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Right off the bat, Ron Paul kind of missed an opportunity to make a sweeping case against the welfare state overall when asked about Medicare. Where is the champion of liberty now?

Gingrich, challenged on his previous "right-wing social engineering" comment about the Ryan plan for Medicare, tried to undo the damage. Unfortunately, he went into perhaps too much detail about his alternative plans, and ran out of time to explain himself.

Cain made his first misstep, pronouncing Chile "Chill-ay" when referring to that country's social insurance program -- neither correct nor relatable. 

Cain also made his second mistake, failing once again to improve on his statement that he wouldn't be comfortable with a Muslim in the cabinet, even thought he had two chances to finesse the point. Gingrich actually stepped in with a stronger version of the point, stating that he would not appoint anyone to the cabinet who he thought would be working against the government, and comparing the situation to that faced by the U.S. when the country was facing the Nazis and Communism. He stated that both times we learned that there really were "bad people" trying to infiltrate the government.

Although there were multiple questions about the role of religion in government, Romney's Mormon faith did not become an issue, even indirectly.

When are we going to get to questions about foreign policy? A lot going on in the world right now.