Posted on 09/23/2011 11:36:05 AM PDT by iowamark
ORLANDO – The first line of Rick Perry’s campaign obituary may have been drafted Thursday night: He got in too late.
It’s not quite time for his camp to panic but in his third debate in a month – nearly as many as he’s done in the entire decade he’s served as Texas governor – Perry demonstrated why so few presidential candidates who parachute into the race mid-campaign win the nomination.
Perry gave a foreign policy answer that offered no indication he’s thought about how to respond to threats against America, twice bobbled attacks on Mitt Romney’s well-documented departures from conservative orthodoxy, called immigration hard-liners heartless and, in what was otherwise his best answer of the evening, stretched the truth in the course of delivering a well-rehearsed line about why he mandated pre-teen girls to be vaccinated against HPV.
A more seasoned candidate would be better informed on national security policy, fluent to the point of knowing by heart his chief opponent’s core vulnerabilities, and would never offend his party’s base with such a pointed attack. And a more sure-footed one would have recognized that he couldn’t get away with the claim that he issued an executive order on HPV after being “lobbied” by a cancer victim—because it has been publicly established that he met the victim only after he made the decision.
Instead, after a roaring August start, Perry’s second consecutive lackluster debate performance will reinforce the growing view among some Republicans that he’s not ready for the big leagues.
As conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News following the debate: “He’s still the rookie in the field.”
Equally threatening to the Texas governor, his stumbling appearances on national television have come as his on-the-fly campaign attempts to quickly build an organization and raise money ahead of the third-quarter deadline at the end of the month.
Grumbling has already begun about Perry’s operation and how they’ve not been prepared to handle the zero-to-frontrunner demands on the campaign.
One leading Republican said he’s given names of individuals – donors, former state party chairs — who want to be helpful to the campaign and that they’ve never gotten a phone call.
Recognizing the frustration, the National Committeewoman from Texas, Borah Van Dormolen, sent a blast email to fellow RNC members this week.
“I have received numerous calls requesting information on how to contact the Perry for President campaign team,” Van Dormolen wrote, including the email address for where to send the governor an invitation to appear at an event and the address of his finance director for those who want to help him raise money.
The upside of these growing pains, of course, is they reflect a campaign besieged with supporters. And, as Perry officials correctly note, it’s still early in the campaign—a contest that the governor only joined six weeks ago.
But it’s in part because he rocketed to the top of the field so quickly after getting in, creating such high expectations, that he’s now being damaged by sub-par debate showings.
In short, Perry’s command of the stage hasn’t matched his exalted status.
When he’s pitted alongside Romney, as he was Thursday, the discrepancy between Perry’s promise and his actual performance is glaring.
“Romney has the advantage of having run before and learned from it,” noted former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. “Perry got in late, and it will take him some time to get up to national speed. He has time to get up to speed, but he doesn’t have much margin for error.”
What may hurt Perry the most, though, is if the ongoing series of debates create the impression that he simply doesn’t have the capacity to get up to speed. If, after the four additional forums scheduled between now and the Iowa caucuses, Perry shows no ability to give a cogent answer on a foreign policy question or discuss the country’s domestic challenges in a way that veers from his top-line talking points, Romney’s slow and steady approach will have the former governor of Massachusetts positioned to take advantage.
“The bottom line is he’s failed to meet expectations in the last two debates,” said a veteran GOP operative who is neutral in the race but didn’t want to offend Perry. “He often starts off strong in replies but tends to wander, displaying a lack of intellectual discipline that doesn’t inspire confidence.”
Recognizing this vulnerability — call it a stature gap — Romney backers were ferocious in their assault on Perry following the debate here, suggesting that their rival was out of his depth.
“It really calls into question when he’s up for this,” said former Missouri Sen. Jim Talent, a Romney adviser. “When you’re consistently having difficulty articulating yourself in a forum like that, it’s a problem.”
Romney officials were particularly tough in their critique of Perry’s vague answer on what he would do if he got a 3AM call alerting him that Pakistan had lost nuclear weapons to the Taliban.
“It was clear he had no idea what he was talking about,” said Romney adviser Ron Kaufman.
“I think a lot of being president, of getting ready to be president, is understanding the complexity of the world that you have to deal in, and I think you either naturally have that countenance and that demeanor, or you don’t,” added Romney donor and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, adding that at such difficult moments, “I think you want to have the mental faculties, the experience and be able to surround yourself with good people and get the job done, and don’t make too many mistakes.”
