WASHINGTON — Two days after voting down a plan to strip the ethanol industry of billions of dollars in federal subsidies, the Senate approved a similar proposal today, but a bipartisan group of largely Midwestern senators who opposed it, including those from Minnesota, are seeking to reach a compromise on any potential subsidy bill.

The legislation would end the 45-cent-per-gallon tax credit on ethanol that is mixed into gasoline and a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol at the end of the month. Both are set to expire at the end of the year.

The tax credit costs $5.4 billion in lost revenue each year, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Both Minnesota senators, Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, voted against the legislation, which was an amendment attached to a large stalled economic bill that has little hopes of passing. In approving the amendment, which passed 73-27, the Senate was essentially signaling its underlying support for an issue that was burdened by procedural controversy this week.

Tuesday’s vote was on identical legislation offered by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, who was criticized for using Senate procedures to force a vote on his measure. California Democrat Diane Feinstein, who sponsored today’s legislation, asked Coburn on the Senate floor to withdraw the bill and work toward a compromise that would draw wider support. He did not, and the bill then failed 40-59.

Klobuchar, along with South Dakota Republican John Thune, introduced an alternative amendment that would end the subsidy (but not the tariff) and redirect $1.5 billion of the savings to investments in renewable fuel infrastructure and $1 billion to deficit reduction measures. The bill would also extend a series of tax credits related to the production of biofuel. Franken and 12 others have signed on as co-sponsors.

Klobuchar’s office said she and Thune are continuing to meet with Feinstein and Coburn to negotiate a compromise between the two pieces of legislation. She said in a statement Thursday: “It should come as no surprise that there is support for phasing out the current ethanol tax credit, the question is when and how. We are continuing to work on a bipartisan compromise that will allow for a reasonable way forward for the biofuels industry and provide significant deficit reduction."

Among the 20 senators who represent the country’s top 10 ethanol-producing states (which includes Minnesota), only Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson voted for today’s measure.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Keith Ellison will co-sponsor on legislation to prevent localities from banning male circumcision, according to the JTA news service.

The bill, which will be introduced by Democrat Brad Sherman, comes as San Francisco residents prepare to vote on a ballot measure to ban male circumcision of anyone under 18.

Sherman represent’s California’s 27 Congressional District, which wraps around Los Angeles.

Sherman’s bill is called the “Religious and Parental Rights Defense Act.” Circumcision is considered a religious ceremony in for Jewish-born children and Muslims. Sherman told JTA that Ellison, a Muslim, will be one of the bill's co-sponsors.

“The Religious and Parental Rights Defense Act ensures that Jewish and Muslim families will continue to be able to enjoy the free exercise of their religious beliefs,” Sherman said in a statement.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

WASHINGTON — When New York Republican Peter King held a hearing on “the extent of radicalization in the American Muslim community and that community's response” in March, Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison was a vocal critic, calling it “counterproductive and destructive to the goal of protecting the country.”

Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, had a similar reaction to King’s second such hearing, held Wednesday.

In March, Ellison delivered an emotional testimony at King’s hearing, recalling the story of a Muslim first responder who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. His basic thesis: “Muslim Americans live in every community in America — they are our neighbors. In short, they are us.”

King, the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, promised to further investigate radical Muslims in America, and he delivered Wednesday when he convened a hearing entitled “The Threat of Muslim-American Radicalization in U.S. Prisons.” In a brief interview off the House floor Wednesday, Ellison called it “an unfortunate use of the gavel.”

“He keeps using it to whip up hate and hysteria against a minority religious group,” Ellison said.

King’s hearing focused on the prevalence of radical Islam in the prison system, illustrating the urgency by telling stories of Muslims who committed terrorism after their time in prison. One of them was Farah Mohamed Beledi, a Minnesotan who allegedly tried to kill himself in a suicide attack in Somalia in 2009.

The committee heard testimony on the issue from law enforcement, counterterrorism officials and academics, who had varying opinions on the prevalence and degree of radicalization in the prison system. But their testimony took a backseat to the hearing itself, with Democrats on the committee questioning its need.

