(Please see update below.) Concerning the most shameful moment of last night's Fox News/Google GOP Debate, I have received a slew of messages more or less to this effect:



>>My problem is that Santorum didn't say, "Listen! Don't you boo that soldier. Don't you ever, EVER boo our soldiers!" And, if not Santorum, someone on that stage should have jumped in and stood up for that soldier against the mob's boos. None did. Not one person on that stage saw a possible political opportunity in backing the man serving his country in Iraq. And that speaks volumes about the state of the Republican party.<<



Or,



>>Here's my question: Did ANY GOP candidate have the integrity to speak up and say it was inappropriate to boo anyone who is serving our country, regardless of their sexual orientation? What does THAT say about the character of this field of candidates?<<



Given the track record of crowd response at two previous GOP debates -- the cheers for the record number of executions in Texas and for the proposition that someone without health insurance should "just be left to die" -- I'm willing to believe almost anything about the current extremist state of a lot of right-wing opinion. But just now I got a note from someone who works for one of the candidates on stage and was at the debate. This person writes:



"The acoustics were such that you couldn't really hear the booing if you were on stage."



This person adds that his own candidate, on seeing replays of the event, felt bad not to have realized what was happening and therefore to have missed the opportunity to say something like what the readers I quote wanted to hear.

This is offered for the record. While the crowd response at the previous debates, which candidates clearly heard, has highlighted some of the most bloody-minded parts of the Republican base, the practical circumstances of this debate may have made things seem worse than they were, or than at least one candidate wanted them to be.