Kyle Kondik wonders how serious Cain's candidacy is:
Cain’s polling numbers are skyrocketing, but then again, this Republican primary battle has been so crazy that another non-politician politician (Donald Trump — remember him?) once led national polls. In fact, as New York Times commentator Nate Silver pointed out recently, 10 different individuals have led at least one national Republican primary poll this year. Cain may very well be a placeholder candidate — a person gaining support in polls and straw polls not because he actually has a chance of winning, but because Republicans are just unsettled and don’t see anyone in the field they are ready to rally around just yet.
Nate Silver thinks Cain must win Iowa if he's to have any chance at the nomination. Joe Klein takes a second look at Perry:
I’d say that Rick Perry is probably stronger than he seems right now–those who’ve watched him work a crowd think he has excellent retail political skills, which are very important in a place like Iowa. I’d also guess that Herman Cain is an overvalued commodity at the moment–he’s a nice protest parking place for Tea Partisans disappointed by the Bachmann and Perry adventures.
Kevin Drum says Tea Partiers should reconsider Romney because he'll do their bidding if they keep his feet to the fire:
It's not like [Romney] can give a speech saying he doesn't care about principle and will just abjectly do whatever the tea party wants him to do, so help him God. Still, good politicians always figure out how to get messages like this across with a wink and a nudge in just the right place. Romney can do it too if he devotes enough CPU cycles to the problem.
And Matt Latimer doesn't blame Perry's slide on poor debate performances:
Perry is in trouble for one (very surprising) reason: he has shown an alarming lack of understanding about how to talk to his own base. It is not that conservatives refuse to tolerate Perry's liberal view (if he'll excuse the term) on the issue of illegal immigration. What rankles even more is that Perry had to label those who disagreed with him as heartless. This struck too close to the language of Bush and Rove when they tried to push an immigration-reform bill past their political base and lashed out when the base balked. And Perry definitely doesn't need that particular comparison.
(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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