In an exchange with one Democrat, King defended the hearing as narrowly focused on an important national security issue.

“We are not going to spread ourselves out, investigate everything, which means investigate nothing,” he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "We're going to focus on a target which threatens the security of this nation."

But Ellison said the hearing only succeeded in highlighting a divisive wedge issue.

Repeating a tone he’d used earlier Wednesday in criticizing Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, Ellison said the hearings single out Muslims when other religious, racial and social groups represent similar types of threats.

“White supremacists get radicalized in prison, come out and do bank robberies, and even threaten to overthrow the country,” Ellison said. “People come out of prison, get radicalized from all walks of life, and all Americans of all colors and cultures and faiths … what [King] wants to do is give people the false impression that it’s just one religion that’s the problem.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

WASHINGTON — Seventy one days before the Minnesota State Fair opens, the White House decided to have a go at hosting their own in the name of bipartisanship.

White House officials invited members of Congress and their families to the event on the South Lawn, for three-legged races, pie throwing contests and the like. Rep. Erik Paulsen, ever mindful of the most important things at state fairs, said on arrival that he was looking for those foods on a stick.

The state fair fare, per a White House aide, included stick favorites corn dogs and salad on a stick, as well as Sen. Al Franken's favorite, fresh grilled corn on the cob. Also on the menu: footlong hot dogs, burgers, fried chicken, fresh cut fries, cotton candy, pie and ice cream.

"Turnout at the White House is big — even salad on a stick, but it doesn't beat the MN state fair :)" Paulsen tweeted.

Your humble correspondent, by the way, has suggested to White House officials that next time they try including hotdish on a stick, which in my not-entirely-unbiased opinion is akin to deep-fried perfection.

Just 71 more days...

WASHINGTON — Steps from the House floor, as Michele Bachmann prepared to cast her first votes since announcing she's running for president, colleagues stopped her to tell her just how great she did in the first New Hampshire presidential debate.

Iowa Rep. Steve King was first to see her. "Michele!" he called out, before embracing her, holding her shoulders and telling her just how great he thought she was. "It's pretty hard to name somebody in that debate [Monday] night who helped themselves more than Michele did," King told MinnPost later.

Colleagues who walked by touched her shoulder to get her attention and said "great job" and "congratulations" as they entered the House chamber. Her press calendar was full, phone lines to her office were jammed and four of her staffers walked with her to and from the chamber, briefing her on everything from upcoming votes to the avalanche of media requests.

Tuesday provided the first glimpse of the new role for Michele Bachmann — at once both a relatively junior Republican backbencher in the House and also a Tea Party-infused insurgent candidate for president.

Bachmann, in an interview Tuesday, said she'd be leaning on her House experience as she runs for president.

"I think where I fit into this race is that from day one when I arrived in Washington I've been the leader and the movement that I've been leading is really the unique voice that's come up across this country that's the Tea Party, and it's fiscal sanity that people want to see to return to Washington D.C."

When asked what she brings to the table different than other candidates, Bachmann returns to her House experience. "I think I've been extremely effective to bring that voice here, in the halls of Congress, and to have that voice known, and now I want to take that voice to the White House," she said.

"That's what the difference will be. I've been here fighting these fights, people know that I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do, but also I think that I'm very much in tune with where the Tea Party is at and I intend to take that voice to the White House."

An easier path to a higher office?
The reception Bachmann got Tuesday stood in stark contrast to the one she got eight months ago, when she last ran for a higher office.

The day after the 2010 elections, where Republicans surfed a Tea Party-whipped wave into the House majority by picking up a net 63 seats, Bachmann, who'd founded the Tea Party Caucus in that body sent her colleagues a letter, asking for a promotion.

