Perry vs. Romney: Now it's personal (No mention of Cain!)

Yahoo.com ^ | October 19, 2011 | Ben Smith, Jonathan Martin (Politico)

[Deo volente]

LAS VEGAS – After months of diversions — sideshow candidates, Hamlet acts and straw polls — Tuesday night’s sizzling Republican presidential showdown boiled the nomination fight down to its essentials: a deeply personal, ideological and smashmouth contest between two rivals with almost nothing in common.

[MNJohnnie]

Good let the two commit mutual assured Rinocide.

[olezip]

Tuesday night’s sizzling Republican presidential showdown boiled the nomination fight down to its essentials: a deeply personal, ideological and smashmouth contest between two rivals with almost nothing in common.

I would not call it "sizzling." It was boorish, unpresidential behavior for candidates to talk AT one another. It makes me tune to another station, or just turn off the tv and do something peaceful.

[PapaNew]

I thought Perry looked like hot head and so did Santorum when he kept interrupting Romney. Hate to say this but these guys made Romney, who was polite and curious, look good. Seemed like Cain was the only one who was really successfully able to call Romney to task.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

9 - 9 - 9

:)

[Deo volente]

Politico clearly wants the conservative Herman Cain to go away. They’re happy with the idea of the two RINO’s fighting it out for the nomination.

“...the duel in the desert seemed to reorder the campaign and return it to its natural order.
An unsparing inquisition of Cain’s tax plan, and his stumbling answers to foreign policy questions, seemed to relegate him back to the margins of the conversation.”

[Yosemitest]

The LAME Stream Media is doing everything it can to sell LOSERS Romney and Perry.

Do allow the LAME Stream Media or the "Establishment Republican" to chose your candidate.

[Fred]

Rino v Rino fighting over who might be Cain's VP...





The first 30 minutes of the debate were ALL CAIN ALL THE TIME with the Cain opposition touting how they will do some kinda flat tax too..flatten the tax blah blah blah playing catch up...

Note to Bachmann, the tax expert, A VAT IS NOT A SALES TAX!!! and your idol Laffer endorses and defends 999

[ken21]

lol!

and take the rinos from free republic with them!

[Netizen]

That Perry and Romney can’t stand one another has long been accepted in GOP circles, but their mutual contempt came into stark relief on the Strip. It overshadowed all else and even managed to overshadow Herman Cain, whose rapid rise in recent polls wasn’t matched by his performance Tuesday night. If anything, the duel in the desert seemed to reorder the campaign and return it to its natural order. An unsparing inquisition of Cain’s tax plan, and his stumbling answers to foreign policy questions, seemed to relegate him back to the margins of the conversation.

I guess that's better than thin skinned hotheads! lol

[duffee]

I’ve been waiting for the perfect pure candidate and I don’t believe there will be one. Newt’s baggage doesn’t appear to be as heavy as I thought it might be. I like Herman Cain and would be proud to support him but at this time I believe Newt Gingrich is by far our best choice. Newt and Cain I believe both have common sense as well as the proper temperment. I belive Newt Gingrich would be our smartest president since Thomas Jefferson.

[Netizen]

What’s with the (No mention of Cain) in the title, when the article mentions Gain?

[Deo volente]

Yes, they mentioned him several paragraphs down, and dismissed him from any serious consideration for the nomination, despite the fact that his tax plan was a central focus of the debate, and ignoring his lead in most of the polls.

In the first sentence of the article, the authors have decided it’s a two-man race. The others, including Cain, are “sideshow candidates”.

[Yosemitest]

Palin was my first choice
Bachmann is now my first choice, and Cain is my second.
Newt is my third choice, and I might consider Rick Santorum.

But Romney, Perry, Ron Paul, Huntsman, and Johnson are NOT acceptable,
and if on the ballot for the general election for President or V.P., would cause me to do a write in.

There's no way in hell I can compromise my values.

Jack Kerwick wrote an article on May 24, 2011 titled The Tea Partier versus The Republican and he expressed some important issues that I agree with.

Thus far, the field of GOP presidential contenders, actual and potential, isn’t looking too terribly promising.

This, though, isn’t meant to suggest that any of the candidates, all things being equal, lack what it takes to insure
that Barack Obama never sees the light of a second term; nor is it the case that I find none of the candidates appealing.
Rather, I simply mean that at this juncture, the party faithful is far from unanimously energized over any of them.

It is true that it was the rapidity and aggressiveness with which President Obama proceeded to impose his perilous designs upon the country
that proved to be the final spark to ignite the Tea Party movement.
But the chain of events that lead to its emergence began long before Obama was elected.
That is, it was actually the disenchantment with the Republican Party under our “compassionate conservative” president, George W. Bush,
which overcame legions of conservatives that was the initial inspiration that gave rise to the Tea Party.

