For the 2012 Republican hopefuls, Wednesday night is the first Fall Classic.
Eight candidates are slated to take the stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., for the POLITICO/NBC News debate — the first face-off as the campaign kicks into high gear.
It’s also the first debate that will include Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the new front-runner who has shaken up the slow-forming presidential contest and shifted the landscape for Mitt Romney, who’d been sitting atop the field for months.
Five things to watch for as the candidates take the stage:
1) Does Perry stumble or survive?
Assuming the Texas wildfires don’t keep Perry at home, he will be the most-scrutinized candidate at the debate. The state’s longest-serving chief executive has had all the momentum heading into tonight’s event, his first televised national vetting.
“All eyes will be on Rick Perry, as he has become ‘Mr. August,’” said veteran GOP strategist Scott Reed, who was on Haley Barbour’s team earlier this year before the Mississippi governor opted against running.
Perry has debated before, albeit not frequently and, according to Texas-based politicos, with mixed levels of success. But an enduring question for Republican elites who are looking for a winner and are disenchanted with Romney has remained: “Can Rick Perry take a punch in a boxing ring he’s unaccustomed to?”
The potential for a gaffe is ripe. Perry could get a range of questions, from his whiff-of-violence comment about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to his “Ponzi scheme” rhetoric about Social Security, to his states-rights manifesto “Fed Up!” which was published just last year.
Working in Perry’s favor? It’s a multicandidate debate, and the bar for Perry has been set pretty low, given the conventional wisdom that he’s not the Great Debator and questions about his basic smarts. He may be able to stick to his playbook from past debates — memorize a message and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.
Working against him? The rest of the candidates have met onstage at least once before to learn each other’s rhythms.
Some Republicans argue privately that Perry should ignore his rivals and focus his attention on President Barack Obama. But given his aggressiveness on the stump against Romney and his record, it could be risky to hold back — even in the House of Reagan, whose famous 11th Commandment prohibited attacking fellow Republicans.
2) Will Romney go after Perry by name?
In the two debates he’s done so far, Romney has almost disappeared — happily — while the other candidates duked it out. Much of the summer was a Michele Bachmann-Tim Pawlenty grudge match, and that consumed the Ames debate last month.
The only time a candidate ever came close to directly taking on Romney was in New Hampshire in June, when Pawlenty declined to repeat a swing about “Obamneycare” he’d telegraphed days earlier. Romney escaped unscathed — and with the bar raised for other attacks on him.
But those were gentler times for Romney, who has been struggling to be seen as able to join the fight with both fists.
Even with Perry eclipsing him since getting into the race, Romney’s been making only veiled, passive-aggressive hits that could apply to a range of different candidates.
Romney will have to get a bit more aggressive than his “I’m a conservative businessman, not a politician” pitch, without seeming forced — or flailing. Romney has experience pushing back at opponents in debates — he got used to candidates ganging up on him in the 2007 debates — but he often came off as angry, not forceful.
“Both Romney and Perry have to strike a balance,” said Dan Schnur, director of the University of Southern California’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. “Romney has to take on Perry without seeming desperate. Perry has to be in control without seeming anesthetized. Of the two, Perry’s got the easier job.”
3) Can Bachmann break through?
There is no denying that Michele Bachmann’s been struggling.
Thwarted by Perry’s entrance on the same day she was hoping for a momentum surge with her Ames Straw Poll win just three weeks ago, Bachmann’s been searching for her footing — and enough altitude to keep the race from becoming a fixed, two-man contest. Though she’s disposed of Pawlenty, Bachmann heads into the debate with questions lingering about shifts in her top campaign structure this week.
She needs a breakout moment, but sources in her campaign insist she will not be swinging at Perry.
“The plan is and always will be to tout her message and not attack the others,” said one source. “That being said — just like with Pawlenty — if someone is going to tell lies about her record, she will tell the truth about theirs.”
4) Will Jon Huntsman bring his “truth telling” from the Sunday talk shows to his opponents?
Huntsman survived his first debate at Ames despite visible discomfort and no breakthrough line or moment of engagement with another candidate. He needs to do more than that here.
Since Ames — and since a POLITICO report about a campaign rife with infighting, second-guessing, profligate spending and minimal fundraising — Huntsman has refashioned himself as an open critic of his party, taking the shots himself that his campaign strategist John Weaver had until recently been taking on his behalf.
If he doesn’t bring the same criticisms of the party — and of specific candidates, like Romney — while he’s there with his rivals, he risks a Pawlenty-type whiff. If he doesn’t engage, he will look wimpy. If he does, the whole “civility” approach he talked about at his kickoff will be firmly put to rest — along with, potentially, his ability to galvanize support in a future race.
5) Can Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain prove that they’re relevant?
Gingrich was the critics’ pick thanks to his anti-media rant at the previous debate, but the praise did him little good in actual poll movement. Santorum also had a good moment in the Ames face-off, when he criticized Ron Paul as, essentially, too extreme. And Cain’s benefited from his own rhetorical success on stage, particularly at the campaign’s first debate.
But all three remain mired in the third tier. Can any of them do anything onstage to persuade an early-state voter to give them a shot over Perry, Romney or Bachmann?
Other than using Paul — who is likely, as he has been doing with gusto, to complain about the lack of mainstream media coverage he receives — as a foil, each one needs to show a flash of something presidential, or at least serious on policy, to get consideration from voters going forward.
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