Another Bad Debate For Perry (UPDATED)
This won’t kill him. It also won’t help him. He won’t get to profit from the bleed-off of Cain’s support everybody sees coming. That will all go to Gingrich now, whereas some of it would have gone Perry’s way since most of Cain’s current support was once Perry’s.
It was the Department of Energy he was trying to fish out of his head. And that’s a little amazing, since energy is the lynchpin of Perry’s economic growth proposals – not that he planned on using DOE to promote domestic energy, since Perry has rightly noted that the Department of Energy was created by the Carter administration to do that and it’s done zero to advance that end.
That he couldn’t remember this indicates Perry is never going to be an acceptable debater. Is that fatal? Well, it’s kind of hard to tell people you’re more electable than Newt when he shines like gold in these things and you stink on ice.
He’s just not good in the debates. Not good at all.
UPDATE: Perry in the spin room after the debate…
This is a really bad night, though. He now has fundraisers saying it’s time to go home.
Perry’s “oops” moment was one of the most embarrassing I’ve witnessed in a long time and was fairly alarming. Although he was doing rather well up to that point, the brain freeze was proof of what so many of us are worried about: an inability to go toe-to-toe with Obama in a debate. Moreover, this causes many to wonder how quick he’d be when dealing with foreign tyrants. Yeah, he’d be surrounded by seasoned diplomats, but, at some point, the buck would stop with him. Brain freezes, at that level, could be deadly.
Overall, Perry no longer inspires confidence and it’s doubtful he can recapture that. So very sad…
Perry had me until he started digging for China during the debates. Written off now.
I was a Newt supporter when I first started paying attention to politics in 2006. After his webwide American Solutions weekend of 2007, any chance of me supporting someone who WAYYYYY off the reservation killed that support. Of course, I would support him should he become the nominee, but NOT during the primaries.
He who has never had a brain freeze, please step forward. He had one at a very bad moment. He’s still a good man and I would vote for him, Cain, or Gingrich if they were the nominees. I would not vote for the empty suit, Romney. The others are just throwing money away by continuing to campaign. There was an article praising Romney in the New York Times online headlines yesterday. Enough said!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would not vote for Obama under any circumstances.
Sky, it’s not so much as his performance last night, but as the debates as a whole. If that’s his A game, then he needs to step out.
How did Kay Bailey lose to that guy?