Culling the GOP Herd

With Rick Perry and Herman Cain looking down – but not out, or at least not yet – Mitt Romney's 'inevitability' factor ratchets up.

By now, if you have even the slightest interest in American politics, you've probably seen Texas Gov. Rick Perry's "Oops" moment from Wednesday night's debate of Republican presidential hopefuls. There isn't much left to say about it that hasn't been said already, but The New York Times' Ross Ramsey is able to come up with a keen observation about Perry's rise and fall. "He stayed out of the race all summer, a decision that had the advantage of building buzz, exciting donors and activists, freezing support that might have landed with others and – this is important – protecting himself from debates and attacks," says Ramsey. "He was winning right up to the moment he entered the competition." The appeal of a Perry-like candidate – full of Texas swagger, straight-talk, and limitless hatred of big government – catapulted him to the top of the race when he entered this past summer. But all that appeal quickly disappeared as soon as Perry opened his mouth. After all, this is the guy who has routinely refused to debate opponents during gubernatorial campaigns. Wednesday night clearly showed why. Sure, he's folksy, and played off the gaffe like a pro, but "oops!" doesn't go too far when the president's sitting down with, say, Hu Jintao.

Over at the National Post, Barbara Kay, Lorne Gunter, and Matt Gurney discuss just what's become of Herman Cain. With four women now coming forward with allegations of sexual impropriety (even if no flies were ever unzipped), Kay notes that "it kind of strains credulity that he is being unfairly maligned." Further to that end, that these allegations completely blindsided the Cain camp really throws into question how prepared he is to run a country. (Woulda thought the flat-tax proposal would have accomplished that. But we digress... ) As with the Anthony Weiner Twitter saga, it's not the substance of the allegations, but how the guy responds to them that's the true measure of the man.

All of which leads us to the heir-apparent to the Republican chalice, Willard "Mitt" Romney. Robert Shrum of The Week repeats the tried and increasingly true notion that it's now Romney's race to lose. Not that it should ever have been this difficult, mind you. As Shrum notes:

It's a fallow field. Think of the contrast with the GOP choices in 2000. Instead of a pre-certified Bush, there's a self-destructing Perry. Instead of a heavyweight flat-taxer like Steve Forbes, there's Herman Cain – who, whatever his apologists say, is fumbling and (apparently) lying his way toward a well-deserved defeat for a clearly unqualified candidate. Instead of a genuine maverick like John McCain – and he was one in 2000 – there's the re-tooled revisionism of Mitt Romney.

The Right is suspicious of that, and the search for the un-Romney will continue for awhile. Newt Gingrich may have his nano-second in the spotlight; he's about all that's left unless Jon Huntsman, the Obama-tainted former ambassador to China, can pull a nearly incredible upset in New Hampshire. But Gingrich is as unthinkable as those who have gone before – say, Michele Bachmann – and those who are never going anywhere — like Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, who's confined to a cranky libertarian cul de sac.

Romney's success, or more accurately, lack of failure so far is in no small part due to the amount of experience he now has on the campaign trail and in debates. His experience dates to debates against Ted Kennedy to be one of Massachusetts' senators in 1994, that state's gubernatorial race in 2002, and the race through the Republican primaries in 2008, which he would eventually lose out to the even more experienced John McCain. This time around, no one else in the field, save for Gingrich, comes close to Romney's experience in running a campaign. No wonder, then, that he's been the only one to do the smart thing and just keep his mouth shut while the others cannibalize each other.