The scene, including chants of "No bill, no break!" was like nothing that has occurred in Congress in recent years, more reminiscent of the civil rights battles of the 1960s than today's often predictably scripted debates.
On Monday afternoon, Mr. Baier and his team hunkered down in a windowless conference room in a far corner of the convention center here to make sure they had scripted the debate as sharply as possible.
From my experience, corporate employees, while understanding the need for unity, are hungry for real debate, not scripted events.
What we didn't see was that the faithful had been bused in and prepped to cheer, the debate answers scripted and the voters' questions screened.
In an obviously scripted confrontation at a debate in Buffalo, Lazio marched over to Clinton and demanded that she sign a pledge to ban so-called "soft money" contributions from the campaign.
They were worried that he had composed the background music for a film that had been scripted by Goebbels, and debated whether the composition conveyed Nazi ideology.
And of course the fictional Borgen debates came scripted and with a convenient tendency to over-explain each politician's position so viewers could easily place them on the spectrum.
For months, he sought to remain above the fray, appearing onstage for scripted speeches and television debates, occasionally gracing the friendly environs of Sean Hannity's show to take potshots at President Obama, and otherwise avoiding the campaign press like the plague.
The senator set off on a barnstorming tour of New Hampshire on Sunday, the morning after he was widely panned in the Republican debate for coming off as scripted.
