The Duel
The battle between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry explodes at the GOP presidential debate.
Early in the evening Newt Gingrich complained when the moderators tried to get him to engage in the debate over whether Romney or Perry has a better health care record. "I'm frankly not interested in your efforts to get Republicans fighting each other," Gingrich said. "Whoever the nominee is, we're all for defeating Barack Obama." That's a shame, because Gingrich has interesting views on health care, and it would have been useful to air them. There are four more debates in the next six weeks. Let's hope that Gingrich's opponents, like the voters, don't listen to him and continue to actually debate each other.
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John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at slatepolitics@gmail.com. Read his series on the presidency and his series on risk. Follow him on Twitter.
Photograph of Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images.