romney has right words, but delivery sucks

[angus]

watching him live...almost painful...he has a good speech writer though

I had exactly the same thought about George Bush on several occasions. 

[angus]

dude, the dude is done, stick a tea bag in him

McCain was done summer 2007, Kerry summer '03, etc. These things have peaks and valleys. The GOP system favors Romney's nomination.

Actually, the GOP has fewer of the superdelegate and PLEO type gimmicks at their convention than the DNC does, if I recall correctly.  Sure, it has some built-in croneyism, but overall, it's going to be a slugfest in the primaries that determine the winner.  Let's look at the calendar:

Iowa:  28 delegates.  I could see Perry taking at least 14 of those pretty easily, if polls are to be believed.
New Hampshire:  20 delegates (10% threshold).  I could see Perry taking at least 5 of those.  
SC:  47 delegates.  Perry gets at least 20 of those.
Florida:  99 delegates, 81 based on results.  Perry could easily take 40 of those.

Then, with LA, WV, ME, and AK he gets maybe 100 more altogether.  This heads him into the first mini-superTuesday with around 200 of 450 delegates.  Probably ahead of Romney, Paul, and Bachmann at that point.  

Of course, the public is fickle, and I'm just basing this on current polling data, and it's sort of hard to peg primary voters anyway, but I don't think you can say that the process favors Romney unless you mean in the Bobdole sort of way.  Bobdole thinks that Bobdole deserves the nomination, so go ahead and give ol' Bobdole the nod, okay?  

But Mitt Romney is no Bobdole.  Unless he starts referring to himself as Mittromney, of course.

[angus]

why would I go with perry in 2016 when I don't even want him in 2012?  but Romney isn't getting the nomination unless Perry drowns a bunch of puppies

and praising Clinton's medical service initiative, eighteen years ago, as Commissioner of Agriculture, isn't going to derail him.

I agree that Romney doesn't seem to be the one to ensure his undoing.  

It is also worth noting that the previous comparison to George Bush is not very well informed.  Their politics are very different, as well as their styles.  Perry doesn't seem quite as humorous as Bush, for one thing.  And he doesn't even give lip service to the "compassionate," as Bush did.  Also, Bush never blasted the Fed the way Perry did.  He may appeal, on some level, to some subset of the same constituency because his swagger is a bit cocky like Bush's, but he really doesn't walk the same walk or talk the same talk as George ("Humble foreign policy") Bush.  They're miles apart, substantively and stylistically, as far as I can tell.

That said, I think that Perry is unlikely to defeat Obama unless Obama starts drowning puppies.

[angus]

What about if pictures come out showing Perry and Clinton looking like best buddies of the 1980s? Who knows what is out there from Perry's days as a Democrat? How many people even know right now that he voted for a multi-billion dollar tax hike on Texas back in 1987? Or that he was one of Al Gore's top guys in the 1988 presidential race?

I have no intention of supporting either Romney or Perry in the upcoming caucus, as I'll vote for Ron Paul just as I did last time, but Perry's flavor seems to be leaving a nice taste in the mouths of Republicans lately being polled.  Sure, Perry has skeletons in his closet, as we all do, but those you bring up are more ancient and no worse than Romney's.  I also think you're over-rating Romney as a General election candidate.  I'd consider voting for him.  Then again, I'd also consider voting for Obama.  I'm just saying, as a swing voter who supported Bush in 2004 and Obama in 2008, that you make a mistake to assume that Romney is more appealing to me than Perry.  

Consider this:  recent head-to-head general election polls between Romney and Obama put Obama ahead by an average of 3%.  A similar comparison of Perry and Obama put Obama ahead by about 6%.  I'm taking the average of five recent polls.  There's not a huge difference, there, and Obama is marginally ahead of both candidates.  And Romney is someone lots of folks have heard of.  Something like 86% of likely general election voters have heard of Romney.  It's around 67% for Perry.  (Gallup, August 23)  So Romney's ceiling may be lower than Perry's.

Your suggestion that Romney is a more likely win than Perry in November 2012 is not certain.

[angus]

There is a huge difference between a statistical tie in the case of Romney/Obama and a clear-cut lead for Obama over Perry.

Actually, there's not.  Even without propagating the error statistically, the +/- 3% that most polls claim leave room for a 6% difference to be a statistical tie.  And, propagating the errors properly, we need to take the square root of the sum of the squares of the errors given in the five polls I cited.  To keep it simple, let's assume that they're all 3%.  Then the square root of 5*(0.03)^2 is equal to 0.067.  So that's about a 7% margin of error for the average of the polls I averaged.  Both Romney and Perry are within 7% of Obama, on average.

But who cares about all that, really?  The only poll that really matters is the election.  Americans are out of work and nervous.  And they're fighting.  And they're weary.  Yes, I heard the remarks against Bernanke, which I precisely referred to in an earlier post when I suggested that Perry is stylistically and substantively unlike Bush.  He said that the Fed would be treated "pretty ugly" in Texas.  Ron Paul makes the same point, by the way, although with more nuanced language.  And it's a point that should be made.  Frequently.  And one that Romney will no doubt make as well, on the general election campaign trail, should he become the nominee.  But it'll take more than attacks on the Fed to defeat Obama.  And Romney doesn't even seem to be able to stay ahead of Perry.