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The phalanx of white men that defines the Republican presidential field took the stage Thursday night at Florida Atlantic University. And while they may present a more homogenous portrait than their Democratic counterparts, they also exuded a level of professionalism and clarity in their policy positions that reflected badly on the Democrats.

The Republicans, quite frankly, behaved like grownups, and in doing so helped suggest to voters that Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had acted like peevish teenagers at their debate three nights earlier.

Democrat John Edwards clearly agrees with me, and took that view a step further. News reports Friday showed Edwards making hay of the situation by suggesting to voters that he was perhaps the lone grownup on Team Democrat.

Edwards saw a competitive perceptual advantage, and took it. He may benefit from the Clintons’ overstepping on Osama’s toes by garnering those wavering white votes. That just might be good for the Democratic race, because Edwards is the overlooked factor. I do not think the Republican presentation was a coincidence.

What I think is that Republican Party officials made sure the candidates would strike precisely that sort of contrast. If, like a smart sports team, the Democrats want to regain their competitive edge, they need to learn from the demonstration of unity, confidence and easy individualism displayed by “Los White Guys.”

The usual white-guy suspects, MSNBC’s Brian Williams and NBC’s Tim Russet, presented the questions. The debate format bested the Democrats’ event by being scheduled to last an hour-and-a-half rather than two hours. It also featured a segment prior to the debate itself of a tenor singing the national anthem.

The entire event was clearly meant to upstage the “other team;” for example, to show more considerate of the audience’s attention spa and demonstrate more respect for tradition.

I was also impressed that Ron Paul was allowed to share the stage with his fellow candidates, unlike the exclusion of Dennis Kucinich on the Democratic side. It’s s kind of hard for the Dems to preach inclusion when they don’t insist on practicing it (which means having the sponsors and networks that broadcast the debates practice it).

Let the Game Begin

For the most part, the candidates stuck to the traditional Republican bread and butter: military might, cutting government spending, and tax cuts — especially for those capitalist enterprises supposedly responsible for “job creation” (although I’ve noticed Republicans don’t generally clarify whether they mean jobs in the U.S. or just more outsourcing). Oh yeah: and illegal immigration.

John McCain is the most vocal “anti-spending” guy (”I was there for the Reagan Revolution,” he asserted), but I wondered where he wanted spending cuts to come from. The war in Iraq has been the most obvious source of that spending during the Bush presidency, but McCain wants to keep America in Iraq ’til kingdom come. Anything is preferable, he asserted, than waving “the white flag of surrender,” which of course he pinned on Democrats.

Does McCain expect the voting majority to just get used to deprivation, to being priced out of the middle class? Are we supposed to be content with a Christ-like “appreciation” of our own relative poverty in exchange for the comfort of the ongoing Crusade against the Eastern heathens? I don’t know … I’m just fishing for logic in his position.

I mean, does McCain even want American citizens to have a quality of life, right here at home? We need SOME of our tax dollars to go to our public schools, highways and healthcare — don’t we, John?

Rudolph Giuliani clarified would he thought should pay for cuts in corporate-gain and business taxes: spending would be cut “on the civilian side.” Good to know.

Illegal immigration should be stopped at the border through the implementation of tamper-proof ID cards, Giuliani said. Further, all immigrants should be required to learn English. Sounds logical. So why was his campaign running ads in Spanish, the reporters wanted to know. Just working with reality on the ground, Rudy implied, suggesting awkwardly that surely the people the ads targeted already spoke English.

So I guess he was accommodating them by showing respect for the Spanish language? Communicating with Hispanic voters in their native language? Kind of like municipalities who provide Spanish-language signage and documentation do to accommodate Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens? The kind of policy so many Republicans criticize?

Huckabee, as usual, sounded alarmingly coherent for a guy who’s actually come out and spoken the great unspoken evangelical ambition: to replace the current U.S. Constitution — which has been amended along the way to, for example, allow women and black people to vote — with a Constitution that reflects the will of the “living God.”

Huckabee may be happy to ditch the whole separation-of-church-and-state thing, but he was also the only guy on that stage who actually sounded like he gives a damn about the less fortunate among us.

He also got real about the “bipartisan” economic plan that would presumably hand out extra cash to some 16 million American families to encourage them to spend money and jump-start the economy in the wake of the subprime mortgage loan disaster.

“We’ll probably end up borrowing the $150 billion [to fund the program] from the Chinese to get consumers to buy Chinese-made products!” That does sound kind of twisted, Mike.

Huckabee also scored points on the “getting’ real” barometer when he suggested that, rather than borrow money from a foreign competitor as an economic bandaid, we should address the aging infrastructure along the East Coast and build a new highway from Maine to Florida. That would provide long-term stimulus by providing American jobs for years to come, Huckabee asserted. Plus it would keep “social capital” from being wasted by parents sitting in traffic jams and missing their children’s recitals.

Huckabee plays the family values card like a master, but he uses examples we can all relate to. That makes him hard to dislike for recovering liberals like me.

