Republicans playing better on TV

The Republican follow-up to the Democrats' "YouTube debate" finally arrives! They did this with the Democrats in, what, August? (Wasn't the follow-up originally slated for September?) Both campaigns were WAY more boring back then, but now the Republicans are at each other's throats. McCain issues this HUGE smackdown on Ron Paul, 'That kind of isolationism let Hitler rise to power, and how dare you besmirch the name of our military, they want to win in Iraq, I love those guys,' Paul comes back with 'I'm getting more donations from active duty soldiers than all of y'all!' and wow, Rudy Giuliani just stabbed Romney with his pen while Anderson Cooper was pointedly miscommunicating with Fred Thompson!

On a separate but related matter, are audiences in the Republican debates more likely than Democratic crowds to break into perfunctory yet enthusiastic applause when someone pushes their ideological buttons? And to boo?? My own hunch is obviously biased. Still, get good coding schemes together and you could punch out a handful of nice easy studies along those lines.