claim:
The Gingrich Palestinian textbook claim is rubbish. Even the Israelis' own official criticisms of the books mostly centre on questions of recognition of Israel.
At the debate venue in Des Moines, Ewen MacAskill is watching and thinks Gingrich is weather the storm of assaults:
Gingrich has been in the firing line all night: Romeny calls him a career politician; Bachman stands by crony capitalist; Perry, without naming Two-Affairs Gingrich, says you can't trust a man who cheats on his wife; Romney calls his remarks on Palestinians incendiary.
Gingrich appears unruffled so far. Looks relaxed throughout, smiling. This is Nice Newt, not Grumpy Newt. And if it continues like this, he is not only going to escape the night unscathed but strengthened by it. Bachmann, Perry, Santorum and, especially, Paul are bystanders so far.
Personally I think Perry is having a pretty good debate overall, for a change. But yes, all of this is water off a Newt's back.
Asked about their personal financial struggles, multimillionaire Mitt Romney says:
I didn't grow up poor. And if somebody is looking for someone who's grown up with that background, I'm not the person.
A glitch in the Matrix there: that's Romney's stock response to many questions – "I'm not X, if you're looking for X I'm not that person" – and he clicked on the wrong option there. Although he did go on to say that his father had been poor, so that's ok. But now he can lay $10,000 bets on a whim.
Ron Paul reveals that he got through medical school thanks to his wife working. But somehow moves his response onto inflation being caused by printing money. He's smooth. Very smooth.
Now we are back on the whole individual mandate for healthcare thing, and Mitt Romney gets to defend himself for the 9,000th time in this election campaign.
Basically, according to Romney: the individual mandate was brilliant for Massachusetts, but for America it is an economy-wrecking hellhole. Got it?
Now it's Newt Gingrich, who has a well-worn line of snake oil on this subject.
"I was at a pharmacy here in Iowa – I have a cough," confides Diane Sawyer. So that's how she does research.
Ron Paul lays into both Romney and Gingrich for having to explain away their positions. Gets big applause, including when he said that Medicare was unconstitutional. What?
Rick Perry mentions the governor of Iowa, calling him Terry, about states's healthcare rights. "Healthiest state in the nation," Terry Bransted, the governor, shouts back in jest.
After a very long ad break we are now in the wrap-up phase, with the candidates being asked some anodyne question about what they have learned from the other contenders. Yawno.
Interesting: Romney and Perry are sucking up to Ron Paul in this segment, making a play for his supporters there. That's a first. For Romney, though, a Ron Paul win in Iowa takes the heat off him and slows down Gingrich
But that's not the biggest suck up. That award goes to Newt Gingrich, never knowingly under-sucked: "Governor Terry Bransted is my role model," says Newt, in the most outrageous Iowa caucus vote-grabber of the night.
Michele Bachmann mentions Herman Cain. Who?
Wow, have we ended early? Oh joy.
So after a bright start of grenade-throwing, this debate faded slightly towards the end somehow, as ABC back-loaded the ad breaks and the questions seemed to die a little.
Headline of the night from the Los Angeles Times:
Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich spar over moon mining, child labor
Larry Sabato, the Sage of Charlottesville, gives his opinion on how it went down in Iowa:
I have to agree. The rest of Larry's ratings:
His "Oops!" moment was Romney's $10,000 bet.
So: they threw half a kitchen sink at Newt Gingrich and he shrugged it all off, showing that he's been doing this for a while and knows how to deal with a debate. In fact this was probably Gingrich's most disciplined performance, in terms of his usual word salad of half-digested ideas and stuff that he read in the Economist that one time.
Partly because he was on the defensive more often, fending off attacks from Romney and others, Gingrich kept it simple. He gave nothing away and as a result kept himself on the top rung. His performance will only increase the unease that a lot of senior Republicans feel about Gingrich winning the nomination – there has been a sense among Republicans that Gingrich could easily blow himself up. He showed tonight that assumption is a forlorn one.
Mitt Romney tried to scratch Gingrich's armour but straight-out attack is not his natural métier. But he messed up big time by bothering to get into a fight with Rick Perry when he didn't need to – and over-reached badly by offering up a $10,000 bet that Perry was wrong on a textual point. Now, for a super-rich person like Romney, $10,000 might be small change. And if he wanted to confirm his image as a plutocrat in the voters minds, that was a fabulous way of doing it.
Could his $10,000 bet hurt Romney's campaign? Maybe, if it turns out to be the soundbite of the night. And it's such an easy takeaway that it probably will be. What was he thinking? Bet $10 or even $100, bet a six pack of beer, why not. But $10,000? Dumb.
Mitt Romney did undermine Newt Gingrich over the question about Israel. But it was too subtle and slow-burning to have a huge impact. But it shows the grounds Romney wants to fight on: Gingrich's personality, mainly his stability. That may play well with establishment Republicans, if Romney wants to positon himself as the "Stop Gingrich" candidate.
