The staff of Mediaite has seen enough debates already to last us several election cycles. Tonight’s CNN seven-candidate powwow (8:00 p.m. Eastern), moderated by Anderson Cooper, probably won’t do much to differentiate itself from the previous ones, but we’re still holding out hope that something — anything — spontaneous happens. Here, in no particular order, are some things we’re looking and hoping for during tonight’s Sin City gathering of the GOP candidates.

Oh, irony. Mark Foley, the Florida congressman who left his job in 2006 after reports he’d sent a series of sexually-charged emails to young men who were former Congressional pages, is back on the political scene. The Palm Beach Post reports Foley headlined a weekend meeting of Palm Beach County’s Young Republicans. The choice of Foley as a speaker for an audience of young people resulted in criticism when the announcement was made in Florida, with one critic turning to Twitter with the message “have you people lost your minds?”

The Vancouver Sun reports on an explosion of racially-charged slurs in the comments section of Free Republic, a popular conservative blog: “‘A typical street whore.’ ‘A bunch of ghetto thugs.’ ‘Ghetto street trash.’ ‘Wonder when she will get her first abortion.’ These are a small selection of some of the racially-charged comments posted to the conservative ‘Free Republic’ blog Thursday, aimed at U.S. President Barack Obama’s 11-year-old daughter Malia.”