GOP DEBATE

Romney Bests Perry

Candidates to mainly maintain status quo.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney squeaked out ahead of Texas Gov. Rick Perry in Thursday night’s Fox News/Google Republican debate. The debate questions were mainly aimed toward the two frontrunners, while the other candidates tried to stay alive with retorts and zingers. Romney and Perry took things to a new level by attacking each other’s books, each claiming that the other had swayed from the words in their books. Bachmann tried to backtrack from her controversial comments that the HPV vaccine caused a young girl to become "mentally retarded" and blame Perry for being in pharmaceutical companies’ pockets. For the most part, the candidates stuck to their positions and left few opinions changed. The debate’s newcomer, Gary Johnson, having just cracked the 1 percent support threshold, got one of the biggest responses of the night with the joke that “the next-door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration.”