Mitt Romney won yesterday's tea party debate—or at least that's what Fox wants its audience to believe.
If you watched Fox's clip of Romney and Perry debating each other on Social Security, I wouldn't blame you for agreeing with Fox, but if you watched the debate itself, you'd have seen an entirely different exchange, one in which both Romney and Perry took basically the same position, but differed only on the type of language that ought to be used to describe it. Michele Bachmann did land some serious punches over Perry's decision to require HPV vaccines for Texas schoolgirls, but that hardly amounts to a Romney victory.
In addition to the cleverly edited clips, Fox based its claim of Romney victory on reports from other media outlets. If you're asking yourself: "Since when did Fox listen to what other media outlets have to say?" then you're asking a good question. The answer, I think, is that Fox listens to other media outlets when Fox likes what those outlets are saying.
And it's becoming clear that one thing that Fox really would like to see is for Mitt Romney to win the nomination. Karl Rove has been on the warpath for a few weeks, and now Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin (along with her sidekick Greta van Susteren) are jumping on board, as is the Fox & Friends gang.
So why is it that Fox is trying to rally its troops behind Mitt Romney? According to The New York Times:
The rising presidential candidacy of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is stirring excitement for many Republican voters but is creating unease in some quarters of the party’s establishment, particularly over his views of Social Security, which are at the root of an intensifying competition with Mitt Romney.
I have a hard time believing Republican elites are actually worried about the substance of Rick Perry's position on Social Security. After all, these are the same people who tried to privatize Social Security in 2005, so they don't care about what he might do to the program. But even if they don't care about the substance, they still might be worried that Rick Perry's rhetoric on Social Security makes him vulnerable to Democratic attack. But whether it's that or it's something else, it's clear that they are worried about Rick Perry and his rise to the top of the 2012 field.