Thought #1:
Rick Perry is having to spend some of his impressive haul ($17 million in the last quarter, I believe) on paid media because his attempts to move up via earned media (interviews, debates, public events, etc) have seen him move in the opposite direction.

In one sense, it should be no surprise that debates seem to have been his downfall. While running for re-election in Texas, he explicitly refused to debate his Democratic opponent, calculating that no good could come of it. Well… apparently, he had a point. He’s just not very good at it.

Thought #2
Herman Cain is just the flavor of the month. Even if the conservative right/Tea Party coalesces around him, he just lacks the resources and the campaign nous to pull it off. He doesn’t have a staff and he isn’t ticking off the boxes in those early primary states (mainly Iowa and South Carolina; Romney appears to have New Hampshire locked up and Cain isn’t the right kind of candidate to knock him off, unless something very unexpected happens).

A campaign doesn’t just happen. A winning candidate doesn’t just happen. You still need a good team behind you and Cain doesn’t have that and isn’t moving to put that together. Even Ron Paul has a legitimate operation of some kind; it’s not the best in the biz, but it’s not nothing. Cain’s is very close to nothing.

Thought #3
Romney thinks he has this wrapped up.

How can you tell? Did you watch the debate?

Hedging his bets on the financial bailout, talking about his success in covering uninsured children? Those a general election points. He gave a general election debate appearance, not a primary election one.

At the immediate previous GOP debate, people cheered at the mention of a young man dying for lack of health insurance. Talking about one’s success at covering more children and criticizing an opponent (Perry) for having one million uninsured children in his state is not a talking point aimed at the crowd in the room. It was targeted at a general election audience.

You only do this when you think you have things locked and feel comfortable pivoting to the general election.

His biggest challenger, Perry, has seen his support collapse. And he knows as well as I do that Cain is not a serious threat. Heck, he wants Cain to do well. Cain isn’t a danger to Romney; his rising poll numbers are a buffer, sucking oxygen from the campaigns of people like Perry, who potentially could be (could have been?) a real challenge.