Perry campaign manager Rob Johnson lashed back at the criticism on the foreign policy question and touched on Romney’s core weakness.
“For anyone in the Romney camp to accuse someone of not being prepared, when they have different answers to questions every 24 hours, is ridiculous,” Johnson said.
But the Perry campaign plainly recognizes they’ve got to make the best of back-to-back poor outings. They came to the post-debate spin room prepared with a trio of talking points that conceded the underlying point about his debate weakness: that he’s only been in the race for a short while, that his uneasy stage performance demonstrates that he’s more genuine than Romney and that there was another successful Republican who purportedly wasn’t so good at debates.
“He’s been in the debate for six weeks,” said Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback. “Some other people have been in the debate for six years.”
Pressed about some of Perry’s bumbling responses, Brownback invoked Republican royalty.
“People said that about Ronald Reagan in debates,” Brownback claimed. “They’d say, ‘You know he’s not as strong as he needs to be. He doesn’t seem to quite have the factual control the way I would like to see it.’ But you knew what was in Reagan’s heart, and that’s the thing about Rick Perry.”
“Perry’s plain spoken,” added Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon. “He’s not a slick politician. Romney’s run for president before so he likes to have these polished answers, but he’s also flip-flopped on everything from Race to the Top to Romneycare to taxes to abortion to guns. So I’d rather take a guy who’s not a slick, made-for-TV guy but who’s an authentic, real human being.”
Cannon added that the difference between Perry and Reagan, however, is that the Gipper had a knack for delivering memorable lines that more than made up for his meandering moments. In three debates, Perry hasn’t yet found a winning riposte to Romney along the lines of “I’m paying for this microphone” or “There you go again.”
And there is another distinction between the two: By the time he won the presidency, Reagan was on his third try.
I said what I said and I am standing by it.
“Perry’s fall may however push Palin in.”
Do you really think Palin could give even better answers in a debate? Perry is just the male version of Palin. I love ‘em but they just can’t take the heat.
Stolen from Rush Limbaugh show that morning.
“Cain: Zero governing experience. Has never won a single election in his entire life.”
you want a politician and then you’ll complain you got a politician
“Got it exactly backwards. Stantorum and Gingrich are great sound bite politicians. They are great at selling other people’s ideas. Neither of then has any key concepts or leadership principals nor serious programs. “
Maybe you’re confused with Michele Bachmann but Newt is an idea machine. Even Perry got it right when he said the ultimate candidate would be a morph of Newt and Cain.
LOL - that bogus poll was exposed as being done by Perry’s polling group.
C’mon, get with the program!
He was just on radio with Hannity. He underscores it wouldn't be an issue if the Feds had secured the border.
He said it's a state education issue and Texas decided it was in its interest to try keeping these new grads off welfare and out of jail by treating them as other Texans at state schools if they work toward legalization.
He put it in context of the employer sanctions, voter id, the Ranger Recon teams, joining the defense of AZ's immigration bill and other things Texas has put in place in trying to clean up the Fed's mess.
For Texas in-state tuition was a defensive policy in the absence of federal action on the border. He explained the heartless comment as referring to leaving them to be drag on the Texas welfare and criminal justice system.
Yeah, but I think Romney has a ceiling kind of like Ron Paul. You see Ron Paul pulling respectable percentages in polls but you know he can't get any higher. ..... Meet the New Boss
I'm not sure about the Romney "ceiling". Romney crushed the last Gallup Poll against Obama:
As I noted, it was reported that Perry did not engage in any extra preparation for the debate. If Perry was resting on his laurels because he thought he had it in the bag, he needs to wake up and start addressing his debate shortcomings by study, study, study and practice, practice, practice.
Perry is actually governing and has been for almost 12 years. Maybe Perry believes that he does not need to "play the game". However, a slick talker will beat a "doer" that cannot articulate well.
Politics can be very fickle. It doesn't take much for last week's King of the Hill to become next week's fish wrapper in the trash can.
No matter how talented you may be in any given field, two things are guaranteed to bring you down:
1.) Overconfidence
2.) Lack of serious preparation
It sounds to me like the conventional wisdom in the MSM is shaping up that Perry weakened himself by shortcomings in his debating skills.
But I strongly suspect that the poor debating style is not as important as the substance of his views on illegal immigration in weakening him.
Republican politicos always seem to me to underestimate the impact of the illegal immigration issue on the grass roots.
That is because you have a combination of the liberals, the MSM and powerful business interests in favor of the illegals and only the grass roots against them.
