In the wake of the Romney-Perry bloodletting in Las Vegas\u2026 in which Texas Governor Rick Perry savagely and inappropriately attacked former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney\u2026 it is time to assess the winners and losers, those on the way up and those on the way out.<\/p>\n
Taking the candidates in alphabetical order, it is clear that, while Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann received a major boost from her showing in the Iowa straw poll, she has not been able to capitalize on that victory.\u00a0 In an October 12, 2011 Rasmussen poll of likely voters she finds herself in 6th<\/sup> place with 5% of those polled.\u00a0 She has peaked and it is not likely that she\u2019ll be able to reverse the trend.\u00a0 Retired businessman Herman Cain is fast gaining traction, in spite of the attacks on his 9-9-9 tax reform plan.\u00a0 He appears to be unfazed by the attacks and receives high marks for having at least put forth a plan and for standing behind it.\u00a0 In the October 12 Rasmussen poll, Cain held a share of the frontrunner status with 29%.\u00a0 Cain\u2019s popularity is clearly on the rise and he has arrived at a point where he can now be considered a potential nominee.<\/p>\n Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, after getting off to a slow start, is beginning to find his stride and has moved into 3rd<\/sup> place with 10%.\u00a0 He is clearly a man with a firm grasp on who and what he is, and if he could only get his fellow conservatives and Republicans to stop saying, \u201cYeah, Newt is far and away the smartest man in the race\u2026 but he has a lot of baggage<\/em>,\u201d he is the one man who could quickly run away from the field.<\/p>\n Moderate former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman finds himself at 2% in the Rasmussen poll.\u00a0 He has peaked far too early and has no chance of winning the GOP nomination.<\/p>\n Congressman Ron Paul may be right about the Federal Reserve and a number of other issues, but his rants tend to make people\u2019s eyes glaze over and his high-pitched whiney voice grates on his listeners like fingernails being scraped across a blackboard.\u00a0 He is currently at 5%, fifth place, in the latest Rasmussen poll and is likely to stay at that level until the day he drops out of the race, but only \u00a0because his young followers are quite fanatical about him.\u00a0 Paul may gain a point or he may stay at 5%.\u00a0 What is certain is that he cannot win the Republican nomination.<\/p>\n No candidate has ever entered a presidential primary contest with greater prospects for success than Texas Governor Rick Perry.\u00a0 In a recent column titled \u201cRooster Cogburn for President,\u201d Perry was my Rooster Cogburn.\u00a0 Unfortunately, his handlers appear to have no feel whatsoever for his unique strengths and weaknesses.\u00a0 In each of the GOP debates, to date, they have ignored his strengths and highlighted his weaknesses.\u00a0 He could not have been more ineffective if he had hired his worst enemies to advise him and prepare him.\u00a0 He is currently in fourth place, at 9% in the Rasmussen poll, but his store of goodwill is now so thoroughly poisoned that he will never be able to recover.\u00a0 He has little or no chance of winning the Republican nomination.<\/p>\n Along with Huntsman, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is the other moderate in the race.\u00a0 And although conventional wisdom has it that Romney will ultimately win the Republican nomination, that conclusion ignores the depth of mistrust that moderates such as Bush (41) and Bush (43) have created among conservatives.\u00a0 The conservative attitude is: fool me once, maybe fool me twice, but you\u2019ll never fool me a third time.\u00a0 Romney is tied with Cain at 29% in the Rasmussen poll.\u00a0 However, having wrapped his arms firmly around the global warming issue, nothing short of a miracle or a brokered convention will win him the Republican nomination.<\/p>\n And finally, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is currently tied for last with just 2% in the Rasmussen poll.\u00a0 Santorum seems not to understand that the issues in this campaign are jobs, the economy, and saving the nation from Obama\u2026 nothing more.\u00a0 Instead, he continues to wear his religion and his pro-life stance on his shoulder and he always seems to appear as if he\u2019s a bit too tightly wound.\u00a0 He has no chance of winning the Republican nomination.<\/p>\n What it all boils down to is a race between two sons of Georgia, Cain and Gingrich, with the Romney people in position to decide the winner of that contest.<\/p>\n But what was most intriguing about the Las Vegas debate, other than the fact that it likely sealed the fate of at least five of the eight candidates, was a challenge that Gingrich threw at the feet of Barack Obama.\u00a0 Newt said, \u201cAs the nominee, I will challenge Obama to meet the Lincoln-Douglas standard of seven three-hour debates.\u00a0 No moderator, only a timekeeper.\u201d<\/p>\n Newt has apparently been considering that challenge for many years.