October 19, 2011 06:55 PM UTC

Gloves Come Off in GOP Presidential Debate

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last night’s Republican Presidential debate in Las Vegas got a bit heated, with Rick Perry trying to right his sinking ship and others trying to put a chink in Mitt Romney’s armor. Our friends at “The Fix” break down the winners and losers…with a focus on the “losers”:

* Herman Cain: For the first ten minutes of the debate, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza was under near-constant attack over the specifics of his “9-9-9” plan. For the rest of the debate, he was almost nonexistent. Cain’s attempts to dismiss criticism of “9-9-9” – the apples, the oranges – weren’t terribly convincing and are ripe (wink, wink) for follow-ups in the coming days. And, when it came to foreign policy and national security, Cain seemed distracted at best and totally out of his depth at worst. His answer on the Guantanamo Bay prison was, um, not good.

* Michele Bachmann: Almost every answer the Minnesota Congresswoman gave was the dictionary definition of a non sequitur. Bachmann seemed intent on proving to anyone watching that she, more so than the other candidates on stage, really doesn’t like President Obama and wants to undo everything he has done. But, Bachmann seemed so intent on hitting her lines – she threw in the “we are going to make Barack Obama a one-term president” bit in a head-scratching coda to the debate – that it left the impression that she was participating in a conversation entirely apart from the one happening on stage. Just odd.

* Rick Perry’s bullying: Measured aggression in a political debate is a good thing. Unchecked aggression isn’t. And there were several times when Perry came dangerously close to stepping over that fine line. His repeated attacks on Romney employing illegals at his home were decidedly personal – although he did force Romney into an explanation of exactly what happened. Perry brought his swagger tonight but he may have applied it a bit too liberally at times.

The fact is, Herman Cain massively contradicted himself in his answer about potentially negotiating with Al Qaeda for Guantanamo Bay prisoners, a la the recent Gilad Shalit exchange between Israel and Hamas–between plainly ridiculous 180-degree gyrations on a critical foreign policy issue and the fierce takedown of his “9/9/9” tax reform plan by just about everybody on the stage, we’d say the Cain fad took a major, and most likely inevitable hit yesterday.

Less clear, as the report above notes, is whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s much more lively performance in last night’s debate will help him in the long run. He didn’t actually land any new blows on opponent Mitt Romney, as what he accused Romney of has been known since 2008. There were also a few moments, particularly when it was clear Perry was not letting Romney get a word in edgewise, where he looked less combatively presidential, and more like a jerk. That said, Republicans who want Perry to recover from his recent plunge in the polls needed reassuring that Perry was capable of something, anything more than his totally flatfooted performance so far. For good or ill, they got some volume out of him.