So much analysis has been given to the idea that Perry's poor debating skills has led to his bad showing in the Florida straw poll.
Really?
What made the people in the room in Orlando boo him was his unabashed support of the program that permitted illegal alien teenagers to take advantage of in-state tuition rates. To the GOP faithful these students are not remarkable individuals who, despite having seemingly insurmountable disadvantages in school, have earned high school degrees and are only trying to compete with their fellow students to advance further. No these are dangerous alien-interlopers who are browning our country. They are to be relegated to the underclass for the rest of their lives serving as all non-white immigrants should - perform menial jobs for dirt cheap wages.
A little evidence of compassion from somebody and the whole picture of Perry as "one of us" vanished for the Tea Party conservative base. He's for taking 100,000 dollars from hard working white folks and giving it away to the "others".
The idea that this program as a "magnet" to illegals was a laughable argument. How many men and women are making their way into Texas with the plan to soak Texans for tuition money for their kids? And how many children of illegal immigrants really make it into U Texas (where by my calculation get more like a 12,000 dollar annual break than the 22,000 cited by Romney)? Equally laughable is the idea that this program really costs Texans that much money overall in context of the state's higher education costs.
The social security issue and the vaccine of 6th grade girls were the focal points of the first debates with only passing reference to the tuition issue - which Perry was never forced to full-on confront. Even the border fence issue was not that critical.
But when he suggested in the last debate that he had a heart for illegal immigrants - that's what killed him. He will never get the grass-roots Tea Partiers back.