Audiences stealing spotlight from candidates at Republican debates

The in-house audience at a presidential debate is typically a passive body, sometimes permitted to applaud or groan for the candidates on stage. But in the recent Republican presidential debates, the audience has reacted more demonstratively, creating controversy and sparking a conversation among the 2012 candidates.

The Republican candidates found themselves still answering questions this week about the audience reaction at the last presidential debate on Sept. 22 in Orlando, Fla. Individuals in the audience booed when a soldier, who identified himself as gay, asked a YouTube question related to the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Mitt Romney told the New Hampshire Union Leader on Monday that he doesn't regret keeping quiet after the booing. "I have not made it my practice to scold the audience and say, 'I disagree with this person, I agree with that person,' because it goes in a lot of different directions," Romney said.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said it was unclear whether people in the audience were booing the soldier or the soldier's question. He suggested it's too difficult to interpret audience reaction. "Instead I try to focus on the things I want to say," he said.

Watch video of the booing incident via TPM below:

Herman Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather's Pizza, disagreed earlier this week, when he said it would have been appropriate for one of the candidates to respond directly to the booing during the Sept. 22 debate.

"In retrospect, because of the controversy it has created and because of the different interpretations that it could have had, yes, that probably -- that would have been appropriate," Cain told Christiane Amanpour of ABC News on Sunday when she asked if he should have asked the audience to respect the soldier. "But at the moment, it was not the focus of the people up there on that stage, I can assure you."

Cain said he was unsure if the audience was booing the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" or the soldier himself.

Democrats have been criticizing the candidates for this incident and others involving Republican debate audiences.

Members of the audience cheered when moderator Brian Williams noted during the Sept. 8 debate at the Reagan presidential library that during Rick Perry's tenure as governor, Texas "executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times."

Neither the candidates nor the moderators responded to the audience.

At the Sept. 13 CNN/Tea Party debate, Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul if society should let a hypothetical man die if he were uninsured. Some members of the audience responded with cheers that went unacknowledged by those on stage.

President Obama used these incidents this past weekend to criticize the entire Republican Party.

"You've got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don't have health care, and booing a service member in Iraq because they're gay," Obama told a Democratic audience on Sept. 26. "That's not reflective of who we are."

On Oct. 11, the candidates will be in New Hampshire for a Bloomberg/Washington Post debate at Dartmouth College. The candidates will be "seated side-by-side at a round table facing the hosts and surrounded by audience members," according to Bloomberg and the Post.

So who's going to set off the audience this time?

The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza has been having a little fun over whom the Republican debate audience will boo next by creating a Twitter dialogue under the hashtag #peoplelikelytobebooedatnextGOPdebate.

Tweets highlighted by Lizza have named: socialist puppies; immigrant puppies with cancer; and gay, baby Navy SEALs.