By and large, debates aren’t a huge deal for candidates in a presidential primary. Because most Americans don’t watch them, their relevance is limited to primary voters and other party actors, and even then, an acceptable candidate doesn’t need to have good debate skills – middling skills are okay , provided candidates run an otherwise strong campaign. Texas Governor Rick Perry might be the exception that proves the rule. His campaign has not been bad, but his debate performances have been terrible. Even at his best, he is a disaster , flubbing basic facts, botching attacks on his competitors, and chastising the audience for disagreement . Perry’s debate skills are so bad that they’ve actually taken a toll on his campaign. Two months ago, Perry was the frontrunner in the Republican nomination contest. Today, he’s at the bottom of the pack, trailing with just 6 percent support from GOP voters. With that in mind, it’s not a surprise to learn that his campaign is rethinking its choice to...

After George W. Bush was elected in 2000, his advisers and allies set about solidifying their control of Congress. In short order, the phrase "permanent Republican majority" started to get bandied about ( here is a reference to it in a Time magazine article from April 2001). That idea partly concerned efforts by Bush and Karl Rove to expand the Republican base to include groups like Latinos, but mostly referred to the House of Representatives. With the right mix of money, targeted legislation, and clever redistricting (the cocktail that landed Tom DeLay in jail), Republicans could make their grip on the House all but impossible to break. For a while, it seemed to be working. Republicans gained seats in 2002, then Bush won re-election in 2004, and a spate of books arrived explaining how Republicans were redrawing the American political map for a generation to come (see here , here , and here ). But it turned out to be anything but permanent. Democrats won back both houses of Congress...

Americans really don’t like Congress, according to the latest The New York Times and CBS News survey : I’ve said this before , but extremely low congressional approval ratings tend to coincide with massive electoral shifts, as voters “throw the bums out.” It’s possible – and given President Obama’s current unpopularity, likely – that next year will see a complete switcheroo, as Democrats win the House of Representatives, but lose the Senate and the White House.

Let's be honest: the tax plan Rick Perry unveiled the other day is a bushel of bamboozlement inside a cartload of crap. That may not surprise anyone, but I have to point out Perry's embrace of an old zombie lie that should have been shot in the head with a crossbow (have I been watching too much Walking Dead ?) a long time ago. Says Perry's web site: In the case of family business owners and farmers, the [estate] tax often exceeds the ability of the family to pay. These heirs are consequently forced to sell off part, if not all, of their enterprise in order to pay the tax. Eliminating the death tax is necessary to protect family businesses, farms and jobs. No, no, no. I realize that it's a lot more appealing to say you want to eliminate the tax to help struggling family farmers than to say you want to eliminate it so Paris Hilton won't have to pay taxes, unlike people who work for a living. But the family farm myth has been debunked again and again. As a report from the Center on...

In case you missed it, Georgia businessman Herman Cain has dropped a new campaign ad, and it’s terrible . In a good way. I’m not sure which is more hilarious: the terrible production values, the fantastic background soundtrack, or Cain’s knowing look at the end. Regardless, it’s safe to say that this is a classic on par with Carly Fiorina’s “ Demon Sheep ”. I should also say that this settles for good the question of whether or not Cain is a serious candidate for president. In short? No, he isn't.

You must watch Herman Cain's latest campaign ad, via James Fallows. It starts off as a typical dry commercial with Cain's chief of staff hyping his candidate, but gets great right at the 40-second mark: Fallows questioned if this was an Onion parody, but that is in fact Cain's Chief of Staff, Mark Block. If memory serves me right, I've noticed him (or else it was some other dapper mustachioed man) taking cigarrette puffs around Cain's bus at stops this fall. I won't begrudge a political staffer who needs a boost to help him through his time in small town Iowa, but the way the last shot lingers over the smoke is just too much. Though as Tim Murphy points out at Mother Jones , this isn't Cain's first foray into bizarre campaign ads.

Yesterday I detailed how the leading figures of Iowa's evangelical community have all dilly-dallied about picking a favorite presidential candidate. As if on cue, one of those major players announced that he would be moderating one of the more bizarrely formatted debates of a modern presidential campaign. Rep. Steve King will referee a “modified Lincoln–Douglas debate” between Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain in Texas on November 5. It should be a bizarre exchange. Gingrich has been expressing an interest of late in a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate where he would no longer face pesky questions from journalists, but it was always in the context of facing Barack Obama in the general election. Where those candidates would readily hammer away at their differences, a Cain-Gingrich matchup should be a dull affair. The two have appeared personally friendly throughout the campaign and won't diverge too substantially on policy. About the only thing the debate proves is that—despite his rise in...