Newt Gingrich is soaring in the polls, primarily because a lot of people just don’t want Mitt Romney. This is likely to be a short-lived phenomenon. The problem is that Newt Gingrich has too much baggage. Not just a little baggage, a train load of baggage. The press ignored this until now because he was not considered to be a serious candidate. That has changed and we all need to brace ourselves for an onslaught of negative stories about Gingrich, most of which will unfortunately be true. Gingrich will burn very bright, for a short period of time, but he will most likely flame out just as quickly.
Herman Cain is falling like a stone and the descent is about to turn into free fall. His lawyer warned any women considering making sexual harassment accusations against his client. That was incredibly dumb. All of the professional women, including those at Fox News, immediately picked up on that. This is the type of thing the Clintons did to try and cover-up Bill’s long pattern of sexual harassment. In addition, Cain looked way out of his league during the CBS debate on foreign policy. Finally, he says some really dumb things as demonstrated by the following link:
Even Obama knows better than to support collective bargaining for federal employees!
In the meantime, Rick Perry was absolutely brilliant in responding to his deer in the headlights moment. He didn’t blame his medication, or Ron Paul, or the moderator, or anything else. He just admitted he stepped in it and then went on a national television tour making fun of himself. The important thing is that he did not become defensive. In the process, Rick Perry showed himself to be that most rare creature in the world, a politician who doesn’t take himself too seriously. None of the other Republican candidates could have pulled that off.
In addition, Perry finally seems to have shed himself of the professional handlers who were trying to manage his campaign. For example, I believe the fake looking confrontation between Perry and Romney about hiring illegals was a disaster. It made Perry look cheap and opportunistic. In addition, his wooden performances during the debates could have been the result of over rehearsing and trying to memorize talking points. In many ways this is similar to what happened to Sarah Palin. When the professionals took over and tried to handle her after she was picked by John McCain, it was a disaster. She looked out of her element and unprepared. However, if you watch her now, it is clear that Sarah does a lot better just being Sarah.
Rick Perry does well being Rick Perry. His speech in New Hampshire, where the main stream media wiggled their nose and wondered if he was drunk, got a standing ovation. The reason was that they saw a real person and they liked what they saw. During the last debate Perry was very good. He stopped giving scripted answers and just spoke from the heart. The man has been Governor for a long time and he doesn’t need to memorize talking points. Perhaps getting embarrassed on national television was what he needed to stop listening to professional handlers.
In any event, my point is that the baggage train about to descend on Newt Gingrich and the complete collapse of Herman Cain is going to dwarf the Perry wrinkle, where he went brain dead on national television. Ultimately, we are down to Mitt Romney and…someone else. Unless Perry does it again, I think it just may end up being a Mitt-vs-Rick race after all.
So far, this race has been quite different than anyone could have predicted. Odds are we will continue to be surprised.
TDM