Two debates for Republican gubernatorial candidates in one month -- and Debra Medina in both of them? Who would've guessed that two months ago?

Well, as much as the upstart candidate must be loving the earned media, Democrats are likely equally excited about seeing Senator Hutchison and Governor Perry trade blows again this evening. So we'll be liveblogging tonight's debate here, starting shortly before the debate time of 7pm. Come join us after the "read more" jump!

Looking for coverage of the second debate, held January 29? Go to this link.

I think my first reaction to tonight's debate was that if this is what we have to look forward to in the Republican primary, political fact-checkers are on the gravy train. There was so much unsubstantiated he said/she said in this debate that there will likely be a feeding frenzy over parsing the "facts" the candidates were throwing out.

That being said, I'm going to have to give the win in the debate to Senator Hutchison. I'll tell you why in a second -- but first I have to say that I *want* to give the win to Debra Medina.

You know, if there's anything I've learned from watching Texas politics for the last couple of decades, it's that how the field looks before filing starts doesn't tend to have much in common with how it looks by the end of the filing period. So I tend to save prognostications for after some of the inevitable mayhem has hit the fan.

And now some of it has. Ross Ramsey, of Texas Weekly fame and now with the Texas Tribune, is reporting that gubernatorial candidate Tom Schieffer will be dropping out of the race this afternoon and endorsing Bill White.

Over the past week, the Texas Democratic Party has released a Top Ten list of the biggest blunders of Governor Rick Perry's tenure. You could go to their site to check out all ten -- or you could get the executive summary of Perry failures in their under-two-minute YouTube clip: