GOP Presidential Debate January 16, 2012 (Fox News, WSJ, South Carolina, Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, Ron Paul)

Yet still one more worthless GOP debate starts today, January 16 at 9pm Eastern.

NETWORK: Fox News

PARTNERS: Fox and the Wall Street Journal (see the link).

MODERATOR: Bret Baier.

PANELISTS: Juan Williams of Fox and from the WSJ Gerald Seib (see the link) and Kelly Evans.

WHERE: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

PARTICIPANTS: And then there were five: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. Jon Huntsman dropped out earlier today.

TRANSCRIPT: When available.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR: For a preview of this debate, see debates. As with all the rest, this debate will feature weak, superficial questions and few follow-ups. Any immigration ideas the candidates present will be flawed, and the moderators won't press them on their actual policies but instead will concentrate on gotcha. The WSJ is a strong supporter of not just massive immigration but thinks we should have open borders.

SUGGESTED READING: The links in the list of candidates above and most importantly of all the alternative to bogus political debates. That plan would ensure that the presidential candidates promote vetted policies with only known side-effects. All the debates so far simply allow candidates to give their stock speeches without being challenged on the flaws in their plans.

FAKERY: Per the NYT: "Twitter users who are watching the debate will be encouraged to react using the hashtags #answer and #dodge — giving their assessment of whether the candidates are dodging or actually answering questions — and the results will be displayed in metered form on FoxNews.com."

Feel free to leave comments below before, during or after the debate. This post will be updated after a transcript becomes available.

UPDATE: A transcript is here. The immigration question Williams and Evans asked were incredibly dumb and show yet again how much of a disservice these types of debates do to the U.S. We desperately need real debates using the format linked in SUGGESTED READING.

UPDATE 2: See the post about Kelly Evans asking Rick Perry a weak immigration question that backfired.

UPDATE 3: See the post about one of Juan Williams' weak questions.