What a great night. I wish every voter in the country could have heard our crowd cheering when Dr. Paul said he would get rid of the IRS. I'm sure half of Manchester did.

Fantastic turnout--25 in Manchester, and, I hear, about the same in Portsmouth. We took over most of the bar area at Murphy's and had signs and palm cards ready to pass around. A huge thanks to our folks who turned out and yelled themselves hoarse.

As for the debate itself, I'll give a quick review. First of all, online polls are looking great; Drudge Report has Paul polling third with 18%--soundly thrashing McCain, and getting damned close to Giuliani. He's also winning at MSNBC, and getting great coverage over at Digg. Comments on Politico are very positive, and I'd bet his website stats are going through the roof.

The format was just terrible, in my opinion. Chris Matthews sucked, and the moderators seemed to go out of their way to pick the worst questions from the submissions on Politico. Last time I looked, the "favorites" were about spending, the drug war, Iraq, and taxes. So how did we end up with, "Mr. Romney, what do you dislike about America?"

Dr. Paul did well, but I've heard enough grousing to think he could have done better. This kind of format (30-90 second answers to inane questions) works against a candidate of substance (instead of sound bites). But that means Dr. Paul needs to be uber-prepped so he can condense real answers into sound bite blips.

That said, while there's always room for improvement, this was a great start. Now on to South Carolina and New Hampshire. ;)