It?s hard to dispute that Rick Perry?s he-hired-an-illegal-immigrant attack on Mitt Romney was a cheap shot.
It?s even harder to dispute that it worked beautifully.
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Put aside the fact that Perry?s broadside was recycled, and barely relevant to the debate. Just focus on the raw politics of it.
The Perry campaign went into the debate well aware that it needed to accomplish a number of objectives, including rattling Romney, displaying toughness and turning the coverage away from scrutiny of Perry?s stumbling ? sometimes bumbling ? debate performances.
Mission accomplished.
It wasn?t pretty, but by taking a health care question and spinning it into a surprise attack on whether Romney knowingly employed illegal immigrants for lawn work, Perry achieved all three objectives. Just look at the numbers.
* A Google news search turns up more than 7,000 mentions of the exchange.
* On Fox, the favorite of GOP primary voters, Sean Hannity opened his post-debate segment with the accusation. The charge echoed the next hour on Greta Van Susteren?s show, where Sarah Palin was the guest. Over the next 24 hours, the charge was mentioned in more than 40 segments across cable.
* Last night, the exchange was mentioned on the CBS, NBC and ABC evening news, with ABC?s George Stephanopoulos telling ?World News? viewers that Perry?s accusation was ?the most important exchange of the debate.?
?Some of the slick washed off Mitt Romney,? Perry press secretary Mark Miner said. ?It clearly caught him off guard. He became very agitated and confrontational. It highlights the mistrust that primary voters have for him and shows he is not comfortable with his own past.?
Romney advisers called Perry?s comments an obvious effort to distract from his own problems on the immigration issue. They contend that the story will be short-lived ? of more interest to reporters than voters.
Kevin Madden, an informal adviser to the Romney campaign who was national press secretary in 2008, said the media ?will always obsess over conflicts like this ? it was definitely their favorite part of the debate. The question is: Will voters, when their No. 1 issue is the economy??
Madden called the widespread coverage of Perry?s charge ?emblematic of the divide between what reporters think is the story coming out of the debate and what voters are focused on.?
Time will tell.
The frenzy stems for an old story from 2006: that Romney?s lawn maintenance company had illegal immigrants working on his property. The Boston Globe reported this to Romney and then in its pages ? and he promised to look into the matter. A year later, the Globe found the company continued to employ illegal immigrants who were tending to Romney?s yard.
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