"To our Conference I bring strong principled conservative values, a proven level of experience, effectiveness with our friends in the local and national media, and an energetic national constituency that reflects the results of Tuesday night," wrote Bachmann in a letter to her colleagues asking them to support her bid for chair of the Republican Conference, the number four spot in party leadership. "It is important that our Conference demonstrate to the people who sent us here that their concerns will be tirelessly advanced at the table of leadership."

There was never a vote. In part driven by concerns that Bachmann was too much of a loose cannon to be trusted with that job, her party's leadership rallied around Jeb Hensarling of Texas, a quieter but still very solid conservative who quickly garnered enough endorsements to render a vote redundant.

Bachmann had lined up just five public endorsements when she eventually threw in the towel. Sometimes after a loss becomes imminent, a consolation prize will be offered to them — that's what happened on the Democratic side when Steny Hoyer bested Jim Clyburn for the number two job in the House, as a new number three job was created for Clyburn. Bachmann got none of that.

"Republican House leaders do not view Bachmann as a team player, despite their ideological congruence," said Kathryn Pearson, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota. " Bachmann's 'outside strategies' sometimes deviate from House Republicans' strategy and message, causing headaches for leaders trying to unify the House GOP Conference. "

Indeed, that rejection may have actually helped Bachmann, who now decidedly not in leadership was free to go her own way.

"These outside strategies resonate with Tea Party identifiers in the electorate who view Bachmann as an authentic and unwavering voice against the President and his policies," Pearson said. "With increasing national appearances and fundraising success, Bachmann's voice has become louder, and Monday's debate further elevated her status among conservative Republicans in the electorate."

Most notable on that path was when she and King devised a strategy just hours before a budget vote that would flip the course of negotiations on Capitol Hill. If the House doesn't vote for something, it can't pass, and that Republicans hold the majority in that chamber.

So if they could get every Republican to vote the same way, the GOP effectively had its own veto. Realizing that, Bachmann and King have since tried to force the issue and insist on a fundamental walk-back of every major policy enacted under the Obama administration thus far.

Their first demand was a full defunding the health care law, refusing to vote for any major spending bills (budget, debt ceiling, etc.) until the entire health care law is repealed or defunded. So strident were Bachmann and King on this — and so effective in ginning up support from the grassroots — that some colleagues who had been allies before lit into her in a closed caucus meeting last month and told her to tone it down.

Onstage at her first presidential debate, however, Bachmann's recitation of her House tactics brought her peals of applause, widespread agreement from the other six on stage who aim to lead their party in 2012, and a consensus that she was among the two "winners" of the debate, along with frontrunner Mitt Romney.

"It's easier for Michele Bachmann to be elected president of the United States than it is for her to become the chair of an 'A committee' here in the United States Congress," King said of the wildly different receptions of the very same Bachmann.

"The American people vote for president, and the structure in here is a leadership structure that controls those positions," King continued. "That's the fact of it, and it's an ironic thing but that's the fact of it. And I trust the people."

A senior GOP aide, asked about King's comments, said there's not necessarily a disconnect between Bachmann's reception in the House and on the trail, adding that her colleagues have taken note of her Intelligence Committee performance.

It was a source of jokes on the Hill when Bachmann was named to the Intelligence Committee shortly after she lost that leadership election. But top officials say (speaking on condition of anonymity as Intel briefings are classified) that she's impressed by showing up to a lot of briefings — sometimes missing press conferences and rallies where she's the featured speaker to do so — taking detailed notes and asking pertinent and probing questions.

"It's not that she couldn't get a gavel," the senior aide said, "it'd just take at least a decade."

Doing double duty
Bachmann came from the statehouse and, if elected president, would have been in Congress for six years. The experience track reminds of a state senator from Illinois, who broke onto the national scene quickly and was elected president after four years in the Senate.

"The real issue isn't the issue of experience with President Obama, as much as it is that he's wrong on his policies," Bachmann said when asked to compare. The reverse of that sentence — someone with as much time in Congress as Obama and the right policies would be right for the job — could stand as a defense for her later.

