2012 will hinge on jobs-focused swing voters who are in no mood to revisit the still-popular New Deal-era program during a time of economic uncertainty. Many thinking Republicans and Conservatives believe that Social Security and Medicare reform should be handled with great care

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Rick Perry may be suicide for the Republican Party, Mitt Romney may have better possibilities to attract the center and independents ( but only in case that the Economy is in poor shape and that unemployment is not diminshed in 2012 ).

Those prudent conservatives and republicans will vote for Mitt Romney, the extremists and crazies will vote for Rick Perry in the Primaries. And prudent and cautious Analysts and Strategists of both parties may acknowledge that competing against Barack Obama with Extremism and Emotion is a suicide for the Republican Party.

POLITICO.COM
At Reagan debate, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry place big bets on GOP direction
By JONATHAN MARTIN & BEN SMITH
September 8, 2011

At Reagan debate, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry place big bets on GOP direction


Some excerpts :

Perry’s bet is on a conservative, confrontational and mad-as-hell Republican Party. Romney’s is that GOP activists want, above all, to win and will come to recognize that nominating the Texas governor would be an act of political suicide.

The divide between the two men reflects an ongoing debate that’s splitting the Republican Party both on the campaign trail and beyond it. Some of its leaders, looking back at the 2010 midterm elections, believe that the party – and the nation – are ready to gorge on red meat as never before. The American people, goes this line of thinking, recognize that entitlements must be addressed and that old-style demagoguery over the issue has become less effective.

Others believe deeply that the laws of political gravity still apply - that Social Security and Medicare reform must be handled with great care, if at all, and that 2012 will hinge on jobs-focused swing voters who are in no mood to revisit the still-popular New Deal-era program during a time of economic uncertainty. The divide is both strategic and ideological, and as Romney and Perry emerge clearly as the party’s two presidential poles on the issue, it will take on an even higher profile than it did during the punishing debate over Paul Ryan’s budget proposal.

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What’s crazy, say gleefully incredulous Romney aides, is nominating a GOP candidate who thinks that “by any measure Social Security is a failure.”

“The Republican Party has to defend the position of the nominee,” said top Romney adviser Stuart Stevens. “Every House candidate that runs, every Senate candidate that runs, would have to run on the Perry plan to kill Social Security.”

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Romney and some establishment Republicans believe such talk offers the makings of a Goldwater-style landslide loss in a general election and will even stop Perry from capturing the Florida Republican primary.

“Our nominee has to be somebody who isn’t committed to abolishing Social Security,” Romney said in the debate.

Alex Castellanos, who is now unaligned but worked against Perry in 2006, said electability-minded Republicans would come away scared following Wednesday’s performance.

“Rick Perry did not alienate the GOP base of primary voters tonight, but he didn’t show them an electable Republican who can win the middle, independents and soccer moms, and that is essential if a Republican is going to defeat Barack Obama,” said Castellanos. “If he begins to lose steam in head-to-head [polling] matchups with Obama, he becomes Bachmann, just another conservative who can’t beat Obama.”

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