When you watch as much cable news as me, after a while you start noticing little patterns in news reporting — on Thursday, the prevailing meme on MSNBC was the number of times the candidates uttered the word jobs at the previous night’s debate in Mesa, Arizona. This factoid was brought up no less than three times on three separate shows!

Mitt Romney is a Mormon. And Jon Huntsman, no longer in the GOP race, is, too. And yet most Americans would be hard-pressed to find many mentions of Mormonism in any of the Republican debates. Well, that’s because in 20 debates, only three questions have addressed the faith. None of those were directly pointed at Romney or Huntsman.

After blazing to victory in South Carolina on the strength of dynamite debate performances, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has seen his status as a master-debater falter in Florida, along with his poll numbers. Following Monday night’s NBC News debate, Gingrich complained about Brian Williams’ silencing of the audience, and this morning, his campaign is accusing Mitt Romney‘s campaign of packing Thursday night’s audience, like some kind of Republican establishment Snickersâ„¢ bar.

At Thursday night’s Republican Presidential Debate in Florida, former Gov. Mitt Romney tried to play coy when asked about an ad that accuses former Speaker Newt Gingrich of calling Spanish a ghetto language, telling moderator Wolf Blitzer “I haven’t seen the ad, so I’m sorry, I don’t get to see all the TV ads,” and later added, “I doubt that’s my ad.”

Several minutes later, Blitzer said that CNN had verified that the ad was Romney’s (not a SuperPAC’s), and asked him to explain, again.

There has been a lot of high-minded chatter among the political media elite deriding the proliferation of presidential debates this election cycle. As CNN prepares to air the 19th Republican Primary debate tonight, Starting Point anchor Soledad O’Brien wondered if this GOP reality show is a good thing. Roland Martin argued that the debates have been revealing, noting “If we didn’t have 19 debates, trust me, Rick Perry would still be in this race.”

New York Times‘ political blogger Nate Silver crunched the numbers and found that Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich has mentioned Ronald Reagan a whopping 55 times during the GOP presidential debates — more than any of the other candidates combined.

During CNN’s South Carolina debate, the audience erupted in jeers when John King tried to switch topics from abortion before letting Congressman Ron Paul give his two-cents. “All right, let’s take another question,” King said, before being interrupted by the crowd to let Paul respond. “Let’s take a question now from social media question — before we move on, you want in on this issue?”

Have you been watching this debate, people? Hoo boy. At one point, moderator John King asked Rick Santorum to respond to Newt Gingrich‘s assessment that he and former candidate Rick Perry would do well to drop out of the race, citing their lack of “knowledge” to do anything on a grand scale.

During CNN’s South Carolina debate, moderator John King asked the GOP candidates to weigh in on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Bill being discussed in Congress, and all of them expressed disapproval.

In recent days, the heat has been turned up on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns, with pressure coming from rivals, allies, and revelations about his Cayman Islands investments. At Thursday night’s South Carolina Republican debate, Romney was put on the spot to release his tax returns before April, and when he balked, the crowd reacted disapprovingly.

Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich excoriated CNN’s John King at Thursday’s South Carolina debate for asking if the former Speaker of the House wanted to respond to the allegations by Gingrich’s ex-wife that he had asked her for an “open marriage.” “I am, frankly, astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate,” Gingrich fumed.

In a preview of Wednesday’s Piers Morgan Tonight, former President Jimmy Carter surprised host Piers Morgan with his somewhat blunt (by mainstream media standards) assessment of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Speaking of Gingrich’s standing ovation moment at Monday night’s debate, President Carter told Morgan “I think (Gingrich) has that subtlety of racism that I know quite well, that appeals to some people in Georgia.”

During Fox News’ South Carolina debate, Texas Governor Rick Perry called upon Turkey to be kicked out of NATO, saying the country was being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists. Perry’s response might surprise many, as Turkey is a longstanding US ally in NATO, and a critical diplomatic partner engaged in “a working relationship that is one of the most important but least discussed developments shaping (2011)’s change in the Arab world.”

At Monday night’s Republican Presidential Debate on Fox News, former Sen. Rick Santorum delivered a series of gut-busting punches to Mitt Romney, both on style and substance, over a pro-Romney SuperPAC ad that accused Santorum of voting to allow felons to vote. Santorum lit into Romney over the ad’s misleading style, and laid a neat trap for him on the substance of the policy in question.

At Saturday night’s ABC News/WMUR Republican presidential debate at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, moderator George Stephanopoulos began to press former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on his claim to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain Capital, but after extracting a major admission from Romney about a glaring flaw in that calculation, Stephanopoulos mysteriously ignored it completely.

Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney got into a bit of a tussle during Sunday’s NBC News/Facebook debate, as Huntsman addressed the “political spin” on the stage and then laid in to Romney for criticizing the former Ambassador to China “for serving my country.”

Texas Governor Rick Perry earned the biggest round of applause during Sunday morning’s NBC News/Facebook debate, when he correctly named the three federal departments he would do away with if elected President (some people may remember his flub in a November debate).

Sunday morning’s NBC News/Facebook Debate featured a few somewhat-heated moments of candidates going after Mitt Romney for his past politicking, including a Rick Santorum-Newt Gingrich inadvertent tag-team on the “front-runner.”

At tonight’s ABC News/WMUR Republican presidential debate at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney stumbled badly on a Constitutional question from moderator George Stephanopoulos, first trying to punt it to “our Constitutionalist” Ron Paul, then demonstrating painful ignorance about the issues of privacy and banning contraception. To his credit, George pursued him like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.

At tonight’s ABC News/WMUR Republican presidential debate at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) zinged Rep. Ron Paul when the Texas Congressman’s microphone fed back on him. Paul was in the midst of launching an attack on Santorum, and when the mic squealed, Santorum cracked, “It caught you not telling the truth, Ron.”

Tonight, Part 43 in a 164-part competitive reality series known as the 2012 GOP Presidential Primary. It’s like Survivor in that there is something of a tribal counsel, but it’s also like a soap opera in that characters come and go in mysterious and inexplicable ways. Now, via the magic of streaming Internet video, you can watch it in the comfort of sitting in front of your own computer!

This is pretty neat: Tonight, Twitter is introducing a feature allowing viewers to share whether they think the candidates participating in tonight’s Fox News GOP debate in Iowa are answering the questions being posed to them or dodging them altogether.

In preparation for the Fox News Republican Debate tonight, Megyn Kelly sat down with Bret Baier, Chris Wallace, and Neil Cavuto to preview what viewers should expect (Kelly, Cavuto, and Wallace are moderating, with Wallace hosting). Noting the seating arrangement — with Kelly on one side facing the three men — the four decided to play off a Dating Game theme, throwing in jokes alongside the serious analysis.

Former Louisiana Governor and Congressman Buddy Roemer — the only Republican Presidential candidate to serve as both a governor and congressman — has been caught in a vicious cycle in his bid for the GOP nomination: he hasn’t been invited to debates because his poll numbers are low, while scrambling to raise his poll numbers without the benefit of debates. Instead of constantly whining about it and stomping his feet, however, Roemer has hit on a unique way of having his voice heard: he answers all the questions asked in the debate, in real time, on his Twitter account (@buddyroemer).

Pop quiz, hotshot. You’re in a nationally televised debate for the presidency, at a time of tremendous economic hardship, trying to endear yourself to a socially conservative audience in Iowa. What do you do? What do you do?

Well, if you’re Mitt Romney, apparently the answer is high-stakes gambling. Romney actually challenged Rick Perry to a ten thousand dollar bet onstage. Really.