Do you get the feeling that the early battle between GOP presidential candidates is more like a BEAUTY CONTEST than a campaign?  The media makes it so, because the big five television networks are ravenous for a story.  ANY story.  Personalities, slight conflicts in policy, who lost his cool last… it’s a reality show contest!

Today, we look at the latest standings revealed in the October 19-24th The New York Times/CBS Poll.  (The last two organizations we should be listening to when it comes to GOP potential!)

Here are the numbers:

Of 1650 adults and 1475 interviews conducted among registered voters likely to vote in GOP Primaries:

Herman Cain                                25%

Mitt Romney                                 21%

Newt Gingrich                              10%

Rom Paul                                       8%

RICK PERRY                                 6%

Michele Bachamann                      2%

Rick Santorum                               1%

Jon Huntsman                               1%

What do these numbers tell us?  More about what’s happening behind the scenes than in front of the cameras.

Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum?  OFF THE STAGE.  Michele Bachmann?  She will fight it out for honor in Iowa, but no matter how beautifully the Congresswoman masks the difficulties of her organization, it’s hurting.  Michele Bachmann is smart and she is a bulldog, but she can’t be everywhere.  Her campaign manager, Ed Rollins, threw his hands up and quit and took his people with him.  Bachmann has had to shut down revolts in two separate statewide campaign offices.  Now, she’s digging in and just trying to hold on for Iowa.  Bachmann might cut her losses and consider it a win to have been mostly successful on the national stage.

Rick Perry has sunk to 6% in the polls after starting out ahead of the steady Mitt Romney.  Perhaps his last minute economic plan will lift him?  Perry is the only candidate with any real money to challenge former

Governor Romney in New Hampshire or any other state, but Perry just brings no confidence to the national stage.  We WANT to support him, we WANT him to have the answers, but in each and every debate, Texas Governor Perry seems a foot wide and an inch deep.

Herman Cain….is riding a wave this week.  However, he has little money coming in.  Cain is outstanding in plain-speak, but he gets agitated and impatient when seriously challenged.  Herman Cain has great ideas, but he is lean on government experience and rich on talk radio experience.  We like what he is contributing to the discourse, but anyone who believes that America can keep the streetlights on with 9- 9- 9-, is dreaming.  Herman Cain is going to play a role, but it might be as Vice President.

Finally,  Mitt Romney, like a steady horse holding to the inside,  is waiting out the opposition.  The longer pundits and viewers scrutinize Rick Perry’s Christmas Tree economic plan, and Cain’s unrealistic 9 – 9 – 9 plan, the more it will become obvious that Mitt Romney is the only GOP candidate with the tool box to fix the U.S. economy.

Republican Primary voters will have to set aside their misgivings and focus once and for all on cleaning out The White House.

Insiders, big national funders, political strategists in the GOP and the Democratic Party know it’s just a matter of time before Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are staring across at each other on a stage with Anderson Cooper trying his hardest to appear…..as if he is undecided.

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Filed under: Economy, Featured, Inside The KC, Politics, Sonja Eddings Brown by Sonja Eddings Brown, Oct 25, 2011