Perry ante su primer debate

Observadores, estrategas y antiguos rivales opinan en The Daily Beast y POLITICO.com de lo que puede esperarse de Rick Perry mañana en su primer debate.

Wayne Slater, reportero del Dallas Morning News:

“He’s fairly aggressive. He never backs down, or rarely backs down. He’s going to try to look very confident. Sometimes he’ll smile and smirk. One of the problems with that is that it reminds people of what they don’t like about Texas—the perception of these arrogant cowboy-type guys. There’s a danger there.”

Paul Begala, estratega electoral de Clinton en 1992:

“He is a superior debater. I think he’s got more political talent than anyone in the field, except potentially Bachmann. He’s way better than Romney.”

John Feehery, estratega republicano:

“He’s going to face the toughest questions over his comments on Social Security and some of his other crazy comments like Bernanke. He has to try to seem more credible than he’s been to more rational Republicans.”

Dan Schnur, director del Instituto de Política de la University of Southern California:

“The bar for Perry is not that high. As long as he doesn’t melt down in the face of his opponents’ challenges, the debate probably doesn’t do much to harm him. Perry doesn’t need a knockout to survive the debate. All he needs is a split decision.”

Chris Bell, rival de Perry en las elecciones a Gobernador de 2006:

“It all depends which Rick Perry shows up. In 2006, most people agreed that he showed up prepared and did fine. Then you fast forward to the Republican primary debate in 2010 and most people thought that was a really poor performance. If that Rick Perry shows up, he could be in a lot of trouble and do a lot of damage to his campaign.”