At one point during the debate, candidates were allowed to question each other. Armed with the golden gift of new White House records showing intimate meetings between Romneycare architect Jonathan Gruber and the Obama administration, Perry mumbled a jovial question at Romney for a few seconds — after which Romney steamrolled him with his usual spin for the next several minutes. Perry disappeared somewhere under the table after that. Or maybe he was playing Words with Friends on his iPhone. Or looking at his watch George H.W. Bush-style.
While the debate will probably not be critically damaging to Mr. Perry, his odds of upending Mr. Romney have continued to lengthen. Meanwhile, the more solid Mr. Cain’s support becomes, the harder it may be for Mr. Perry to recover his standing in the polls.
I thought it was a bit premature to say Perry was mortally wounded, even if, as the Times’ David Leonhardt informed us in a tweet shortly after the debate finished, Intrade, an online political futures market, “now gives Assad a larger chance of being ousted this year (15%) than Perry of being the R nominee (13%).” For all his errors of omission, Perry hadn’t made any obvious gaffes. By his standards, this was a big improvement.
[Perry] went back and forth between garbling his answers and simply disappearing for large stretches. He showed up for a debate on the economy with nothing to say on the economy other than that his economic plan wasn’t ready yet, and apparently he decided to avoid his difficulty in delivering prepared zingers by not bothering to even try any. Just incredible.
Once again, Romney defended his Massachusetts health care plan by citing its reliance on private insurance, and the way it was designed to cover the uninsured without changing health care for the already-insured. This is exactly what Obama did, too. But, of course, by describing his plan in reasonable terms, Romney realizes that Republicans will conclude it must be different to the hated Obamacare, which is based on socialism and death panels. Romney's contempt for his electorate continues to endear me to him.
In not getting bruised and by demonstrating his superior campaign skills, Romney came out the big winner. Perry didn’t help himself a bit, and now risks slipping behind Bachmann and others.
Rick Perry continues to amaze. I mean, after his last disastrous outing, he must have known that Job 1 was looking like he was ready for prime time. Instead, he looked completely unprepared, as if he was surprised that people were still asking him actual questions instead of just nominating him on the spot.
Herman Cain is going to be around for a while, and people should start taking him seriously. If he’s not president, he could be vice president. Or bet the under and just start calling him Mr. Secretary.
[Cain's] performance was solid, if unremarkable. He stuck to his talking points — anyone who criticizes his plan doesn’t understand that he wants to chuck the whole tax code first! — and met new attacks from his rivals with cheerful aplomb. At this point, any boost in Cain’s name recognition will be a boon to his relatively obscure campaign. And the constant 9-9-9 chatter, even if some of it was negative, probably helped Cain’s chances of sustaining his unlikely rise.
Romney is quickly demonstrating that he’s ready for the challenge of the campaign and that everyone else has a lot of catching up to do.
The Dish 