Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, September 23, 2011.

I am David Plotz, the editor of Slate. I am here in Slate's Washington, D.C. studio.

Emily Bazelon joins us by phone from New Haven. Emily's Slate Senior

Editor, Emily. Welcome, Emily. Emily. I am here, yes. Okay. You're not on the phone, though.

You're not on the phone. And then joining us by phone from some place, and I want to guess what place he is is john dickerson who

is at a republican presidential debate which we are taping before so we don't have the results of

and john i'm going to guess that it's in south carolina and i'm going to guess it's in charleston

south carolina am i right no you're wrong um and that's interesting charleston because charleston's not the most republican party would my guess if you're wrong. And that's interesting, Charleston, because Charleston's not the most Republican part.

My guess, if you were to guess a Republican debate would be Greenville or Columbia.

Or Columbia.

But Charleston would be the, if I were to host one, I'd host in Charleston.

No, I'm in Orlando, Florida, which is probably the last place you'd guess because I was just down in Florida seven, eight days ago or so for the last Republican debate.

Why do they keep having them in Florida?

Two Republican back-to-back debate.

Well, I think, I guess a number of different reasons.

One, swing state, two, swing state that they might be able to actually win.

Three, this is where the convention is, Republican conventions in Tampa next year. And it's a state, you know,

with a new Republican governor, it's got Marco Rubio, the kind of young darling of the Senate.

It's just kind of a happen in Republican state. And I don't know why

there are two back-to-back ones, though. I mean, other than there's also, in addition to the

Google Fox debate this evening, there's a conservative political action committee meeting on Friday

and something called P5, Presidency 5, which is a meeting of Florida activists on Saturday,

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