\u00a0 It was reminiscent of a February 28, 2007 Cooper Union dialogue between Gingrich and former New York Governor Mario Cuomo\u2026 next to Obama, the Democratic Party\u2019s most gifted orator.\u00a0 Moderated by the late Tim Russert, of NBC, the dialogue took place on the very same stage from which Abraham Lincoln spoke on February 27, 1860.\u00a0 Historians say that it was Lincoln\u2019s Cooper Union speech that won him the Republican nomination and catapulted him into the presidency.<\/p>\n In that Gingrich-Cuomo dialogue, Gingrich delivered a straight-from-the-shoulder, statesmanlike speech about our poisonous political atmosphere and the inability of government to solve even the most tractable problems of the day.\u00a0 Delivered extemporaneously, his remarks were every bit as critical of the Bush Administration as they were of Democrats.<\/p>\n Cuomo, on the other hand, read from a thick sheaf of papers.\u00a0 He spent much of his time at the podium defending the Clinton-Gore Administration, mentioning at least twice that Bill Clinton left the Bush Administration a $5.4 trillion surplus\u2026 not mentioning, of course, the economic impact of 9\/11or the cost of the War on Terror.<\/p>\n Although he was mildly critical of Democrats for always avoiding a discussion of the really hard questions \u2013 because it might \u201ckeep them from getting elected\u201d \u2013 when he turned to questions of policy he sounded more like a typical Democratic politician running through a collection of DNC talking points than a respected elder statesman delivering a thoughtful message in support of his party\u2019s White House aspirations.<\/p>\n Gingrich challenged every candidate, in both parties, to commit themselves\u2026 prior to the 2008\u00a0 nominating process\u2026 that if they become the nominee of their party they would agree to nine ninety-minute dialogues \u2013 one a week, for nine weeks, between Labor Day and the election.\u00a0 He said, \u201cNothing will take more poison out of the system than requiring the candidates to be in the same room, with partisans from both sides, because you cannot biologically be as vicious and as nasty as the current system if you\u2019re face to face.\u00a0 And if you can be, then you\u2019re pathological and you\u2019re disqualified.\u201d<\/p>\n On the subject of illegal immigration, he suggested that we adopt a system of ID cards, much like credit cards, which would allow a potential employer to quickly determine who is a legal resident and who is not.\u00a0 But, he insisted, that program should not be a government program; it should be farmed out to American Express, Visa, and MasterCard\u2026 organizations that have actual experience with combating fraud.<\/p>\n Discussing the current state of the bureaucracy and comparing it to the efficiency of the private sector, he said, \u201cWe have somewhere between 11 and 13 million illegal immigrants in the United States.\u00a0 The current government says we can\u2019t find them.\u00a0 I suggest that we should just mail them all a package.\u00a0 UPS and FedEx would find them.\u201d<\/p>\n Russert concluded the dialogue by recalling a conversation between Barry Goldwater and John F. Kennedy in 1963, months before Kennedy was assassinated.\u00a0 In that conversation, Goldwater is said to have told Kennedy that it was likely that he would be the 1964 Republican nominee for president.\u00a0 That being the case, he proposed that the two of them fly together to every major city in America, where they would then engage in a free-wheeling, unstructured, face-to-face exchange\u2026 the classic confrontation between conservatism and liberalism.<\/p>\n Judging from the reaction of the Cooper Union audience, Newt gave an exemplary performance.\u00a0 As a historian and a lover of history, the drama of standing in the exact same spot where Lincoln stood 147 years and one day earlier \u2013 just before becoming a candidate for the presidency \u2013 was certainly not lost on Gingrich.<\/p>\n Seeing Newt standing there\u2026 in the footsteps of Lincoln\u2026 I couldn\u2019t help but feel that I had just witnessed the first major event on Gingrich\u2019s road to the White House.\u00a0 Of course, we had no way of knowing at the time that a totally inexperienced young black man with a glib tongue and a talent for reading from a teleprompter would defeat the formidable Clinton political machine and go on to capture the White House.<\/p>\n Sarah Palin has suggested that, if Newt is the GOP nominee and Obama takes up the challenge, Newt would \u201cclobber\u201d him in debate.\u00a0 Yes he would.\u00a0 And what a joy it would be to see Obama methodically dissected before a nationwide TV audience, totally lost without his speechwriters and his teleprompter to tell him what to say.\u00a0\u00a0 If Obama\u2019s enormous ego eventually brings him to accept the Gingrich challenge, we are sure to see history repeat itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the wake of the Romney-Perry bloodletting in Las Vegas\u2026 in which Texas Governor Rick Perry savagely and inappropriately attacked former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney\u2026 it is time to assess the winners and losers, those on the way up and … Continue reading