I MIGHT as well admit it up top: "American Idol", "America's Got Talent", all those "perform and be judged" shows make me cringe. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found out that's precisely what I was covering on Labour Day in Columbia, South Carolina? The judges may not have held up scorecards or voted anyone off, and no contestant won at the end of the show, but the dynamic was pretty similar. There were three judges: Steve King, Jim DeMint and Robert George. There were five contestants: Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. And there was a prize: not the Republican nomination, which of course comes much later, but the chance to get a good word from Mr DeMint. For this was indeed the Jim DeMint show. The American Principles Project may have been the nominal host, but Mr DeMint acted the host, and he knew full well that, as he admitted at the end, "it's a lot more fun to ask the questions than to answer them."

And truth be told, he and his co-hosts did a pretty good job. The format was unusual: this was a forum, not a debate. Each candidate made a three-minute opening statement about his or her understanding of "the foundational first principles of our republic", and then faced around 20 minutes of questioning from Messrs DeMint, George and King. The questions were softballs, but pretty substantive softballs. Critics might carp that letting candidates talk uninterrupted about what makes America great and then answer leading questions about the evils of unions and the incompetence of the current president does not a tough interview make. And that's fair. But at least mindless, unrevealing trivialities like "iPhone or BlackBerry?" or "Thin crust or deep dish?" were absent. There were no surprise questions, but there were plenty of intelligent questions and they got to respond at length. I would love to see more events like this. I'd especially like to see President Obama face questions from conservatives in this forum, just as I would like to see these five candidates being questioned by thoughtful liberals. Of course, I have no idea what anyone—other than primary voters, national political discourse and the general intellectual health of our republic—would gain politically from such cross-party questioning, but a political nerd can dream, can't he?

The big question coming into the event was how the tea-party audience (and panel) would respond to Mr Romney. Up until late last week he was not even supposed to attend, but then Rick Perry (who skipped the forum due to wildfires in his home state of Texas) started walloping him in the polls, and suddenly his schedule opened up. He did well enough: there were no gaffes, boos or errors. And he pandered far less than I expected him to. He may have told Mr King that he wanted to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank and the Community Reinvestment Act, and then privatise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but he also told the audience that "regulations are necessary to make a free market work." A true statement, sure, but not a popular one in this crowd.

Mr George asked each candidate a very leading question about whether they would consider supporting legislation banning abortions, using the enforcement clause of the 14th amendment as constitutional justification, and whether, having done so, they would face down the Supreme Court over constitutional precedent. Three of the five candidates—Messrs Cain and Gingrich, and Ms Bachmann—said yes. Mr Gingrich followed his yes with a rant about judicial oligarchy, and about how "the legislative and executive branches have an obligation to defend the constitution against judges who are tyrannical and seek to impose un-American values on the people of the United States." Mr Romney, whose rather nuanced and relatively modest view of executive power was a relief by comparison to the other candidates, declined: he said he opposed abortion, and thought Roe v Wade should be overturned, but did not want to "precipitate a constitutional crisis."

The other candidate who declined the entreaty was, of course, Mr Paul, whose sparring with Mr George about the nature and limits of the 14th amendment was one of the debate's high points. Another came after he had said he wanted to bring all the troops home, and a baffled Mr King asked him how he would project power around the globe. Mr Paul crinkled his eyes, waved his hand dismissively and said, "Ach...power", as if the premise of Mr King's question annoyed him.

It would be only half-right to say this was not Mr Paul's crowd: an audience that cheers Mr Gingrich's full-throated, near-dictatorial view of the presidency would likely not also support Mr Paul's more modest one. Yet, as Mr Paul said in his opening speech, he had been talking about liberty and strict constitutional fidelity for years. The other candidates, he implied, were playing catch-up.

At some point, perhaps a more comprehensive debate could be had over the relationship between individual liberty and limited federal government. The relationship is not nearly as direct as the five musketeers on stage last night proclaimed it to be. Sure, a limited federal government would impose fewer regulations on institutions: businesses and schools, for instance. But is there any reason to suppose that most people would be any more free? What was the net gain or loss of "liberty" in America resulting from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Black Americans in the South were more free to exercise their constitutional right to vote. White Americans in the South were less free to prevent black Americans from voting. Is there any reason to suppose that individual people were more free before, say, those acts were passed, or before the New Deal?