Do the Republican candidates really believe the crap they say about Barack Obama?

Here's what the candidates had to say about Barack Obama in last night's debate:

Romney: "Barack Obama is just way over his head and he's taking our country down a path that is very dangerous. He's making us more and more like a European social welfare state. He's making us an entitlement society. He's taking away the rights of our citizens. He believes government should run this country."

Gingrich: "This is, I believe, the most dangerous president of our lifetime. And if he is re-elected after the disaster he has been, the level of radicalism of his second term will be truly frightening."

Romney again: "This president's changing that. He's changing the very nature of America. He's turning us not from a merit society, an opportunity society, where people are free to choose their own course, but instead he's making us an entitlement society, where people think they're entitled to what other people have, where government takes from some and gives to others."

Santorum: "I believe in capitalism for everybody. Not necessarily high finance, but capitalism that works for the working men and women of this country who are out there paddling alone in America right now, who have an unemployment rate 2.5 times those who are college educated and feel that no party cares about them. Because you have the Democratic Party, and Barack Obama, and all he wants to do is make them more dependent, give them more food stamps, give them more Medicaid."

After seeing the Pandora's box he had opened by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain felt compelled to try to refute the wild criticism of Obama by some of his supporters. When a woman at a McCain rally said she was afraid of Obama because he "is an Arab," McCain rebuked her: "No ma'am, [Obama's] a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues." Will any of the Republican candidates this time around be able to bring themselves to make that kind of statement? Or have they gone so far down the road of vilifying the president that they won't be able to walk it back?