For the rest: Rick Perry had a pretty good night, and got his revenge against Romney for the $10,000 gaffe. The other candidates had highlights, Ron Paul getting a higher profile and a softer ride for a change. That makes me think that his chances of winning the Iowa caucuses must be pretty good.
For the last word, here's the Guardian's Ana Marie Cox on the winners and losers tonight:
• Debate winners:
The state of Iowa, whose ego get lovingly stroked with gathering frequency and increasing affection every day the caucus creeps closer. Newt cited the governor as an influence, Bachmann reminded us that she was born there, and Rick Santorum continued his quest to name all 99 counties while on stage.
Newt Gingrich, who did not screw up. While you could have collected some more screen shots for your "Newt Gingrich looking condescendingly at things" collection, he was his usual brash self: So confident in his own intelligence that he makes you believe in it, too. This despite his advocacy of mining colonies on the moon. (To be fair, those sound awesome.) His one shaky moment: outright laughter from the audience at his assertion that he was ever part of the private sector.
Rick Perry, who totally put words together in sentences that wound up resembling paragraphs. Also, SOMEONE is using his word-a-day calendar! (When he said "luxury wasn't in my lexicon," my eyebrows shot up higher than Ron Paul's.)
Ron Paul, too, who remains the most consistent, most thoughtful candidate of the field. He got a little laugh at his own expense at the debate's end, referencing the need to stay in the competition so that your ideas finally sink through – but that wasn't really a joke. His ideas are the source of his appeal, something you can't really say about other candidates, and in a debate that asked viewers to take seriously questions about infidelity and the question of an "invented people," Paul swung focus onto the Patriot Act and bailing out banks. Iowans are a practical people (and maybe invented ones); his lack of frivolousness and petty knife-grinding will be with them on caucus day.
• Debate losers:
Mitt Romney and his $10,000 bet. I mean, really.
Twitter, since ABC limited its interactive portion of the debate to co-sponsor Yahoo! Even though Twitter was really fun tonight.
Herman Cain, who got props from Michele Bachmann in a desperate attempt to attract those voters that are nostalgic for the days of 9-9-9… I don't think there are many.
Earlier I mentioned the dust-up between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich that started over a reference to the controversy that Gingrich set off by calling the Palestinians an "invented people".
Here's a slightly cleaned up (for clarity) transcript of how the to-and-fro developed:
Romney: Of course you [Gingrich] stand firm and stand for the truth, but you don't speak for Israel.
Gingrich: I didn't.
Romney: If Bibi Netanyahu wants to say what you said, let him say it. But our ally, the people of Israel should be able to take their own positions and not have us negotiate for them.
Gingrich: Can I just say one last thing? Because I didn't speak for the people of Israel. I spoke as a historian who has looked at the world stage for a very long time. I've known Bibi [Netanyahu] since 1984. I feel quite confident an amazing number of Israelis found it nice to have an American tell the truth about the war they are in the middle of and the casualties they're taking and the people who surround them who say, you do not have the right to exist and we want to destroy you.
Romney: I've also known Bibi Netanyahu for a long time. We worked together at Boston Consulting Group. And the last thing Bibi Netanyahu needs to have is not just a person who's a historian, but someone who is also running for president of the United States stand up and say things that create extraordinary tumult in his neighborhood. And if I'm president of the United States, I will exercise sobriety, care, stability and make sure that I don't say anything like this.
Anything I say that can affect a place with rockets going in, with people dying. I don't do anything that would harm that process. And, therefore, before I made a statement of that nature, I'd get on the phone to my friend, Bibi Netanyahu and say, would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do? Let's work together because we're partners. I'm not a bomb-thrower. Rhetorically or literally.
Gingrich: I think sometimes it is helpful to have a president of the United States who has the courage to tell the truth, just as it was Ronald Reagan who went around his entire national security apparatus to call the Soviet Union an evil empire, and who overruled his entire State Department in order to say, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Reagan believed the power of truth restated the world and reframed the world. I am a Reaganite. I'm proud to be a Reaganite. I will tell the truth, even if it's at the risk of causing some confusion sometimes with the timid.
Is that an attack soundbite out of Gingrich's mouth? "I will tell the truth, even if it's at the risk of causing some confusion." That would work.
Oh it's midnight. Time to go home in my pumpkin drawn by a team of mice.
We'll do it all again on Thursday when the final debate pre-primary takes place. Although maybe we've fallen into a space-time wormhole and Rick Santorum will debate Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann over and over again in some sort of Nietzschean eternal recurrence.
On that happy thought: good night and thanks for reading.
If I hadn't been covering this debate tonight I'd have been attending this: Amir Khan v Lamont Peterson in Washington DC. My colleague Steve Busfield is liveblogging it here.