The South Carolina Debate and G.O.P. Golden Oldies The people of South Carolina should be grateful. The Republicans competing for their party's nomination are subjecting them to only two of the carnival sideshows that pass for presidential debates. The first was Monday night and the second will be on Thursday. I'm not saying these debates are a complete waste of time. Important things come out of them, like Mitt Romney finally saying he will - well probably - well, maybe - well, I don't know - release his tax returns. But he will only do it in April, by which time he should have the nomination pretty well sewn up. This morning, we got a pretty good reason for the delay. Mr. Romney said he currently pays taxes "close to the 15 percent rate." I have no idea what he means by "close," but that's not the point. If you're looking at that number and thinking "isn't that less than my tax rate?" the answer is probably "yes." Mr. Romney may derive most, if not all, of his income from investments and is probably referring to the capital gains rate, which ought to be a lot higher. In fact, it was, until Republicans pushed it down. Those investments, presumably, come mostly from his time as the head of Bain Capital, a leveraged-buyout operation in which huge profits flowed to the partners and their investors if the companies they bought flourished - or if they collapsed. The rest of the debate was largely a compendium of G.O.P. punch lines, some of them definitely not funny. Here are some of my favorites. RACIAL DOG WHISTLES - With the contest going to South Carolina, some of the candidates are becoming more overt in exploiting the nation's racial divide to gin up votes. Newt Gingrich is the hands-down champion in this arena. On Monday night, he got into an exchange with Juan Williams, the Fox News commentator, who asked him if he didn't see an insult to African Americans in his suggestion that they prefer food stamps to jobs or that poor black kids should be put to work as janitors in public schools to teach them a work ethic. Of course there is, but of course Mr. Gingrich said he did not. He said something completely irrelevant about his daughter having a janitorial job when she was 13, and then made Mr. Williams" point for him by going on and on about how jobs are good for young people. If only African Americans knew that, it would solve everything! LIES ABOUT BARACK OBAMA - There are so many of these it's hard to keep track. But there are some choice ones from Monday night, starting again with Mr. Gingrich, who said: "It tells you everything you need to know about the difference between Barack Obama and the five of us, that we actually think work is good." Mitt Romney said "the president looks out across American and says it could be worse." Rick Perry said that Mr. Obama is waging a "war on religion" and talked about Mr. Obama's "disdain for our country." Mr. Romney won the night's prize for the straw-man attack. "I believe in free enterprise, I believe in freedom, I believe in liberty, I believe in an opportunity society," he said, because Mr. Obama hates free enterprise, freedom, liberty and opportunity. SILLY COMMENTS ABOUT FOREIGN POLICY - Mr. Romney said he would never negotiate with the Taliban. He also said he would reverse the sensible, bipartisan cuts in military spending that have been enacted in recent years, presumably so there can be more wars. Mr. Perry says there should be "no space" between the United States and Israel, which is ridiculous. The United States should support Israel - and Mr. Obama does. But to suggest that it should never criticize, cajole or push Israel is irresponsible. Mr. Perry said some peculiar things about Turkey, too, including that its government is run by people who "many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists." I'm sure we will hear more of this on Thursday night before South Carolina's primary on Saturday. The most likely outcome seems that Mr. Romney will win, at least according to the polls.