A Fox focus group said Herman Cain won the first presidential debate
Seven Republicans will gather tonight at eight o'clock eastern time in Manchester, New Hampshire for the second GOP presidential primary debate of the 2012 election. Six of them are announced candidates: Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. Michele Bachmann hasn't yet formally announced, but everybody in the world thinks she'll run, and she makes it seven.
Probably the biggest question will be whether any of the seven candidates will deliver a strong enough performance to knock the wind out of the sails of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who appears to be moving closer towards a presidential bid after several of his staffers quit Newt Gingrich's troubled campaign last week.
CNN, which is sponsoring the debate, polled GOP primary voters about their current preferences. For the seven who will attend tonight's debate:
Romney: 24%
Cain: 10%
Gingrich: 10%
Paul: 7%
Bachmann: 4%
Pawlenty: 3%
Santorum: 1%
While those poll numbers look great for Mitt Romney, they tell only part of the story. The poll asked about some other names as well, and if you look at the full results—not just the results of those debating tonight—the numbers look like this:
Romney: 24%
Palin: 20%
Giuliani: 12%
Cain: 10%
Gingrich: 10%
Paul: 7%
Bachmann: 4%
Pawlenty: 3%
Santorum: 1%
I don't think Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich are participating in the debate with any serious hope of winning the nomination. Gingrich says he's running to talk about ideas, but actually that's what Paul is doing; Gingrich is running to make sure his Sheldon Adelson gravy train doesn't run dry.
The rest of tonight's debaters will be focused on prying support away from the 32% of Republicans who say they'd vote for Palin or Giuliani. The six candidates not named Romney will also be going after his supporters. And Rick Perry will be watching it all, hoping everybody fails.
The stakes are particularly high for Tim Pawlenty. Despite running since about 2007 or so, he can't break out from the bottom of the pack. If he doesn't start doing so tonight, it's not clear that he ever will. His best case scenario would be to start making inroads with Romney supporters and stopping any of the other candidates from catching fire with the Palin/Giuliani crowd; failing that, it's hard to see where he goes.
Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann are looking to enjoy the performance that Herman Cain had in the first GOP debate, which Republican voters felt he won. Cain obviously wants to repeat his performance. All of them want to capture the Sarah Palin mojo.
In a way, Romney may actually want one of them to break from the pack. If that happens, whomever breaks away will become his chief rival, denying oxygen to Tim Pawlenty. The scenario Romney really doesn't want to see is for Pawlenty to have a breakout performance while the others slowly begin to fade away. Romney has a reasonably good shot at beating Bachmann or Cain or Santorum heads up, but if Pawlenty or Perry become his chief rival, he's going to be in a world of hurt.
Join us for tonight's debate, live at 8:00pm ET.