Another Great Texan Debater

It has been a long time since American politics has seen a Texan with poor speaking and debating skills... And it is not clear if Governor Rick Perry truly does fit into that category, or if he simply is not used to the format of the GOP presidential debates.  Or maybe his dislike for Mitt Romney unfairly overpowers Perry’s intellect and causes him to make inarticulate and muddled assertions.  In any case, one thing is abundantly clear:  he has not been fairing well over the past five Republican debates.  

Unfortunately for the Texan, few things affect the public opinion polls more than the debates.  This is, perhaps, the primary reason that his status in the race has declined in recent weeks, with the anti-Romney vote flocking to Cain and his impractical but ever-so-simple 9-9-9 plan.  If practice makes perfect, then five appearances is hardly sufficient experience to mold Perry into the sharp debater necessary to compete with President Barack Obama’s eloquent yet confident manner of speaking.  The harsher the GOP nomination process becomes – that is, the more invectives exchanged between Perry and Romney in these debates – the more difficult it will be in the general election, as the Democratic strategists will have a great deal to work with for their attack ads.  And if Perry is incapable of outdebating his opponents in the first round, then he has no place in the general election.  After all, the entire GOP nomination process is useless if the Republican Party cannot produce a viable candidate capable of defeating the sitting president.



Perry has been giving reactions to his most recent debate performance on October 18th in various interviews, essentially admitting that he did poorly by describing his distaste for the format.  “It’s pretty hard to be able to sit and lay out your ideas and your concepts with a one-minute response,” said the candidate in one interview.  He claims that the debates are schedule for the sole purpose of “tear[ing] down the candidates.”  Just to be clear, Perry’s argument is thus:  he is not a bad debater or speaker; the system of debate itself is the only flaw in the situation, and the only reason he is falling in the polls.  He expressed concern with the aggressive nature of the debates, yet he has played a crucial role in attempting to “tear down” other potential nominees.  At one point, he went out of his way to attack Mitt Romney on the topic of illegal immigration.  The topic of the question was healthcare.



Now Perry is playing around with the idea of sitting out some of the next debates.  Again, since the debates play such a crucial role in opinion polls, how is this a good plan?  The answer from both political parties is, simply, that it is not.  On the one hand, if he cannot compete in the debates, he should not be in the race in the first place.  On the other hand, even if he cannot compete but refuses to be in the debates anyway, then he might as well extract himself from the race.  It is very likely that if he skips out on the next GOP debate, his public opinion polls will continue to drop exponentially.