"And I think that the report card is already out and he's failed the American people miserably on job creation, on unemployment numbers, on almost any metric on the economy and on foreign policy. And that's where the difference lies in the fact that I think that the policies I will be putting into place will turn the country around and keep the people safe, and that's what we need."

Of those candidates on stage in New Hampshire, Bachmann and Ron Paul were the only two with a day job. Paul, who stayed in the House during his 2008 presidential run, is likely to do that again, and Bachmann said she will stay in Congress too.

"I'll continue to serve the people of the 6th District of Minnesota. "I had made that obligation and promise when I ran, and I intend to keep that promise."

There is almost no way Bachmann can run without missing votes, as she did when she was in New Hampshire Monday night for the debate while the House remained in session. Counting this current week, the House is scheduled to be in session 13 of the 24 weeks until Thanksgiving, with votes likely three to five days per week.

It's a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, the fundamental job of a representative is to show up and vote. On the other hand, when she chose to stay for a vote on the Patriot Act rather than fly to Iowa for a fundraiser she was supposed to headline, she took some flack from those at the dinner who'd paid to hear her speak in person.

"I'll be committed to serving the district throughout my time here, and I'll be pursuing the presidency vigorously, and primarily that will be on weekends and on break periods."

A month ago, Bachmann told MinnPost that if she ran for president, she'd run to win. But if she didn't get the nomination, she'd like to stay in the House next session. Asked about those comments, and whether there was still a Plan B, Bachmann replied, "Well, I'm running for the presidency of the United States, and I'm all in.

"I am all in for running for the presidency. That's what I'm doing. I want to be very clear, it is the presidency. The presidency. This isn't a gimmick. This is in to run, this is in to win."

WASHINGTON — Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum’s latest attempt to monitor federal spending on NASCAR sponsorships has sputtered.

During a mark-up of the Department of Defense spending budget on Monday, McCollum introduced an amendment requiring the department to inform the House and Senate Appropriations Committees of its intentions to spend more than $250,000 of the more than $649 billion in the bill to sponsor racing events, drivers or teams, among other things. The committees, of which Rep. McCollum is a member, would then review the sponsorship, but they wouldn’t have the power to deny it.

The amendment was voted down, like many of her past efforts to curtail government spending on NASCAR sponsorships. Earlier this year, she offered an amendment on the House floor to ban Army sponsorships in motor sports, but it was voted down, 148-281. In May, a House panel rejected her measure to ban the Department of Veterans Affairs from using appropriated money to sponsor racing drivers, teams or events.

Unlike her past proposals, this amendment would not have prohibited those types of sponsorships, but instead require only a heads-up from the Defense Department. Such a warning would apply not only to motor sports, but also for fishing teams or fishing tournaments, professional wrestling events and ultimate or extreme fighting events. According to McCollum’s office, DOD spent more than $50.7 million on these  sponsorships in 2010.

McCollum has contended these types of sponsorships don’t result in better recruiting results. According to the Department of Defense, one single event — NASCAR’s Air Guard 400, which DOD sponsored for $650,000 in 2010 but will not sponsor this year — resulted in only six “qualified leads or potentially eligible recruits,” but none of those ended up enlisting.

“For far too long, millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars were spent on motorsports with little to no oversight,” her office said in a statement. “Congresswoman McCollum's objective is to increase transparency and accountability for spending on motorsports sponsorships.”

The committee approved several other McCollum amendments, including one that caps Pentagon spending on military bands at $200 million a year.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted down controversial legislation Tuesday meant to end $5.4 billion in federal ethanol subsidies.

Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken opposed the legislation, which would have ended a 45-cent per gallon tax credit and a 54-cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol at the end of the month instead of its current expiration at the end of the year. The bill failed 40-59.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., proposed the amendment, which was identical to legislation offered by California Democrat Diane Feinstein. Before the vote, Feinstein had asked Coburn to withdraw the legislation and try to negotiate a deal with Klobuchar, who had offered an alternative bill.

