[mylife]

I think he is luring them in.

This aint his first rodeo.

[DRey]

I think Obama is in deeper doo-doo than he realizes.

[South40]

This aint his first rodeo.

Actually, on a national stage, it is.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

It's kind of funny though, that being this was his first debate and there were 8 candidates standing on the same stage, the entirety of the theme was about Rick Perry, who fought back quite handily. Especially against Goofball Paul.

This was the introduction and Perry came across as cool, calm and intelligent. The next debate will be much better and the focus will be even more pointed his way. The bottom line is, the audience walked away knowing that Perry can handle himself well, even with all the guns pointed at him.

[ziravan]

"I think he is luring them in.

This aint his first rodeo."

I doubt that. Rick Perry is famously not a great debater. This is only like his 5th debate in the last decade.

That said, when you're the front runner, you don't NEED to win debates; you only need not to lose them with a major flub.

The chief advantage of debates is to make up ground by standing out. You don't particularly need to stand out if you don't have ground to make up.

The WP has it wrong. All Rick Perry has to do to 'win' a debate at this point is to walk away without a quotable gaffe. In that sense, he won. Keep in mind I'm not particularly a Perry supporter.

Perry won because he didn't lose.