ANDREW MALCOLM: RICK PERRY IS BACK AND MITT ROMNEY NEVER LEFT
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/588565/201110190825/herman-cain-mitt-romney-rick-perry-debate.htm
After a couple of poor debate performances and one middling affair, Texas Gov. Rick Perry came on strong during last night’s Republican rhetorical confrontation in Las Vegas.
He was fluid, poised, argumentative, better-spoken and he came right at front-runner Gov. Mitt Romney on jobs and immigration. Romney stood his ground, pushed back, talked over the Texan and even got in a personal shot about Perry’s poor debate appearances.
Clearly, the stakes are mounting.
Herman Cain has attracted the most media and online attention of the field in recent days with his 9-9-9 tax plan and his refreshing unpolitic talk that sets him apart from the professional pols seeking the GOP nomination. What also sets Cain apart is his lack of money and policy staff.
He has the best capsule sound bites, which goes a long way in a TV age at a campaign stage where potential voters tune in only episodically.
Asked what would set him apart from Democratic incumbent Obama in a 2012 campaign, Cain said, “It’s gonna be the problem-solver who fixes stuff vs the president who hasn’t fixed anything in this country.”
Sounds good at this relatively early point of the nomination process. Cain does know his applause lines. But what does it mean? How would he do that? And how exactly is his bold tax reform better by “broadening the base”? In straight talk that means more people pay taxes than do now. Can a Republican proposing a new 9% federal tax survive longterm in a 2012 party primary?
And how many gaffes can the pizza exec escape? Last week he said he’d build a fence along the entire Mexican border and electrify it. When eyebrows rose, he told NBC that was a joke. OK.
Tuesday Cain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer he could see trading all the Guantanamo prisoners for one American hostage if necessary, an invitation for someone abroad to snatch anyone with a short haircut to make a deal. In the debate Anderson Cooper read the quote back to Cain, who denied saying it and vowed never to do such a thing. But… But… But…
It’s slightly more than two months before any real Republican votes are cast. Right now, the votes being counted are dollars, the resources that enable national staffs, state crews and skilled advance people to come on board.
Forget the polls for the moment. The two real front-runners in that arena are Romney and Perry. Romney raised more than $14 million last quarter, Perry more than $17 million, Cain less than $3 million or about one-third of Ron Paul’s haul.
According to our own private theory — he/she who utters their website address during a debate is in financial trouble — Cain, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich qualify. Bachmann made an impassioned appeal to women and mothers that could help in her shrinking strategy (Iowa, Iowa, Iowa).
Rick Santorum goes for the social conservative family folks at every opportunity and this time went after Perry hard, giving the Obama reelection campaign some possible clips for next year.
Ron Paul is Ron Paul, steady, consistent and a little strange to mainstream Republicans. Gingrich is the elder statesman, recalling relevant history, praising his competitors and coming back to Obama most times. The Gingrich campaign is reportedly in debt, but without his personal baggage, Gingrich would be a prime candidate to surge next.
Jon Huntsman was unusually quiet at Tuesday night’s debate. That’s because he wasn’t there.
Huntsman “boycotted” the debate over Nevada seeming to mess with New Hampshire’s somehow sacred primary date primacy. Not coincidentally, that also saved the bottom-ranking candidate trans-continental airfares and left him alone with the Granite state media for a Huntsman townhall.
The next debate isn’t until November. By then, the media will have done more vetting of Cain’s bold but murky tax idea. Someone may have uttered a regrettable stupidity. Bachmann’s book will be out. And the 12-member congressional “super-committee” will be close to announcing the budget cuts that the larger chambers had no courage to make.
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