In Massachusetts, former Bay State Governor Mitt Romney told the audience, “we didn’t need to raise taxes to solve problems.” Like Huckabee, Romney insisted that many of his successes as governor had come through working well with Democrats.

What Romney and Huckabee have going for them is that they’ve been governors, so they can point to actual results. McCain showed he was willing to oppose members of his own party when it was the right thing to do. “We lost the [2006] election because of a bridge to nowhere,” he said.

Ron Paul showed his Libertarian true colors by reiterating his view that the IRS should be abolished. Further, “the economy and foreign policy are one and the same,” he said, adding, “We are literally spending ourselves into oblivion.”

In Senior Citizen Land, several candidates insisted that spending on “entitlements” such as social security would need to be curbed. But don’t worry, they seemed to tell seniors You won’t be hurt. We’ll save all the pain for the under 60s age group. Thanks, guys.

“We are the party of fiscal responsibility,” Romney insisted. “When Republicans behave like Democrats, America suffers.” WhatEVER.

He then did an about-face and emitted common sense, saying of the recruitment issues in the American military, “If you want more people to sign up … we have to improve the deal.” Yeah, and maybe not treat troops like disposable tissue when they return home from the front lines. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bore the brunt of the GOP candidates’ criticism for “mismanaging” the war in Iraq. I guess they’re happy to have a fall guy to fall back on as a way to justify the campaign.

I thought it was kind of funny, though, that they expressed concern Al Qaeda would take over Iraq if we left. Ron Paul injected truth syrum into the topic by reminding everyone that Al Qaeda was not in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. But he used an imaginative twist on where to place the blame. It was the fault of the Clinton administration, he said, because in 1998 they established the goal of getting rid of Saddam Hussein.

But Paul didn’t like the humanitarian efforts in Bosnia that helped end the war there. So Bill Clinton and Bush Jr. didn’t disagree about everything, it turns out. Just which wars to fight and how to go about it (with a viable alliance or without).

n any case, Bill Clinton’s “peace dividend” — military cutbacks — was a convenient scapegoat for some candidates who want to spin the Iraq adventure in such a way that voters will (hopefully) overlook Republican strategic incompetence. (Weird how the idea of personal responsibility, that Republican mantra, seems to go out the window at times like these.)

Huckabee’s “fair tax” idea got a hearing. Both Democrats and Republicans should support it, he said. People should be rewarded for working, not penalized by tax rates that discourage economic success, he added. Kind of hard to argue with him.

Huckabee, who uses the term “so-called assault weapons” and speaks about the Brady bill like it’s a four-letter word, wanted to know what Romney’s position was on the Second Amendment.

Romney pointed to a bill he’d worked on in Massachusetts that involved stakeholders on all sides of the issue, and insisted he didn’t support any new legislation, only enforcement of existing laws. Insurance reform came up in this region where hurricanes threaten to destroy property on a regular basis, and the general consensus seemed to be that any government program to provide an insurance safety net for homeowners would need to be regional rather than federal program.

Several Republicans voiced their intent to support “green” industries, for economic reasons more than conscience. But hey, it’s all good in my book. If some people need the word “incentive” (meaning the ability to make a profit) in there to buy into ideas that are good for the planet, I say use it loudly and often.

McCain is clearly making a bid to regain the trust of Independents. “I’ll bput my country above my party every single time,” he said.

But he’s a strange hybrid of political autonomy and conservative true believer. He was clearly gleeful about the ascent of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court and his part in making that happen.

Tim Russert, trying to live up to his reputation as hard-hitting journalist, had one silly moment when he tried to get Romney to divulge how much of his own money he’d spent in Florida. (This was supposedly inspired by the deluge of Romney ads running on Florida television this week.)

In any case, it was an unnecessary and pointless line of questioning. It looked like Russert was trying to embarrass Romney by reminding voters that he was “a rich guy.” I didn’t get it.

Perhaps the most interesting moment centered on religion. Again, Romney was the subject, and his Mormon faith the inspiration for the question. Asked whether he thought his religion would factor into people’s decision whether to support him, Romney said he didn’t believe people will choose a president based on his religion.

Funny — I thought that religious faith was, in fact, the most important litmus test for evangelicals, who make up a big chunk of the Republican base. They certainly base their disdain for Democratic candidates on Democrats’ relative respect for the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.

I wonder how many voters notice – or care — that Republicans are so selective in when to apply their own “principles.”

For his part, Huckabee insisted he wouldn’t apply his religious beliefs to his job as president. But what I want to know is: Why wasn’t he challenged on this? I would have liked to hear Huckabee square that statement with his recent suggestion that the Constitution should be altered to reflect the laws of HIS God.

This is where Russert, Mr. “Keep ‘em Honest,” was MIA. Strange. It was a missed opportunity. Maybe Russert was just too obsessed with Romney’s advertising budget to be concerned with the potential for a stealth fundamentalist dictatorship under a President Huckabee.