Believe it or not, it's only been 2 1/2 weeks since Rick Perry entered the GOP race for President, but his strong start clearly shows that Mitt Romney has been taking up a lot of space, but not capitalizing on his previous front-runner status.
A Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday morning shows the Texas Governor leading Romney by a 24-18 spread, just the latest national poll that shows that for now, Perry has supplanted Romney in the hearts of the majority of Republican primary voters nationally.
And though Democrats keep on saying they'd prefer Perry to Romney in a general election, it's hard to see how that would make a difference with the public continuing to give Obama low marks.
This article appears in Aug 25-31, 2011.