Klobuchar’s legislation would have ended the per-gallon tax credit and used the savings to pay for new renewable fuel infrastructure as well as extend a series of tax credits related to the production of biofuels. Klobuchar introduced the legislation with South Dakota Republican John Thune and a bipartisan group of senators including Minnesota Sen. Al Franken. It did not receive a vote.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

WASHINGTON — Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson is protesting several provisions of a major agriculture spending bill, saying the committee in charge of the bill overstepped its authority when crafting the legislation.

But in forming the structure of floor debate for the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration funding bill on Monday night, the powerful House Rules Committee ignored Peterson’s appeal to allow members to challenge the relevancy of the bill’s provisions during debate.

In a letter to Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, Peterson said many of the provisions of the bill, a funding measure, would amend the 2008 Farm Act, a policy bill. Policy provisions should be considered by the House Agriculture Committee, where Peterson serves as the ranking Democrat, not the Appropriations Committee, Peterson said in his letter.

He also protested provisions that would cut $1.8 billion in funding for conservation programs that are considered mandatory spending. Changes to those programs should be considered by the committee that authorized them — in this case, the Ag Committee — not the Appropriations Committee, Peterson said.

So Peterson asked the Rules Committee to allow Agriculture Committee members to protest these provisions through parliamentary tactics called points of order. But Rules, which sets the standards that govern debate on the House floor, ignored his appeal, barring points of order but allowing debate on any amendments to the bill.

The House will begin debating the funding bill today.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.

WASHINGTON — Michele Bachmann walked into the hockey rink at St. Anselm College in Manchester looking to show she belonged on stage alongside six declared presidential candidates.

It was a debate in which the entire field assembled all but pledged to contest the 2012 Republican nomination for president on the right side — perhaps the far right — of the GOP by articulating ardently conservative positions with none on the stage even attempting to stake out a centrist or liberal position on any issue presented.

That just so happens to be Bachmann’s home turf. And if the other six didn’t take her seriously before, they’ll have to now after a performance that most analysts said was one of the two strongest of the night.

Bachmann told CNN’s John King, the assembled crowd and the television audience on CNN, CNN.com and WMUR in New Hampshire that she’s running for president. An official announcement will be forthcoming, she said.

And with that, Minnesota officially has two major candidates in the presidential field, the first time that’s happened since Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy in 1968.

The other one, the former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, had what could be considered a decent-to-good performance, except for one key moment that overshadowed the rest.

Pawlenty trips on Obamneycare
The debate started off on Pawlenty’s turf, with candidates agreeing with the fundamentals of his big economic plan offered up last week.

“The ideas that Tim describes, those are in the right wheelhouse,” said Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum, who has said he supports Paul Ryan’s budget 100 percent, also complimented Pawlenty, though he wouldn’t get drawn in on the details.

“There’s nothing wrong with having a 5 or 10 or 15 percent target,” agreed Texas Rep. Ron Paul, so long as the United States unwinds the Keynesian economic model, promotes a strong currency and leads with a free market-style economic plan.

And then it happened.

CNN’s King asked Romney about Pawlenty’s “Obamneycare” comment on Fox News on Sunday, and gave Pawlenty the chance to expound. Pawlenty didn’t take it. King asked again, and Pawlenty continued on with an excerpt from his stump speech about how Massachusetts did one thing but Minnesota did something different. Asked again, Pawlenty said he was responding to a question from a reporter and that he was simply citing Obama’s own words that he looked to Massachusetts as a guide for the health care law.

“But you chose — you say you were asked a question, which is fair enough, but you chose those words,” King persisted. “And so one of my questions is, you know, why would you choose those words maybe in the comfort of a Sunday show studio — your rival is standing right there.

The split screen CNN broadcast showed Romney with a slight smile.

“If it was Obamneycare on Fox News Sunday,” King continued, “why is it not Obamneycare with the governor [Romney] standing right there?”

