I haven’t watched the debate myself yet of course, but reviews & discussion ranging from the Los Angeles Times to the Huffington Postare painting this in rather dire tones. And yet, the SDMB elections forum is oddly quiet on the subject.
So, anyway. William Kristol doesn’t appear to be any secondhand Kitty Kelly gossip monger here: he watched the debate and talked with all the people they’re writing about in real time. What’s the fallout? From what the video discussed with the source, it sounds like it would be very discouraging to Perry supporters.
Haven’t seen it either, but Bill Maher is talking tonight about how all the sudden Perry is dead in the water. Apparently it all revolves around “having a heart” and allowing the children of illegal immigrants to get some state assistance to attend Texas state schools.
Oh, and as to the SDMB silence… who can stand to watch these things? It’s like watching slime.
Here is a clip of Perry being served up a sweet hanging curveball, rebutting Romney on why Massachusetts healthcare plan was great but Obama’s is unconstitutional. If there is anything that Perry should have prepared and memorized, it is the answer to this question. You can flip forward to 1:20 to see how he handled it.
There was another question where he was asked what he would do first if he heard that Pakistan had lost control of it’s nukes to the Taliban. He offered up a word vomit that was even more incomprehensible than the above quote. It was one of those moments where you actually feel bad for him, he was so out of his element.
Perry is actually in favor of the kids of illegals getting aid to go to school. Romney attacked him for it and apparently the typically bloodthirsty Republican audience sided with Romney.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch yet another orgy of inane catch phrases, but the clips I’ve seen so far have shown Perry to be almost comically unable to give a coherent response to anything he hasn’t specifically memorized. He reminds me of a teenager who gets called on in class when he hasn’t done the homework. He plasters a sickly grin on his face and stares off into the distance like he’s waiting for the bell to ring and save him. I think he needs a new set of handlers, but it might be too late for that to help him.
I didn’t watch the debate, only saw clips on the news. The one that struck me as the most incoherent was when he tried to do the “for it before I was against it” line on Romney, but he bumbled it so badly that he sounded like an idiot.
One thing I’ve noticed about this guy is that he seems to have a sort of whole-body tick thing going on when he talks sometimes. It’s very unnerving to watch. Anyone else notice this?
Perry should have had that “Romney’s a flip-flopper” speech queued up and ready to go at the touch of a button. If Perry is no better than that on the most obvious attack line against his main opponent, then Perry deserves to still be Governor of Texas on 01/21/12.
Don[t forget poor whites. No help for them either.
I’m reminded of an old Monty Python skit. Some commission is looking at designs for a public housing project, and these two guys show up and start up with, “Inside the entry, people are drawn into the rotating blades, and there’s a trough here to carry off the blood…”, and it’s immediately clear they’ve designed a slaughterhouse for the poor.
The difference being that in the Monty Python sketch, it wasn’t their original intent. With some of today’s conservatives, you can’t be so certain.
(Okay, that’s probably an overstatement. But with some of them I definitely get the feeling that they share Ebeneezer Scrooge’s opinion of the “surplus population.”)