Mitt Romney Continues To Build A Case for Inevitability

In the wake of the The Post-Bloomberg debate last night, Mitt Romney continued to shine while Rick Perry and Herman Cain continued to show their unfitness for the office of president - not that being unfit for office seems to hold much sway with the Kool-Aid drinkers of the GOP base. Obviously, I'd prefer to see a sane GOP nominee as opposed to a nutcase and/or homophobe like Cain or Bachmann or someone utterly in bed with the Christian Right such as Perry. Of course, if a non-crazy wins the GOP nomination, Barack Obama's re-election effort will be far more difficult since it will be harder to use his opponent as the bogey man to frighten voters into supporting him. Both the Washington Post and Politico review the debate and come to the same conclusion that Romney was the clear winner. First these highlights from Politico.

Hours after Chris Christie signaled he believes Mitt Romney is the Republican party’s inevitable nominee, Romney and the rest of the GOP field went about proving him right.

Romney again outclassed the opposition in Tuesday’s Bloomberg/Washington Post debate. Again, none of the other GOP contenders laid a glove on him. And in a telling move that seemed to acknowledge the limits of Rick Perry’s candidacy, the Texas governor effectively tried to survive the debate by not losing it.

[T]he former Massachusetts governor ended it [the day] by standing above an increasingly muddled group of rivals. Aided by a group of competitors who’ve risen and fallen — or not run altogether — the former Massachusetts governor’s steady-as-he-goes strategy has returned him to unqualified frontrunner status.

After suffering through consecutive brutal debates, Perry and his team clearly made a decision to use this forum as a pivot point, rather than an opportunity, in which he would talk up his coming economic roll-out and not seek to tear into Romney or otherwise repair the damage from his past performances.

The Texas governor was absent from much of evening’s back-and-forth, rarely interjecting as some of his competitors did freely.

Instead of attempting a debate knock-out, Perry is now aiming to reverse his steep slide in the polls with a series of policy speeches. . . . . But a slew of new polls over the last two days and the debate here suggest Perry’s not going to receive the sort of attention for his proposals he may have a month ago. That was before Cain’s surge and the buzz around his catchy economic plan began taking hold.

Cain got off more than a few additional plugs for his economic plan, but then showed why his rise in the polls has been greeted by Romney’s campaign with something approaching open arms. Asked about the most serious foreign policy challenge facing the nation, Cain repeated the question and then offered the vaguest of platitudes.

The Washington Post is even more upbeat on its analysis of Romney's performance and the lackluster showings of his main rivals. Here are some highlights:

Certainly, Mitt Romney has to be very pleased. He was smooth as silk, deflecting a question on RomneyCare, explaining the problems of community banks, and driving home the key message: He is the only candidate ready for prime time. He amped up the populism, continuing on his China currency crusade and tweaking the Texas governor for the huge number of uninsured residents.He also scored a point on national security, telling the audience that defense cuts were a really bad idea. More importantly, he didn’t need to dismantle Herman Cain. That happened at Cain’s own hands with some help from Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), Rick Santorum and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) He managed to drop New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s name, reminding voters and press alike that this may have been his best day in the race.

Gov. Rick Perry looked sleepy for much of the debate. He seemed to have one answer for everything: energy. He didn’t have his economic plan ready to go so all he could do was stall. He got skewered by moderator and Post reporter Karen Tumulty on his crony capitalism, saying states should have the right to do these things unlike the feds and pleading that not all the people who got money were donors. There were other disasters as well. At one point he peevishly said, “We don’t need to focus on this policy or that policy. We need to get America working again.” Ooof. At moments it looked like he simply wanted to get out of there. And perhaps after Iowa, he will get his chance to do just that. In short, Perry struck out looking.

Surprisingly, Herman Cain had a bad outing as well. It was so bad, even Ron Paul scored a point by deriding Cain’s praise of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. Ooof. He seemed under-prepared to answer attacks on his 9-9-9 plan.

In not getting bruised and by demonstrating his superior campaign skills, Romney came out the big winner. Perry didn’t help himself a bit, and now risks slipping behind Bachmann and others. Bachmann brought her A game, but now will have to translate that to fundraising and support in Iowa. And Santorum seems ready to move up as others fail. This was, most of all, Cain’s big moment. He didn’t maximize his opportunity, and instead likely increased doubts about his preparedness to run for and be president. Much can change between now and January, but unless other candidates change the dynamics of the race, Romney will slowly but surely move to lock up the nomination.