I am leaning Perry and I'm very much anti-Mitt and I agree with you.
After the first debate I thought Perry had been unprepared for several obvious questions and had answered poorly but I assumed he would get better right away.
In his second debate appearance he blew the same questions (immigration, Gardisil, social security) in the same way. No improvement. This is a huge problem.
We had eight years of a GOP President who couldn't defend himself in the face of criticism and we ended up with Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.
Team Perry needs to recognize that they are going to be facing relentless, hostile questioning from here on out and will never catch any sort of break and step their game way the heck up and now!
He is a fighter and will defend himself when it is necessary. Attacking a fellow Republican to the degree we saw against him...should help you grasp what his method was.
Perry allowed those attacking him to show the audience what lunatics they are. Santorum and Bachmann both proved what disgusting political hacks they are. Rush says Mittens can't beat Perry...he has to have others do that since Mittens records suck so badly.
That isn’t true. I went back and watched some of the debate and his responses on Social Security did improve. I thought he did well the first half of the debate. He seems to struggle about half way through.
The illegal immigration thing he just isn’t going to win or look good to conservatives on because he’s wrong on the substance. He can learn to be less flustered by it and turn the topic to where we do agree on it but he’s never going to win that debate unless he changes his position.
He does need to improve on Gardisol though. I don’t care about Bachmann’s hysteria but Santorum is different.
And the difference with Bush wasn’t that he couldn’t defend himself but that he wouldn’t defend himself unless he had no other choice and then only so much as necessary to skate by. Bush was a good communicator when he wanted to be. Perry if anything is slightly too eager to defend himself from everyone.
Anyway I don’t know what to make of this poll. On the one hand he stays very closely to what he polled before showing Romney’s startegy may have backfired with republicans but PPP also said it hurt his general election polling. That’s Romney’s goal. Make perry toxic in a general and “unelectable and force Republican voters back by default NOT on the issues. But some sites are saying there were problems with the methodology so I don’t know if I should accept this poll or that one. I’m going to wait on other polls and ty and find the similiar trend.
I think I’m looking to next week’s polls more. The one area he’s weak is immigration. If he can survive hits on that he should be able to weather this pile on and emerge stronger after the debates once they re-engage in retail politics and stumping where he excells.