A New Day

There is going to be about 4 weeks before the next Republican Debate.

This allows the candidates to hit the road, and build on their last performances.  Perry has resuscitated his campaign by tearing into Romney.  As staged and preplanned as it was, it seemed to hit the mark, as it was the first time Mitt has been ruffled.  This needs to happen a lot more.  The other candidates spent a while trying to steal Cain's thunder, but at least they took the cue, and finally started going after Romney as well. 

Romney has eluded attacks so far by simply keeping his head down, and sitting on his 25%.  Nobody really took him seriously because he doesn't have any enthusiasm behind him.  Now that he has consistently kept his support when everyone else has been gaining and loosing, it is starting to become more obvious that unless he gets pulled down into the mud a bit, he very well might get the nomination simply by being the last man standing.  This should never be the way Republicans choose their nominee, but especially in such an important situation as we have now with the most destructive President in 50+ years, we need the best candidate that we can get.  We also need to make sure that we don't allow the good to become the enemy of the perfect.  No one is perfect, and if we allow every candidate who has a flaw to lose, then we won't have a candidate.  Instead we need to concentrate on who best can turn the tide on a 80 year march to government dominance.  Warts and all. 

Romney and Perry have already come out with incredibly biting attack ads.  Those two might very well end up tearing each other down.  If both suffer, I think Cain and Gingrich benefit.  Cain is in the position of trying to consolidate and build on his recent success.  He needs to find better ways to explain his proposals.  Most of the attacks against them in this last debate were witty, and sharp, and so economically nonsensical as to be borderline stupid. 

Gingrich is the one that I feel like he has the most potential, but it's potential wasted.  He sweeps the debates, but all the pundits and media dismiss him out of hand.  By simply doing as well as he has, he has fought his way into the lower top tier.  He needs to find a way to counter media shrug offs.  He would actually learn quite a bit by asking the advice of Sarah Palin who has made a career of using the media for her own devices.  He has learned a bit about that by tearing into the moderators during the debates, but there are many other things he could be doing to get their attention, and advance his message. 

In all, it will be interesting to see how the results of this debate influence the next month of campaigning.  We are getting close to the beginning of the primaries, and it is too late for anyone else to drop in.  We are set with the group that we will have, and now it is a matter of sorting out who has what it takes, and who needs to go back to what they were doing before.