Posted on 09/13/2011 9:30:24 AM PDT by shield
They say it ain’t over ’til it’s over or the fat lady sings at least a dozen times, finally making all the high notes in Aida and La Traviata in succession. Nevertheless — after only his second debate — things do look pretty good for Rick Perry.
And consider before this Tampa debate he was already twelve points ahead of nearest rival Mitt Romney, according to its sponsor’s (CNN) own poll.
So it’s no surprise that most of Monday’s affair — which mostly reprised the same questions from last week’s Reagan Library debate (this all could get pretty tedious fast) — was a game of “Everybody on Rick” with the Texas governor, perhaps in deference to his state’s proximity to Mexico, as the designated piñata.
Well, not quite everybody. Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain declined to attack Perry. (I will try to explain that later.) But Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and, of course, Romney did their best to slam Perry at every opportunity, sometimes remembering, seemingly as an afterthought, to throw in an unkind word for Barack Obama, as if the Texas governor and the not the president was the incumbent.
The five, however, did their Perry dissing in different ways. The first three — Huntsman, Bachmann and Santorum — I would classify as the soreheads. They are all doing miserably in the polls. Huntsman and Santorum always were. They are both currently at 2%, tied with a generic “Someone else” and 2 points behind “None/No one.” (No surprise here with Santorum who, when last facing the electorate, lost reelection in his home state of Pennsylvania by 18 points.) Who, besides their wives, really knows why they are running?
Bachmann, too, once flying high, has herself sunk to a mere 4% (tied with “None/No one”) since Perry entered the race. No wonder she’s sore at the Texan. She took after him, as did Santorum, during the Monday debate because some years ago Perry evidently tried by fiat to have high school girls vaccinated against cancer of the cervix. Perry admitted this approach was a mistake and this whole thing had apparently been rehashed ad infinitum by Kay Bailey Hutchison in her recent, ill-fated run against Perry for the Texas gubernatorial nomination, but never mind. To Bachmann and Santorum this attempt to prevent cancer, whether ill-founded or not, was a form of child molestation or something. The more they went on about this, the more rabid, and frankly scary, they sounded.
But they never sounded quite so nutsy as Huntsman when he accused Perry of “treason” for not building a border fence. Either the Utah governor is suffering from a cognitive disorder or, more likely, he deliberately misunderstood Perry’s position on the border. But he certainly seemed over-heated. Of course, what Huntsman was really trying to do was define Perry as the dangerous one because he had used the word treason in association with Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. But the word flew back in his face.
All of this was — I would guess almost deliberately — grist for Perry’s mill. Which leads me to the man who is putatively the Texas governor’s great rival — Mitt Romney. My advice to Mitt is that he start rereading his Mark Twain. Ironically, it is the New England governor who is being played for the rube here. He allowed himself to be drawn into the most obvious of traps by again accusing Perry of being excessive in his use of the term “Ponzi scheme” with respect to Social Security. It would “scare” seniors.
What a setup that was. It took Perry about thirty seconds to explain that in no way would his plans to reform Social Security affect those currently or soon receiving it. Romney was left to explain his years of attacks on Social Security in which he called the program, well, close to a “Ponzi scheme.” In fact, the brouhaha about the subject since last week’s debate has led to numerous identifications of interesting people who have called SS a PS in the past. My favorite is Paul Samuelson, the very liberal Nobel Prize-winning author of my freshman economics textbook.
I will put aside Ron Paul, except to say that he was roundly (and quite properly) booed for his bizarre ahistorical assertions that jihad is our fault, and skip on to the aforementioned Gingrich and Cain. They didn’t attack Perry because, in part at least, I think they suspect he is going to win and are acting accordingly. Gingrich is not particularly vice-presidential material but he would make a highly qualified secretary of State (a more interesting job than Fox news commentator, I would imagine). Cain supposedly has his eye on the Senate from Georgia. Although he might not need it, an assist from a President Perry would be extremely helpful.
All politics is local, as they say. Stay tuned.
I must have been watching a different debate. Perry took huge hits on Social Security (whether you agree with him or not), Gardasil & immigration.
Of all the candidates there I thought he did the worst.
I agree. He looked like the phony that he is.
At the time, I wish he had just told the truth—he was trying to prevent cancer and save the State of Texas money down the road.
“Not to throw cold water on anyone’s candidate pick, but it is worth remembering that McCain polled as low as 5 percent before the primaries began. Never underestimate the money, power and organization of the establishment. Romney is their man. It will take a lot of work and support to beat him.”
yup. And notice that he only went after Perry on illegals. It won’t be easy to make this a simple race between the rino and the ‘true’ conservative.
“He has had plenty of experience as a politician; he should already have a better answer ready.”
He didn’t expect Michele to take the low road. He looked shocked.
ha! We were all worried that Michele was going to get Perry on social security.
Yes, Newt does such a great job when they’ll ask him questions...the only ones that got the most questions were the ones who’d attack Rick Perry. The two I wanted to here from Cain and Newt weren’t ask as many questions since they wouldn’t attack Perry.