“President Obama is the one I quoted in saying that he looked to Massachusetts,” Pawlenty responded. “He’s the one who said it was a blueprint and that he merged the two programs, and so using the term Obamneycare was a reflection of the president’s comments that he designed Obamacare on the Massachusetts health care plan.”

Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, wrote on Twitter: “TPaw blinked on ‘obamanycare.’ That was his moment.”

There were strong moments elsewhere in the debate. Pawlenty earned applause from the GOP-friendly crowd for his impassioned defense of right-to-work legislative efforts, and the crowd also appreciated his comments on separation of church and state — even if he did mix up the Declaration of Independence and Constitution in saying the latter establishes one nation under God (that’s the Declaration, the Constitution doesn’t have the word “God” anywhere in it).

Pawlenty also had a rational defense of a modified space program — urging public-private partnerships to help keep the United States at the forefront of space exploration and research. It was a point aided by the contrast Newt Gingrich tried to draw with it, in which the former House speaker aimed to make a nuanced point but wound up sounding legitimately upset that the United States doesn’t have a functional and permanent moon base alongside multiple space stations right now.

But in summing up the debate for Pawlenty, analysts returned to that Obamneycare exchange.

“A small nightmare for Pawlenty,” said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, summing up his performance. “His refusal to take on Romney in person on health care made him look weak in front of a national audience.”

Outsider finds her voice
One of the most frequent accusations levied against Michele Bachmann the member of Congress is that she’s not a serious legislator. Aside from the Stillwater Bridge replacement bill, most of her efforts have been broad sweeping legislation that makes clear where she stands but doesn’t have a hope of getting signed into law.

Bachmann introduced no-hope legislation the day after the health care law passed to repeal it wholesale. She introduced a no-hope bill to fully repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill shortly after it passed too.

She’s also got an independent streak that can frustrate allies in her party. She founded the House Tea Party Caucus, which she still chairs, despite the calls from some Tea Party-affiliated members of Congress that such a group was too formal and establishmentarian for the Tea Party. And she has demanded that House Republicans hold firm on the debt ceiling and budget cuts with such ferocity that members of her own party in closed caucus meetings have told her to tone it down.

Yet on the presidential stage, those moves dovetailed into easily-delivered sound bites. You want this? I fought for it in the House, was the basic tenor of her answer, repeated and customized to at least four questions from King on health care, financial reform, the validity of the Tea Party and on Libya.

“If people only know her for the occasional sound bite they might have been surprised by her performance,” said Matthew Masur, a Minnesota native who’s now a professor at St. Anselm College, where the debate was held. “If you watched only the debate you would not think she had a reputation as a firebrand.”

“She moves to the head of the class among very conservative voters,” Scala said, leaving behind Santorum, Herman Cain and Gingrich. Nate Silver of the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog said Bachmann’s at the top of the second tier of candidates now, behind only Romney and Pawlenty.

It was an unscientific study of one, but my Republican friend sitting next to me as I watched the debate (who hates Bachmann) was even forced to grudgingly admit that "she sounds pretty good here."

This was a coming out party for Bachmann as a presidential candidate, and for about two minutes I could have said that in more ways than one.

Asked what her thoughts were on gay marriage initiatives in the states, particularly New Hampshire, Bachmann said she was a believer in the 10^th Amendment and that the job of the federal government isn’t to overrule states. As she continued explaining, it seemed as if she was all for allowing states like Vermont, Massachusetts and Iowa that have moved to legalize gay marriage to keep on keeping on.

And then she clarified, saying she wants a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Constitution trumps state laws, so no gay marriage under a President Bachmann’s dream scenario.

No, we still don’t know how Bachmann would balance the budget in Year One, but we’re assured it will happen. (By my count she’s still about $900 billion away from that answer in her most detailed plan. Perhaps those and other details will be forthcoming in a later debate.)

Strident field seemingly accepting of Romney
One major candidate wasn’t at this debate: Jon Huntsman, the Utah governor and former ambassador to China, and without him no one even attempted a case for moderation.

