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As it stands now, unless Perry gets his act together and engages in serious debate preparation, Romney is currently in the driver's seat. ..... Polybius

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.