Please elaborate. I could kick myself because I meant to do a snap poll a couple of days ago between Perry and Romney to gauge opinions about who would win the nomination. I've said from the beginning that Perry may not last.
If you enjoy truly empty, meaningless rhetoric and a good orator, then yeah I guess Romney "won." Personally, I was very glad to see my man Gary Johnson on the stage. That makes 2 candidates I would enthusiastically support! Never that I'd say after a major party debate.
Perry's campaign advisers are idiots. I said it when he ran for governor and I'll say it again. His 2006 and to a lesser extent his 2010 campaigns weren't very good. Texas isn't the same as the US. You can't talk to primary voters like you talk to the Texas Farm Bureau. Plus he's always been a bad debater and now its showing.
Can you or someone else who saw the debate explain? How did Perry come across this time? What mistakes did he make?
Why does Santorum keep on going? He just embarrasses himself, he actually blamed Obama on the troops in Afghanistan not having what they need to take care of the 'problem'. Hey DUMBASS, YOU HAD EIGHT YEARS, EIGHT! WITH CONTROL OF THE PRESIDENCY, it wasn't taken care of then, but now it's Obama's fault.....Come on man.
And Huntsman just lost me as a supporter. His answer to the healthcare mess is to "let the states experiment with solutions" I'm sorry, you don't experiment with healthcare.
Im not a fan of Huntsman, but I agree. We should instead do a massive overhaul that offers no clear definition or solution to the problem. Or as one popular comedian put it, a "cluster*****"
I think this is actually an ideal solution. Dems had to move on health care because you never know when you'll have the opportunity to do it again, so they took the opportunity when they had it. But in an ideal world, experimenting is exactly what you want to do. The real problem is that no one knows how to control costs - coverage is easy, but slowing the cost curve is all theoretical, and that's the important part. You want to try as many different solutions as possible and then implement the best ones. The best part of the Obama bill is actually exactly this - it enacts small tests of literally dozens of different strategies that experts have come up with over the years to try to cut costs, with the hope being that some work and can be expanded nationwide. But letting states each experiment is just as effective.
I haven't watched the debate (I plan to, if I can find it online later.), but a guy I've worked with politically had this to say about it on Twitter:
the whole debate is on here for you viewing (dis)pleasure- http://www.youtube.com/foxnews to me, perry's answers tonight were the classic politicians answers. very few direct answers to the questions posed, and repeating his talking points... but we saw that from many of the candidates on stage. huntsman made a reference to perry and romney regarding the 2008 republican primary about guliani and thompson being the front runners and then fading. i think bachman is one of those, she seems to me, to be disappearing as each debate progresses. also, i was glad to see gary johnson invited back, he had the best (funniest) line of the evening regarding shovel ready jobs.
