I've been away for a while and sick with an eye infection. It seems much has gone on. Perry's blank out on stage. Cain's today. Newt Gingrich's rise in the polls. The primaries haven't really begun, but the candidates' prospects keep shifting. Newt has always been great at showing off his knowledge of history and dispensing red meat to the base, but he tends to be arrogant, which is the opposite of leadership. He's a great debater and I like the way he refuses to accept the assumptions underlying many of the questions from the media, but he can't help being arrogant, and I'm not sure that his penchant for new ideas is really what we need.