What really matters in these debates is not giving your opponent any new additional fodder they didn’t already have for future ads. Because it’s all about the ads folks. Perry will have all the chance in the world articulate and clarify his positions and to hammer Romney till he looks like the bag of RINO crap that he is.
Perry is getting hit with what he was going to get hit with regardless, nothing really new has come up, and thus nothing has fundamentally changed, except for some to realize that yep... Debates are not Perry’s strong point.