Bachmann staffers, as she spoke about being pro-life from the moment of conception through natural death, tweeted that Bachmann supports laws that would require mothers seeking an abortion to hear the fetal heartbeat before getting one.

Herman Cain got in some trouble before the debate for saying he’d require a Muslim seeking a job in his administration to take a loyalty oath to the Constitution as a prerequisite for the job — something he wouldn’t require of others, like those who profess to be Christians or Jews.

After that, Newt Gingrich followed by seemingly running to the right of him, saying that the people might lie in those loyalty oaths and then suggesting more stringent tests, like the kind Joseph McCarthy had when he was investigating people accused of being members of the Communist Party.

The only major rift in the field was on foreign policy — Ron Paul mainly but also Bachmann and, to a lesser extent, Romney sketching out a position of fewer troops abroad while Pawlenty and Santorum have called for a more strong-armed national security policy.

Yet in all that, no one really took a shot at the presumed frontrunner, Romney — which was somewhat odd considering that the entire campaign against Romney is that he isn’t conservative enough.

Romney has been criticized before — heavily in the 2008 campaign — for his switch from being pro choice to being anti abortion, with some suggesting (as moderator King noted) that the switch wasn’t genuine. Every single candidate refused, when asked, to question it, and furthermore they all agreed it was a “dead issue.”

Romney will take that, as he certainly will the flat-out unwillingness of anyone bar Pawlenty to question his oft-criticized health care plan. Instead, he offered an explanation for his own plan in Massachusetts, said he’d work to repeal the national health care law and, in the meantime, give every state an immediate waiver from implementing the law.

Democrats said the GOP field proved Monday that it’s too extreme.

“Tonight’s Republican debate was a reminder that we’ve been down this road of failed economic policies and proposals before,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. “The economic recession in America wasn’t caused by bad luck; it was caused by bad Republican policies.  But the Republican candidates are doubling down on the same flawed policies that led to the loss of 3.6 million jobs in the final months of 2008 and gravely affected middle class families across America.

“And if those policies weren't bad enough, we heard support tonight for policies as extreme as ending Medicare and privatizing Social Security — policies the American people have rejected over and over again.

“The debate tonight put into stark relief the contrast between the Republican presidential candidates and President Obama.”

While Republicans would vigorously contest the majority of her interpretation, on that last sentence alone, I suspect she’d find no disagreement whatsoever from the field assembled.

WASHINGTON — The political pundits were almost unanimous in their assessment of the debate, giving high marks to Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney, while saying Tim Pawlenty missed the mark, especially on his Obamneycare answer (video here).

Here's a sample of what they're saying:

Washington Post's Chris Cillizza: Lists Bachmann first on his list of "Winners" and Romney second. Of Bachmann, he says: "What Bachmann proved tonight? She’s ready for primetime." Pawlenty is first on his list of "Losers." Cillizza called the Obamneycare moment "strange," and said that while Pawlenty had moments where he shined, "by and large he came across as a bit over-programmed." More here.

National Journal Insiders Poll: "Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the winner of the first major presidential debate tonight according to a survey of Republican and Democratic political operatives, campaign consultants, and party strategists, in a special National Journal Political Insiders Poll conducted tonight. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann also had a good evening." While Pawlenty was ranked third among winners, he was the number one loser in their survey. More here.

Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler leads with a story headlined "Pawlenty's Big Choke: Won't Repeat Criticisms to Romney's Face." It begins as the headline would suggest: "In one of the most cringe-worthy moments of Monday's GOP presidential primary debate, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty blew his first big chance to draw a distinction between himself and his top rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney." More here.

And lest we forget the Iowa caucuses with all this New Hampshire attention, the Des Moines Register's William Petroski watched the debate with a group of Tea Partiers. He writes: "In a show of applause after they watched the debate on television at the Elks Club here, the loudest clapping went to Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and businessman Herman Cain. No one applauded for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney." More here.

We'll have a full write-up and analysis in the morning. Good night from D.C.