Tonight's GOP presidential debate focused on economics, and that is good. However, the debate/discussion would have been much more lively, informative, and revealing if Charlie Rose and Co. had asked the following questions: 

1. Does man live by economics, or bread, alone? Why? Why not? And can you relate your answer to the founding ethos of the United States?

2. How does your economic philosophy differ from that of Barack Obama's?

3. As a constitutionalist (because when president you will have taken an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States), how would your economic policies, limited by constitutional governance so that freedom might grow and thrive, differ from those who reject the Constitution?

Prediction: If the Republican nominee articulates his or her vision for freedom, based on the Constitution and Declaration, over against the failed liberal vision of Barack Obama, the GOP will win with a huge mandate for freedom-oriented change in America. And we may even rediscover a basis for refounding the republic that liberals and secularists have been so busy trying to destroy since the 1960s.

If not, however, if the Republican nominee fails to articulate such a vision, Obama well win again. And there's no telling where that might end.

In this regard, the lessons of history offer little comfort. The human being does not live by bread alone.