After watching Mitt Romney move back into the lead in the polls and seeing Herman Cain surge ahead of Rick Perry in the last two weeks, the eight major Republican hopefuls for the White House gather for a debate tonight at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
Can they shake things up even more?
After three debates in September, this is the first of two forums in October; the candidates will also verbally duke it out next week in Las Vegas.
In the last three debates, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was the punching bag for the others and those attacks, along with Perry's uneven debate performance, sent him downward in the GOP polls.
Will the Republicans turn tonight more on Mitt Romney? What about Herman Cain? There are a number of story lines still to be explored in this GOP race.
First, let's remind everyone how much the GOP battle has changed since the last debate in Orlando on September 22:
- Rick Perry was the frontrunner in a Bloomberg poll taken just before that debate - Perry had 26% to 22% for Romney. Michele Bachmann was at 9, Ron Paul 8, with Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain at 4%.
- On Monday, Bloomberg released a new poll to set up Tuesday's debate in New Hampshire which showed Romney at 24%, Cain 16, Perry 13, Paul 6, Bachmann 4 and Gingrich at 3.
- A new Gallup poll released Monday showed things even tighter, with Romney at 20%, followed by Cain at 18 and Perry at 15. Cain continues to do things his way - I think this will only be the second time he's been in New Hampshire since a debate there in June. He hasn't been to Iowa since August. Will Cain be a target tonight for any of those on the second tier? It will be interesting to see. When Romney was the leader, no one laid a glove on him in a June or August GOP debate at all - maybe that will change tonight. Romney's debating skills are certainly better than four years ago, when he looked and sounded awkward at times. You can count on him having a few good zingers, and has shown the willingness to engage Rick Perry in the last three debates. As for Perry, he supposedly has been doing more debate prep for this debate, which will be his fourth since joining the GOP field. Perry has also has some good moments, taking on Romney and others. But the Texas Governor has also had some head-shaking times as well, when he got himself into a few verbal cul-de-sacs that prompted comparisons to George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush. If this debate stays just on the economy, that could help Perry, so that he doesn't have to re-live his battles over immigration policy and the HPV vaccine that dogged him in the last three debates. There will be another debate next Tuesday night in Las Vegas. Iowa is less than three months away.
