Jonathan Chait: How Rick Perry Won the Debate

[Fumesucker]

If this isn't dead on the money it's awfully close..

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/94678/how-rick-perry-won-the-debate

<snip>

Yet Perry, stylistically, ruled the roost. The media seems to consider Romney the winner. Pardon the condescension, but they’re not thinking like Republican base voters. Romney approaches every question as if he is in an actual debate, trying to provide the most intellectually compelling answer available, within the bounds of political expediency. Perry treats questions as interruptions. What scientists do you trust on climate change? I don’t want to risk the economy. Are you taking a radical position on social security? We can have reasons or we can have results. His total liberation from the constraints of reason give Perry a chance to represent the Republican id in a way Romney simply cannot match.

In this way Perry eerily apes the style of George W. Bush, who was also mocked for his intellectually vapid debating style, but who succeeded in rallying Republicans behind him. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I suspect the Bush-Perry debating style broadcasts a subliminal message of strong leadership. Romney feels compelled to bind himself to the parameters of the question before him. Perry ignores them. It is, in a sense, an alpha male move. I am not going to lower myself to your premise about scientists. I am going to declare my principles.


In my view, Perry established his alpha male style, and that impression will matter more than any position or statement he’s made.

[Waiting For Everyman]

1. ...except for that "Social Security is a ponzi scheme" bs. n/t

[txwhitedove]

2. 'Alpha Male'??? What a load of bs. I saw NO alpha male in the debate.

Rick Perry looked like a pasty shrunken head in a too high too tight white collar.

[nenagh]

4. If that article is right, then some Repubs will see Perry as an alpha male...

Because facts do not matter,

It is his attitude that appeals

Wow, hope his viewpoint is wrong..

[txwhitedove]

3. Sorry, dupe

[Eddie Haskell]

5. I love this:

"His total liberation from the constraints of reason give Perry a chance to represent the Republican id."

There are no rules.

[Fumesucker]

6. We're talking Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo levels of id..

Jeebus-scented testosterone oozing from every pore..

Square jaw, eagle eye, carries a laser sighted hand cannon when he goes jogging which he uses to dispatch wild animals attacking him.

A Republican wet dream.