It is this frustration with the GOP’s betrayal of the values that it affirms that accounts for why the overwhelming majority
of those who associate with or otherwise sympathize with the Tea Party movement
refuse to explicitly or formally identify with the Republican Party.
And it is this frustration that informs the Tea Partiers’ threat to create a third party
in the event that the GOP continues business as usual.

If and when those conservatives and libertarians who compose the bulk of the Tea Party, decided that the Republican establishment
has yet to learn the lessons of ’06 and ’08, choose to follow through with their promise,
they will invariably be met by Republicans with two distinct by interrelated objections.

First,
they will be told that they are utopian, “purists” foolishly holding out for an “ideal” candidate.

Second, because virtually all members of the Tea Party would have otherwise voted Republican if not for this new third party,
they will be castigated for essentially giving elections away to Democrats.



Both of these criticisms are, at best, misplaced; at worst, they are just disingenuous.
At any rate, they are easily answerable.

Let’s begin with the argument against “purism.” To this line, two replies are in the coming.


No one, as far as I have ever been able to determine, refuses to vote for anyone who isn’t an ideal candidate.
Ideal candidates, by definition, don’t exist.
This, after all, is what makes them ideal.
This counter-objection alone suffices to expose the argument of the Anti-Purist as so much counterfeit.
But there is another consideration that militates decisively against it.

A Tea Partier who refrains from voting for a Republican candidate who shares few if any of his beliefs
can no more be accused of holding out for an ideal candidate
than can someone who refuses to marry a person with whom he has little to anything in common
be accused of holding out for an ideal spouse.
In other words, the object of the argument against purism is the most glaring of straw men:
“I will not vote for a thoroughly flawed candidate” is one thing;
“I will only vote for a perfect candidate” is something else entirely.



As for the second objection against the Tea Partier’s rejection of those Republican candidates who eschew his values and convictions,
it can be dispensed with just as effortlessly as the first.

Every election season—and at no time more so than this past season—Republicans pledge to “reform Washington,” “trim down” the federal government, and so forth.
Once, however, they get elected and they conduct themselves with none of the confidence and enthusiasm with which they expressed themselves on the campaign trail,
those who placed them in office are treated to one lecture after the other on the need for “compromise” and “patience.”

Well, when the Tea Partier’s impatience with establishment Republican candidates intimates a Democratic victory,
he can use this same line of reasoning against his Republican critics.
My dislike for the Democratic Party is second to none, he can insist.
But in order to advance in the long run my conservative or Constitutionalist values, it may be necessary to compromise some in the short term.

For example,

as Glenn Beck once correctly noted in an interview with Katie Couric,
had John McCain been elected in 2008, it is not at all improbable that, in the final analysis,
the country would have been worse off than it is under a President Obama.
McCain would have furthered the country’s leftward drift,
but because this movement would have been slower,
and because McCain is a Republican, it is not likely that the apparent awakening that occurred under Obama would have occurred under McCain.


It may be worth it, the Tea Partier can tell Republicans, for the GOP to lose some elections if it means that conservatives—and the country—will ultimately win.

If he didn’t know it before, the Tea Partier now knows that accepting short-term loss in exchange for long-term gain is the essence of compromise, the essence of politics.

Ironically, he can thank the Republican for impressing this so indelibly upon him.

I'm fresh out of "patience", and I'm not in the mood for "compromise".
"COMPROMISE" to me is a dirty word.
Let the RINO's compromise their values, with the conservatives, for a change.

The "Establishment Republicans" can go to hell!

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

Lest you feel smug about this, this is a bad reflection on ALL Republicans. The choosing a president is in the process of being degrading to the dignity that should be afforded to the process.

The plug must be pulled on these stupid, degrading "debates". One or two may have been OK but this is out of control.

It's too bad when Huntsman begins looking good.

[TheOldLady]

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[Java4Jay]

Cain/Newt team up now, combine your resources and sweep this country clean!

[pallis]

Perry is very likely out of this race as a serious contender, and that makes me wonder what Romney is up to. He must have polling data showing that Perry is taking some of his voters, and pressure from Cain makes those voters important. Otherwise, starting a battle with Perry is like kicking a dead carcass on the side of the road.

[sheana]

After the ‘fight’ between Romney and Perry I turned it off. Neither one came out ahead. Ridiculous.

[nhwingut]

If anything. Perry can use his $15 million t0 weaken Romney so bad that even RINOs will shy away.