Perry: The growing Republican doubts

“Yikes.” That’s the only word that fairly describes conservatives’ reaction to Rick Perry’s performance in the GOP debate last week, said William Kristol in The Weekly Standard. The Texas governor has been the party’s darling since he jumped into the race in August, but at the Fox News debate in Florida, he horrified his supporters with a performance so bad it was nearly “disqualifying.” He stumbled through an utterly incoherent answer to a question about Pakistan, and when he tried to go after chief rival Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper, he mangled his prepared sentences so that they made no sense. Perry was “awful, just awful,” said John Podhoretz in the New York Post. He even managed to infuriate the party’s base by hotly defending his decision to allow the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition fees in Texas. “I don’t think you have a heart,’’ Perry said of those who disagree with that policy. Ouch. As that one sank in, that “old smoothie” Romney was smiling.

Don’t rule Perry out just yet, said Nate Silver in NYTimes.com. The party’s brain trust and pundits might be freaking out over his inability to debate, but polls suggest the Republican base hasn’t given up on him. They want an Alpha Dog conservative who can stomp Barack Obama, and with his big-shouldered Texas swagger, Perry comes closest to their dream candidate. Despite renewed pleas from frantic Republicans, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is still insisting that he won’t jump into the race. As for Romney, the GOP base sees the former Massachusetts governor as slick and inauthentically conservative, and won’t settle for him “without a fight.”

Still, Romney looks right now like the luckiest politician in America, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. A Mormon who instituted universal health care in Massachusetts and once supported legal abortion should have zero chance at the GOP nomination in 2012. But many of the GOP’s strongest candidates—Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and Jeb Bush—decided not to run; declared candidates Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann, meanwhile, quickly self-destructed. Then, Rick Perry—“a walking embodiment of the Republican id”—suffered a “total implosion” in the first two debates. Is Romney “protected by some invisible force field” that melts down the brains of his opponents? He might become the Republican nominee “simply because nobody else could stand in his path without keeling over.”

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