Mitt Romney's Herman Cain Problem

Mitt Romney has a problem named Herman Cain. Cain is now leading PublicPolicyPolling's latest foray into the vital Iowa contest, with 30% to Romney's 22%. Other polls show the two in the other order, but much closer; whatever, I trust PPP way more than any other pollsters at this point. In late August, Cain was getting just 7% in Iowa, compared to Romney's 19%. But that's not Romney's problem, or at least, his problem isn't that Herman Cain will win the Republican nomination instead of Romney. It's that the rise of Herman Cain tells us a hell of a lot about the Republican primary electorate: they really, really, really don't want to vote for Mitt Romney.

The Benefit of a Failed Perry Candidacy

Rick Perry is giving off a strong impression of being Not Ready For Prime Time. That would please me immensely if he were already the Republican nominee; unfortunately, the whole point of these debates is to give Republican voters a chance not to nominate people like Perry who can be charismatic or whatever but fail miserably on substance, and it kind of looks like that's working. But I still think that the Perry candidacy can be very helpful in one very specific way: making Mitt Romney look less moderate. Apparently in last night's debate, Romney attacked Perry on Texas' policy of letting illegal immigrant children go to state college at in-state discount tuition. Perry, for his part, defended his position in a way that will probably not go over well with Republican voters. But what I'm looking at here is that Romney is trying to find opportunities to position himself to the right of Rick Perry. Great. I have a feeling that Latino voters, who probably agree with Perry that "if you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart," will remember that Romney decided to curry favor with Republican voters by taking the hardest of hard lines on immigration. I have a feeling that same dynamic will play out on other issues: every time Romney tries to defend his right flank against attacks from Perry, or tries to loop around and hit Perry's right flank, he makes himself less electable. And I'll take that if I can get it.

The 17th Amendment and the States

Texas Gov. Rick Perry apparently is one of the people who opposes the 17th Amendment, which shifted the election of Senators from a power of state legislatures to something handled by direct popular election in each state. Here's the quote:

I think the issue is about consolidating the power in Washington, D.C. The 17th Amendment is one of those where they were making... the states were historically more in control when they decided who those senators were going to be. They took the states out of the process at that particular point in time. So that’s the... uh... the historic concept of checks and balances, when you had the concept of the federal government and the states. The 17th Amendment is when the states started getting out of balance with the federal government, is my belief.

Now, see, he's not entirely wrong about this. It is indeed very possible that the switch to direct election of Senators created a political culture in the federal government that is less respectful of state power, and/or less reticent about using federal power, depending on your point of view. But what Perry glosses over entirely is why exactly this is a bad thing.

Why Rick Perry Is *Not* Headed to the White House

With Texas Gov. Rick Perry's announcement for the Republican Presidential nomination today, there's an article on CNN by James Moore arguing that Perry will win the election. Moore, author of a book about Karl Rove's role in George W. Bush's rise to power, is a Texan left-winger, strikes me as someone a little bit spooked by the rest of the nation's apparent willingness to consider his state's hideous governors. The first half of the piece is a rather sound analysis of why Perry will beat, most importantly, Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination. At this point I do think Perry's the favorite; Pawlenty's dead, Romney's a dead man walking (see the events of today), and Bachmann offers nothing Perry doesn't, while lacking the same level of established stature. But it's his "analysis" of the general election that strikes me as, well: