Visual source: Newseum
NY Times:
Rick Perry’s failure to name a third federal agency he would cut was the debate’s most memorable moment, with little mention of accusations against Herman Cain.
Know what this is? Yet another opportunity for pundits and voters alike to to realize that Perry simply is not Presidential material. See
Is Rick Perry this year's Fred Thompson? from August before he declared.
TPM:
Rick Perry, already under widespread criticism for his listless debate performance, found a way to dig himself into a deeper hole on Wednesday night by forgetting which executive branch departments he would eliminate mid-answer. Even in a campaign loaded with cringe-worthy debate moments, this was easily the low point for any candidate.
Roger Simon on why it's Mitt:
Michele Bachmann? By the time reporters had learned how to spell her name correctly, she had disappeared from serious contention.
Rick Perry? Well, Texans understand brands. They burn them into cattle. And after the CNBC debate Wednesday night, when Perry was unable to remember his third talking point - - hey, he got two out of three, cut him some slack! - - he forever branded himself the “Oops Candidate” because “oops” is what he was forced to reply after racking his brain for an answer after several agonizing, live-TV seconds.
Herman Cain? Well, Cain’s problem can be summed up easily: Are the Republicans willing to nominate a candidate who almost certainly will lose to Obama next November? And are they willing to nominate a candidate who could bring down a few crucial GOP Senate and House candidates along with him?
The rest of the field is … the rest of the field.
Dan Balz:
Republican strategists see two factors at work. First are the shifting sentiments of tea party supporters and others who define themselves as part of the most conservative wing of the party. Whether anyone can coalesce support among that part of the GOP electorate is now in doubt.
But these GOP strategists, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer candid opinions about their party, also cite the relative weakness of the contenders. “You’ve actually got some candidates with accomplishments and credentials,” one strategist said. “But it seems like they all have deficiencies or vulnerabilities.”
That they do. And that's why we have a competitive election despite the dismal economy.
EJ Dionne:
One of the only referendum results the GOP could cheer was a strong vote in Ohio against the health-insurance mandate. While health-reform supporters argued that the ballot question was misleading, the result spoke to the truly terrible job Democrats have done in defending what they enacted. They can’t let the health-care law remain a policy stepchild.
That useful warning aside, Tuesday’s results underscored the power of unions and populist politics, the danger to conservatives of social-issue extremism and the fact that 2010 was no mandate for right-wing policies. They also mean that if Republicans don’t back away from an agenda that makes middle-class, middle-of-the-road Americans deeply uncomfortable — and in some cases angry — they will lose the rather more important fight of 2012.
NY Times editorial:
It might have been “too much too soon,” a chastened Gov. John Kasich of Ohio admitted on Tuesday night, after his state’s voters overwhelmingly rejected his attempt to break public employee unions. He certainly was right about “too much,” an analysis that also applies to other examples of Republican overreach around the country that were kicked into the gutter: an anti-abortion amendment in Mississippi, a voting restriction in Maine, the radical anti-immigrant agenda of a politician in Arizona.
Ross Douthat:
Black-white tension isn’t the major problem of our moment, and racism doesn’t explain the motivations of any of the major players in our politics. Conservatives don’t like Barack Obama because he’s the most liberal president in a generation or more, not because they’re subconsciously anxious about the color of his skin. Liberals don’t like Herman Cain because he’s a right-wing Republican, not because they’re somehow the “real” racists. The press is hounding Cain at the moment because the accusations of sexual harassment seem increasingly credible, not because he’s a black conservative.
Obama isn't all that liberal, and saying that there's no racism in the attitude conservatives have towards Obama doesn't make it true (see, for just one example, documented racist pictures and emails in circulation since 2008.) But the part about the press is true. The press is hounding Cain because Cain is accused of being a sexual predator. Now, does it make a difference the women are white?
Roger Simon mentions the obvious:
Allred does not say it, because she does not need to, but Bialek is white and Herman Cain is black.
How or if that will matter to people is not known. Cain recently said of the attacks on him that “relative to the left, I believe that race is a bigger driving factor. I don’t think it’s a driving factor on the right.”
Redirect, redirect, redirect. And hope it works. In this case, not a chance.
Politico:
All of it [the election] took place against the backdrop of a decline in the popularity of the tea party movement following the contentious summer debate over the nation’s debt ceiling. A New York Times/CBS poll conducted in August found that negative perceptions of the tea party were on the rise, with 40 percent expressing an unfavorable view of the movement – more than double the amount that had a negative view in the April 2010 Times poll.