From what I saw, Bachmann looked like she was in a daze until it came time to answer a question. Like some sort of automaton.
While everyone else was watching the speaker as he spoke she seemed to be staring off into space. Kinda creepy.
And THAT is what MUST happen, or this country will lose not just a race played by politicians, but a race played by those forces--within and without our borders--who are cheering for the defeat of this nation, and the "self-evident" truths which are the foundation stones of our republic, and our democratic way of life.
Perry is a politician, a candidate, and a human being; as such he suffers (as we all do) from a lack of the virtue we all so much admire--perfection. We all know this--it seems so obvious. But yet we can so easily fall victim to the delusion that someone--especially someone we have reason to really like and admire--just might be eligible for our support because they are the PERFECT CANDIDATE for it. Of course they are not perfect, and when we see their imperfections in certain areas, we either try to rationalize them away, or turn to the other "someone"s" imperfections to show how much greater they are, and thus not feel so disappointed by our own candidate's lack of perfection. That's when we begin to lose our own "objectivity", and with it our focus on what the GOAL of the race is.
In this case, we as Conservatives need to keep our eyes fixed on that GOAL, and not be verbally "elbowing" each other, or encouraging bystanders to toss obstacles in the way of those who are "in the running" for the nomination. Newt Gingrich seems to understand this, as did Reagan, hence his famous "eleventh commandment".
For me personally, Rick Perry seems to have the qualities of leadership, personal integrity, and political skill, that qualify him to be the best--but not the PERFECT--candidate to compete against Obama. And for that reason, I wish him GOD SPEED!
“I agree with you. Perry took a huge hit. However, Huntsman without a doubt did the worst. His joke against Perry and the border fence (treasonous) fell so flat you could hear the audience groan...”
yeah it was a joke referring to what Perry said about Bernanke. It sounded like he was suddenly an a staunch diehard defender of conservative principles, which of course was ridiculous coming from a mushy moderate.
He has too much experience as a politician not to be prepared for that type of criticism. He needs to do better to win primary and general elections.
“Did you notice that Ron Paul’s solution to every economic problem we confront is pulling the troops out of unconstitutional wars? (so he says) Like if we weren’t in Iraq and Afghanistan we wouldn’t be in this economic mess. Please!! If we would have never stepped foot in Iraq or Afghanistan, we’d still be at 9% unemployment and stuck in the mud economically.”
oh there’s nothing really wrong with SS and medicare. We don’t have 60 trillion unfunded liabilities. Let’s just cut the military to patch it up!
My impression, as a Perry supporter, is that he started off strong, but took some hits on the Gardasil and immigration questions. I think, considering this was a Tea Party audience, that was to be expected, but I don't think he handled the questions nearly as well as he should have, and that will probably cost him with the Tea Party folks. However, it may help him with independents, so it may be a wash - we will see. But he definitely needs to step up his game.
I think Bachmann managed to finally eliminate herself as a serious contender. Cain and Gingrich had some really good remarks, but neither of them will be the nominee. So I think the person helped most last night is Romney, unfortunately.
Hmmm. I never thought of that.
I agree, I actually thought he did BETTER than last week.
You must have been watching a different debate. While I agree about Gardasil and immigration, the crowd was firmly in Perry's corner on the Social Security question.
Very good insight and analysis. I like Bachman, Santorum, Cain, Gingrich etc.. so I’m not going to tear them down. The only ones I would really lay into on that stage are Huntsman and Romney (the RINOS) and Paul (the moonbat). I will say one thing about Ron Paul. He was right on when he talked about executive orders. He said that he would use them but not for legislative reasons. That is the correct and constitutional answer. BTW, is there a more dour candidate than Ron Paul? I mean, the guy never cracks a smile. What was his bedside manner like as a physician? It must have been horrible!!
An opt out feature is not a mandate. An opt out feature forces parents to examine the merits of the vacination and decide for themselves. An opt in feature doesn’t encourage parents to look into the issue and decide for themselves.
Gardisil is not an evil drug that some would portray it to be. There are pros and cons. A parent should, however, look into it and decide for themselves if they want their daughter to have it. Unfortunately most won’t have the incentive to do so and won’t.
Actually I think he explained it pretty well in the CA debate last week.
Well he’s got time to practice - there are a few more debates coming up in the short term.
He did do MUCH better in the first hour. Either he was tired or just ran out of “good lines.”
Still - the first hour of last night’s debate was far better than the entire CA debate, and the only thing in the second hour that really hurt Perry was the (sometimes) ridiculous things being thrown at him, and the fact that he didn’t respond that well to them.
I like John Bolton for SOS...however, if Newt would stay like we’ve been seeing him...then he may make a good SOS. In the past, he has cozied up too close to the left too many times. He isn’t showing those colors today...because he is running for President...but when he is not he becomes to cozy with the left which makes him untrustworthy.
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