It must be getting closer to Feb. 1, the date of the Iowa Caucuses.
The attacks are getting sharper, and the debates are getting more wearisome.
The sixth clash among candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, the first this election year and the next to last before the Iowa vote, settled nothing after nearly two and a half hours Thursday night. But, little by little, the debates appear to be narrowing the field to, in one sector, businessman Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and in the other, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
By spring, barring something unforeseen, primary voters will probably have to select either one from column A or one from column B.
The debate, in North Charleston, S.C., the state of the first primary in the South on Feb. 20, offered spats between Trump and Cruz, Rubio and Cruz, and Rubio and Christie. Christie is trying to edge his way toward the top three, and Bush hopes voters might see him as a calmer alternative to the top three.
Meanwhile, pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson continues to fade in the polls, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich seems unable to gain traction nationwide.
Trump, the national polls leader, appears content - at least before Iowa - to be either loved or hated. We know he wants to return all illegal immigrants to whence they came, to temporarily refuse the immigration of all Muslims, to put no limits on guns and to "make America great again." He's offered very little beyond that.
Meanwhile, his lack of anything but bumper sticker rhetoric - "the country's a mess," "I'm very angry," "we can't be a stupid country anymore," "it's bad" - makes it difficult for many to take him seriously.
Trump even attempted, as boos were heard Thursday, to pawn off on "others" - "it isn't me saying it" - his recent questioning of Cruz's eligibility for the presidency because the Texas senator was born in Canada to an American citizen. But Cruz cleverly noted that Trump in September had found the eligibility "no issue" but changed his mind when he slipped behind Cruz in Iowa polling.
Haven't we seen enough of that, though, in the last seven years when the current White House occupant blamed so much on his predecessor? It's unbecoming and beneath what we should expect from a serious presidential candidate.
Cruz, however, drew as many boos as Trump did when he cried foul after Rubio lashed him with a litany of flip-flops on various positions he'd taken. Rubio also got in a lick with his description of Cruz's tax plan as a European type of value-added tax.
But Rubio, who had generally been able to parry most thrusts in previous debates, found himself on the defensive from, at times, Cruz, Christie and Bush, who is running attack ads on the Florida senator in New Hampshire. Although he held his own, Rubio's previous support of illegal immigration reform - an issue he now says must take a far back seat to securing the borders - will be around as long as he's in the race.
Christie denied several of the charges Rubio made against him regarding taking sides similar to President Obama on the acceptance of unpopular Common Core education standards, on supporting Planned Parenthood and on praising far left Supreme Court Judge Sonya Sotomayor, but fact-checkers found evidence that he's done all three.
Carson, while probably not moving the needle much for himself, nevertheless brought up several topics little discussed in the debates - the potentially devastating Supreme Court selections by another Democratic president and the destruction an attack on the country's electrical grid would have - and kindly turned a question on former President Bill Clinton's past sexual misconduct to the country's "strength in unity" and its need to return to its Judeo-Christian heritage of right and wrong.
Bush, who sounded competent and was more confident than in previous debates, didn't make the strides he needed to, either. His best moment probably came when he told Trump he hoped he would reconsider his Muslim ban, adding that such a proclamation - though people are understandably "angry" and "scared" - makes it difficult to create coalitions in the Middle East and settle problems "in unison."
Not surprisingly, all seven candidates got in their shots at Obama's odd "all's well with America" State of the Union address or Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton's plans for a "third Obama term," or both, while taking on each other.
With Clinton so vulnerable, it's a shame Republicans are unlikely to have a sure front-runner until late spring. In the meantime, we can dream of a Franken-candidate that would have the brashness of Trump, the morality of Carson, the constitutional knowledge of Cruz, the youth and foreign policy expertise of Rubio, the confrontational style of Christie, and the experienced competence of Kasich and Bush.