He may be the consensus frontrunner, but Mitt Romney will not be the focus of tonight’s Bloomberg debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The two candidates right behind Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Godfather’s Pizza chairman Herman Cain, will be the news makers. And those two candidates appear to be heading in opposite directions.
As recently as three weeks ago, Perry was leading all candidates in the national polls, and Cain by double digits. But after three bad debate performances in a row, Perry has fallen into third place in most polls, including Gallup’s latest, which places him at 15%. Cain, meanwhile has surged from a fifth-place, 5% showing in Gallup’s September poll, to a second place, 18% showing in October.
This is not Cain’s first trip into the spotlight. He briefly surged following his performance in the first Republican debate in South Carolina back in May. But he was quickly overshadowed by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-MN, then Perry.
Will Cain do anything tonight to solidify himself as the most credible Romney alternative? Will Perry do anything to reverse his campaign’s free fall? Whatever happens, Romney isn’t likely to top the headlines tonight.
Around the Bigs
The Hill, Democrats scramble to save face on President Obama’s jobs bill: Despite scrapping President Obama’s preferred tax hikes, and going with their own millionaire’s surtax, Senate Democrats still do not have the votes to pass Obama’s second stimulus and are now scrambling to package the legislation into smaller bills.
ABC News, Democrats Seek to Own ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Movement: According to ABC News, “a consensus is emerging among Democrats” that the Occupy Wall Street movement is worth exploiting. “I support the message to the establishment,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Change has to happen. We cannot continue in a way that does not — that is not relevant to their lives. People are angry.”
The Boston Globe, Boston police move in on protesters on Greenway, scores arrested: Boston police arrested about 100 people yesterday, after Occupy Boston protesters refused to leave the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway
The Washington Examiner, Protesters allowed to stay downtown into February: Leaders of the Occupy DC protest in Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue met with officials from the National Park Service Monday afternoon, and secured a four-month extension of their permit which expired Monday. The extended permit does not, however, include the right to camp on the Plaza overnight, so more arrests could follow.
The New York Times, Bloomberg Says Protesters Can Stay: Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday that he had no plan to remove the Occupy Wall Street protesters. “The bottom line is, people want to express themselves, and as long as they obey the laws, we’ll allow them to. If they break the laws, then we’re going to do what we’re supposed to do — enforce the laws,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Shrinkage: New York City Thomas DiNapoli released a report Monday predicting the city could lose 10,000 jobs by the end of 2012, a decline of about 17%.
Campaign 2012
New Hampshire: Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will not be standing next to each other at tonight’s Bloomberg debate at Dartmouth. All the candidates will be seated at a large circular table in order of their standing in the polls: Romney, Herman Cain, Perry, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, etc.
Perry: A Wall Street Journal analysis of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund, shows that the program’s 59,000 jobs created claim is almost certainly overstated.
MA Sen: Progressive movement favorite Elizabeth Warren (D) raised more than $3 million in the third quarter if this year, more than twice what incumbent Sen. Scott Brown (R) raised.
WI Gov: Undeterred by their failure to capture the state senate, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate announced yesterday that Democrats will begin circulating recall petitions for Gov. Scott Walker starting November 15th.
Righty Playbook
Ed Morrissey posts the Perry campaign’s latest web ad attacking Romney over health care and writes: “This focuses on a real concern of primary voters, and asks them if they will really pull the lever for a man who created one of the models for ObamaCare.”
In The Wall Street Journal, Naval Postgraduate School economics professor David Henderson explains how the work of the the winners of the 2011 Nobel Prize in economics, Thomas J. Sargent of New York University and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and Christopher A. Sims of Princeton University, shows how Keynesian economics is fallible.
Michelle Malkin posts House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa’s lengthy response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s latest statement on his involvement with Operation Fast and Furious.
Lefty Playbook
Talking Points Memo‘s Thomas Lane wonders if the Occupy Wall Street movement is turning a corner or jumping the shark: “On the one hand, establishment players suddenly seem to be treating the movement far more seriously. Meanwhile, a widely-cited survey suggests that over half of Americans have heard of the protests and feel broadly positive about them. On the other hand, Kanye West swung by, taking a break from rapping about designer sunglasses in order to protest capitalism instead.”
Mike Konczal analyzes data from the We are the 99% tumblr, a free micro-blogging platform, to come up with the following list of issues motivating the movement: “There’s no universal health care to handle the randomness of poor health. There’s no free higher education to allow people to develop their skills outside the logic and relations of indentured servitude. Our bankruptcy code has been rewritten by the top 1% when instead, it needs to be a defense against their need to shove inequality-driven debt at populations. And finally, there’s no basic income guaranteed to each citizen to keep poverty and poor circumstances at bay.”
