GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry may have hemmed, hawed and stammered his way through policy statements during Tuesday night's debate, but his overall performance didn't hurt his candidacy, as it did in the past, Jamelle Bouie blogs at the American Prospect. He says that while the Texas governor is still a bad debater, he was able to stay on track enough to throw Mitt Romney off his game. 

Rick Perry is still a bad debater. At last night's Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, he hemmed, hawed, and stammered his way through policy statements and attack lines. But for the first time since entering the race, that wasn’t a detriment to his overall performance. Perry didn't win the debate, but he didn't lose it either. More important, he achieved his main goal: throwing Mitt Romney off of his game.

From the beginning, Perry went after Romney's credentials as a conservative. "I'm Texas Governor Rick Perry, a proven job-creator and a man who is about economic growth, an authentic conservative, not a conservative of convenience," he said, introducing himself to the crowd. Later, Perry joined Rick Santorum's attacks on Romney's former support for Massachusetts's health-care reform, and in the most explosive exchange of the evening, accused the former Massachusetts governor of knowingly employing undocumented workers.

"Mitt, you lose all of your standing, from my perspective," Perry said, "because you hired illegals in your home, and you knew about it for a year. And the idea that you stand here before us and talk about that you're strong on immigration is on its face the height of hypocrisy."

Read Jamelle Bouie's entire blog entry at the American Prospect.

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