Free Republic

Herman Cain woke up Tuesday to another day of soaring polling numbers, showing him moving into second place behind Mitt Romney and pushing Rick Perry out of the spotlight. The day ended with the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO under attack from his rivals, both on stage and in a series of post-debate press releases meant to tear him down. But from his new center-stage spot next to Mitt Romney, Cain calmly weathered every jab from them, the moderators and even the Democrats, walking out from the Dartmouth auditorium having done little to hurt his standing.

For folks increasingly leery of President Obama’s plan to radically overhaul America’s health-care system, or 17 percent of the nation’s economy, all this could hardly have come at a better time — that is, fiscal troubles aplenty within Repubican Mitt Romney’s brainchild, Massachusetts’ “grand experiment” in “universal” health care. Initiated on Mr. Romney’s gubernatorial watch in 2006, this “experiment” has fallen on hard times, and predictably so. Even though the Bay State commenced its program with a far smaller percentage of uninsured residents than exists nationwide, “RomneyCare” is threatening to bankrupt the state. Budgeted for Fiscal Year 2010 at $880...