The measurement of previous public office,loosely termed as experience, has to be off the table now that we have a President who was elected without any experience.
It will be interesting to see how the polls change after last night's debate. Just before the debate the following CNN survey, taken from Friday through Sunday, showed Mitt Romney and Herman Cain essentially tied.
Romney gets 26 percent of the vote, Cain gets 25 percent, and Perry gets 13 percent.
Ron Paul is in fourth place, at 9 percent, Newt Gingrich gets 8 percent, Michele Bachmann 6 percent, Rick Santorum 2 percent and Jon Huntsman 1 percent.
The number of undecideds, including those who would vote for someone else or no one else, is 10 percent - a relatively small number.
So accordingly to CNN the Republican Residential Candidate Tree is looking like this:
I think last night's debate will not change the leader board too much, but the changes will be in this direction: Cain - unchanged or up slightly; Romney - unchanged or down slightly; Perry - down a little; Paul - down a lot; Gingrich - up somewhat and perhaps the bigger winner of this debate; Bachmann - down a little; Santorum - down somewhat, but not because of his performance but due to people's perception that he is too much of a dark horse candidate;
What's that? The poll lists Huntsman, but Johnson's picture appears above? Wait a minute,......Yeah, you're right. Can anybody tell them apart?
