GOP in Florida January 24 -- Liveblog
Join us in the comments for liveblogging of tonight's GOP presidential primary debate from Boca Raton, Florida, held five days before Tuesday's primary there.
The debate starts at 9 pm ET on MSNBC and can also be viewed at MSNBC's website.
The five remaining candidates (Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Paul, and Romney) will be questioned by moderator Brian Williams, NBC's Tim Russert, and St. Petersburg Times editor, Paul Tash.
In the comments we'll be looking for signs of desperation from Rudy (who had told Russert and the world that Florida was his firewall) and for an escalation in the Romney/McCain competition for front runner status.
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: liveblog, debate, debates, republican presidential primary, elections 2008, Florida, MSNBC
GOP Univision Debate Preview
Originally scheduled for September but postponed indefinitely after John McCain was the only leading Republican candidate to agree to participate, tonight's GOP Univision debate, hosted by the University of Miami, airs live from 7-9 pm on Univision cable channels as well as at the Univision website.
The format is conventional in that Univision news anchors will moderate and ask candidates questions on a range of issues. But the questions will be asked in Spanish, then translated into English for the candidates. The candidates will respond in English but the television and web audience will hear the Spanish translation of the answers. Folks like me, who cannot understand Spanish, can use the closed captioning feature on their televisions to read the English. English speakers in the live audience can wear headsets if they need the English version.
The Democratic Univision debate attracted an audience of 2.2 million television viewers, a far higher percentage of the Spanish speaking audience than the percentage of English speakers who watch the "traditional" debates on other cable networks.
The political context for tonight's debate includes this week's Pew Hispanic Center poll that finds "there is now a 34-percentage-point gap in partisan affiliation among Latinos. In July 2006, the same gap measured just 21 percentage points," reverberations of the CNN/YouTube debate that began with Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney questioning each other's anti-immigrant credentials, the rise of Mike Huckabee (in part attributed to his ability to rise above the negative tone of his rivals), and the locale itself, a swing state with a Cuban population that has favored Republicans.
Details are below the fold . . .
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: debate, debates, univision, republican presidential priamry, Florida, immigration, elections 2008
