At one point during Wednesday night’s Republican Presidential debate, Gov. Rick Perry said he felt a bit like a pi?ata at the party as he fended off attacks by the seven other candidates on stage at the Reagan Presidential Library in California. But in truth, none of his opponents swung very hard at the GOP’s newest and most popular presidential candidate and it was Perry who swung the hardest, walking away from his first debate for the most part unscathed. Surprisingly, Perry’s competition passed on the chance to attack Perry on his support of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, which is arguably his most politically vulnerable position.
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Perhaps they were taking a cue, or pledge, suggested by candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who reprised his blame-the-media role that earned him so much applause at the last debate. Gingrich at one point called on the entire bunch to pledge not to let the media use divisive questions to divide the Republican field, which he said, should be focused on making President Obama a one-term president.
Even former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has all but ceded his front-runner status to Perry, was at various points defending his opponent in favor of attacking the current president.
“We have some differences between us, but this president has to go,” Romney said. “He doesn’t’ have a clue about how to get this country running again.”
Romney and Perry sparred briefly at the opening of the debate on who would be best able to create jobs and reverse the nation’s 9.1 percent unemployment rate.
Romney defended his job-creating abilities despite the fact that the Bay State ranked 47th in job creation during his tenure, but Perry, whose state leads in job creation, said Romney’s effort fell short.
“Governor Romney left the private sector, and he did a great job of creating jobs in the private sector all around the world, but the fact is, when he moved that experience to government, he had one of the lowest job creation rates in the country,” Perry said. “As a matter of fact, we created more jobs in the last three months in Texas than he created in four years in Massachusetts.
Perry then added, “”Michael Dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did.”
Romney was also cornered by Perry and the other candidates on the Massachusetts health care reform law that he authored and continues to defend.
Romney was quoted by the debate moderators characterizing his health care law as “a great opportunity for the country,” allowing Perry to zing him once again.
“It was a great opportunity for us as a people to see what will not work, and that is an individual mandate in this country,” Perry said.
While both Romney and Perry said they were committed to stopping the national health care law, neither did it as convincingly as Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who has placed its repeal at the center of her campaign.
She argued that none of the other candidates is as committed as she is to stopping the law, which would require cooperation from both the House and Senate.
Bachmann said repealing the health care law would help staunch job loss and she also proposed new energy legislation that she said would create more than a million jobs. Bachmann wants to open up more areas in the United States to oil and natural gas production.
“We just learned today that if the federal government would pull back on all of the regulatory restrictions on American energy production, we could see 1.2 million jobs created in the United States,” Bachmann said.
Former Gov. Jon Huntsman, who has been fading in the polls, fought to stay relevant on the stage but took perhaps his best shot at President Obama, when he called for a president “who would actually walk out from behind the TelePrompTer …speak from your heart and soul,” about ways to reduce domestic energy prices.
None of the candidates took any fatal blows at the debate, but Perry came out looking the strongest, if only because he fended off weak attacks pretty easily.
The Romney camp, nevertheless, quickly declared their candidate the victor as soon as the debate was over. “Mitt Romney won tonight’s debate because he demonstrated that his is the only candidate in the race who can return the country to economic prosperity,” said a statement from his campaign.
Perry was more direct in his post-debate statement. “I will get America working again,” he said.
