Could Rick Perry be "the one" for Republicans?

By Matthew Barrett
^{Follow Matthew on Twitter}

US Republicans are having a tough time considering who their candidate should be for the 2012 Presidential election. 

Mitt Romney is the current front-runner, but has a ceiling of support at around 35-40% of the vote. He is fatally hamstrung, however, by the healthcare law he passed when he was Governor of Massachusetts, which many Republicans compare to the federal healthcare law ("Obamacare") which they fiercely oppose and are desperate to repeal. He is also a Mormon, which largely makes him unable to connect with the evangelical Christians who make up a sizeable chunk of the Republican Party.

Michele Bachmann, who entered the race to become the party's nominee relatively recently, has created a lot of excitement, and started coming second in polls. Despite her lack of a record to point to (she has been representing Minnesota's 6th Congressional district for four years) and lack of executive experience, the excitement around her is understandable. She's the first candidate really to start vocally challenging President Obama, she's a Tea Partier, and she gets media coverage. 

American conservatives are challenged to move outside the 'movement cocoon'

As part of a New York Times feature on the health of US conservatism, a concern was expressed that American conservatives are listening too much to each other:

"Another new-generation conservative, Ross Douthat, argues that “Reagan was right for his time, but now it’s a different time.” Mr. Douthat, 28, and Reihan Salam are the authors of a new book, “The Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.” Mr. Douthat says that social conservatives have gotten stuck and need to move beyond their focus on gay marriage and abortion — a focus, he said, that does nothing to help a single African-American mother trying to raise a family. Instead, conservatives need to “figure out a way to talk about the problem of family breakdown and the extent to which that’s linked to social mobility, economic troubles.

In his eyes, while the network of research groups and journals helped build conservatism, it has also contributed to its stagnation. “Conservatives have always criticized the liberal establishment” — universities, magazines, organizations — for a “tendency toward cocooning,” Mr. Douthat said. Now, it is conservatives who are cocooning, talking only to each other and not looking around for new ideas.

There was this tremendous generation of intellectuals who came of age in the ’70s and ’80s, but I think there’s been some difficulty in establishing a new generation,” Mr. Douthat said. “On the right, a lot of them did their best work 20 years ago.”