"Rick Perry just never does well in debates. He never has. He doesn't win debates, but, boy, does he win elections!"

The standard spin for Rick Perry, as articulated by Rush Limbaugh, who goes on to analyze it this way:

Okay, look, I totally understand spin, but these are not "debates." This is just Q&A. You gotta have some facts at your command, you have to be able to parry (p-a-r-r-y), have to be able to go back and forth, but if you're gonna go out and try to illustrate Romney's flip-flops, rehearse it, or know it. I don't know about you; I just thought it was a little disappointing. And, in fact, I made an observation about Perry last week where he seems to get tired, seems to wear down. The sentences get slower, the words get put together slower. In fact, the Perry campaign has said that it was a product of being tired in these debates.  In fact, last Thursday, this is in Orlando, here is Perry responding to Romney's defense of Romneycare.

I think Americans just don't know sometimes which Mitt Romney they're dealing with.  Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment?  Was it was before he was for these social programs from the standpoint he was standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against Roe v. Wade?  He was for Race to the Top. He's for Obamacare and now he's against it.  I mean we'll wait until tomorrow and see which Mitt Romney we're really talking to tonight.

So they said, "Ah, he was just tired. He had a long day out there, long day of fundraising, long day of campaigning, a bunch of speechifying, and just a little tired out there."  And I'll tell you why this matters.  It's because within the conservative base, call it the Tea Party base, what have you, they just do not want Romney.  There is an active anti-Romney sentiment and Perry represented perhaps somebody that could wrest all this away from Romney.  Romney's the presumptive nominee, based on money and media trying to make this into a two-man race and so forth, it's getting late for anybody else to get in.

In other words, these excuses for Perry are delusion and desperation. But what do you do at that point if you think Romney's not the solid, principled conservative you want? You should hope for Chris Christie to come in. It's not that Christie is the conservative, but that Christie is the one who can draw support from Romney. That would help Perry, Limbaugh predicts.

Help him how far? If Christie comes in and attracts all the attention, Rick Bad-at-Debates Perry will get to relax into his quiet, manly persona. He can conserve his scarce enegy while Christie and Romney compete for the moderate crowd, and then saunter into the nomination without looking relatively fresh. But then what? He'll have to debate Obama! I'm getting flashbacks to 2008. It looked like a little something like this:



Care to live through that with the man whose supporters assure you just never does well in debates?