Seven Conclusions From Tea Party Debate

Politico has created a list of seven assessments drawn from Monday’s GOP presidential debate, ranging from praise of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to criticism of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

1. “Mitt Romney came prepared. He did not make any real mistakes, and he managed to land some blows on Perry.

2. “Rick Perry did not come prepared. He went for a more subdued approach — but it turns out that being calm doesn’t totally agree with Perry, whose appeal is rooted in his no-holds-barred approach.

3. “Michele Bachmann’s still got game. It still not clear that there’s a path to victory, but Bachmann at least put herself back in the game Monday night.

4. “Rick Santorum is stepping it up. Santorum is not going to break into the top-tier without massively over-performing in the Iowa caucuses. By tag-teaming with Bachmann on the HPV vaccine question, he moved one small step closer to that goal by dinging Perry.

5. “Ron Paul 2.0 isn’t all that different than the original version. For all the focus on how the Texas congressman is running a different race this time around, he is still the same libertarian iconoclast who is unwilling to modulate his views.

6. “Jon Huntsman can’t quite read a room. One of Huntsman’s more memorable lines was an attempted joke about the title of Romney’s book ‘No Apology,’ which he pretended to confuse with the deceased rocker Kurt Cobain’s song ‘All Apologies.’ He paused after he delivered the line, waiting for the audience laugh, but the moment was met with silence by a crowd that didn’t seem to get it.

7. “Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain are non-factors. After two debates in a row playing the media scold, the former House Speaker instead shifted into a mostly genial, elder statesman mode. Cain, meanwhile, played mostly for laughs.”