I think with the illegals Mittens has stumbled onto an issue helping him against Perry that he probably never understood the importance of. But with Perry falling, Mittens does not necessarily occupy that space if a true conservative can manage to effectively step up and occupy the space being conceded by Perry.
He could prepare all he wants but if his stance on illegals is to educate them then he can look elsewhere for votes. .... wiggen
Sloppy performance, Grunthor. I agree.
In the so-called "Texas Dream Act", as Perry pointed out, only 4 Texas Legislators out of a total of 181 opposed it. In a conservative state like Texas, anything that gets 98% support must have something going for it. Perry, however, was just not ready with an answer to a challenge that was certain to come. In fact, Perry seemed surprised at the challenge and had nothing to offer except to blurt out the "no heart" line that is a red flag waved in front of Romney that is now posing as More Conservative Than Thou.
For example, Perry could have said something along these lines:
"Maybe the Dream Act should have been called the Sins of the Father Act. We are dealing with young adults that, through no fault of their own, were brought here as children by the Sins of their Fathers. They grew up in Texas, they know no other home but Texas and have been here for so long that they know English so well that they were accepted into college. The conservative Texas Legislature understands that. That is why 98% voted for this bill. Yes, we are all against illegal immigration. But we, in Texas, do not want to end up with college capable, uneducated, unemployed young people, who grew up in Texas and know no other home, though no fault of their own, because we want to punish them for the Sins of their Fathers."
"Sins of the Father" will take you a lot further than, "You have no heart".
If an adult tags along with other adults in a bank robbery, that adult is an accessory to the crime.
If a child is dragged along by his parent while the parent is committing a bank robbery, that child is considered an innocent bystander rather than somebody that commited an illegal act.
The child is not the responsible "illegal". The father is.
From that perspective, it can be seen how 98% of all Legislators in a state as conservative as Texas voted in favor of that poorly named law.
The two are related. See my Post 71.
When 98% of all the Legislators in a state as conservative as Texas vote for something, there must be some logic behind the high "Yes" vote count.
Explaining the reasoning ("Sins of the Father") will get you points or, at least, do no further damage.
Throwing out "you have no heart" only waves a red flag in front of those you are trying to convince and pisses them off. Just ask Grunthor.
“We are dealing with young adults that, through no fault of their own, were brought here as children by the Sins of their Fathers. They grew up in Texas, they know no other home but Texas and have been here for so long that they know English so well that they were accepted into college.”
This “Sins of the Fathers” thing is nonsense.
In the first place, this spent all their lives in Texas point is not a requirement for the tuition subsidy from taxpayers. It is only three years in Texas plus a GED. And we all know how that works. They just have to sign a piece of paper. We all know how honest people are these days. Someone here for a year who gets his GED signs a piece of paper and no one cares. The social worker bureaucracy is all on his or her side. And even if they did live here for 3 years, so what? Why should sneaking into the country and managing to avoid deportation for 3 years entitle someone to taxpayer-subsidized college education?
And where is it written in stone that they can’t go live in Mexico? There are countless American families who go to work in another country and when they return to the US guess what? THEY BRING THEIR CHILDREN BACK WITH THEM! Even if the American family has lived in that country for several years.
The illegal parents should be deported, and they should bring their children to Mexico with them. Children belong with their parents. The fact that children born in the US may have a legal right to live in the US doesn’t change the fact that children belong with their parents and when the parents are deported, the proper thing to do is take their children to live with them in their home back in Mexico.
There are other states, 13 that had/have a similar program but that isn't the issue as Perry is the Gov of one that has this program. Also, additional states have filed or are discussing this in the legislatures.
Allow In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students
Then how do you explain that 98% of the the Texas Legislators in very conservative Texas voted for it, 177 to 4?
You may not agree with the reasoning but that is the reasoning.
There was a long-time Texas resident who went through the details of the politics of that in a post last night, I don’t remember which thread.
Just because someone is a Republican in the Texas legislature does not make that person “very conservative,” there were powerful business interests pushing it, it’s not popular with the public other than illegals, and it’s not clear it could get through the current legislature if it was considered de novo now and if Perry were not pushing it.
Hate to have him as a buddy in a bar fight...all hat no cowboy.... he gets that 3 am call and he hopes we have friends?
Yeah he may turn down his next La Raza and Bilderberg appearance....
The candidate in question paid for that line. The guy he paid stole the line from Rush Limbaugh. That candidate is now DOA.
Palin beat the crap out of veteran Senator Joe Biden.
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