LAS VEGAS Unlikely Republican front-runner Herman Cain faces close scrutiny on Tuesday when the party's hopefuls for president in 2012 debate in a gambling city famed for separating winners from losers. 
 
 Cain will be in the spotlight when candidates face off in a CNN-sponsored debate in Las Vegas at 8 p.m. eastern time, but his is not the only significant storyline. 
 
 Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has to sell himself to conservative voters who have been looking for an alternative. 
 
 Many political experts believe Romney will ultimately be the Republican nominee to face Democratic President Barack Obama next year, but he has a long way to go yet. 
 
 Texas Governor Rick Perry, a staunch conservative, has to prove he can hold his own on stage with his main rivals after four shaky debate performances that knocked him out of the front-runner position. 
 
 Cain, a former Godfather's Pizza chief executive and motivational speaker, has shot to the top of polls of Republican voters based on the simplicity of his "9-9-9" proposal to overhaul the U.S. tax code. 
 
 Experts have questioned whether his idea to cut personal income and corporate taxes to 9 percent, while creating a 9-percent national sales tax, would in fact raise taxes on lower- and middle-income Americans, hurting the most needy. 
 
 Although he is seen as a much-needed fresh face in politics with an inspirational style, Cain could run into problems as his economic plan, absence of foreign policy credentials and lack of governing experience, get more attention. 
 
 "The '9-9-9' plan may communicate well, but as people take a closer look, they'll realize that more work needs to be done," Romney told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an interview published on Tuesday. 
 
 A longshot candidate, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, hinted on Monday he may raise some questions about Cain's 9-9-9 plan. 
 
 "It's not as clean as he would like to make it out to be," Santorum told Radio Iowa. "I give him credit for bringing some innovative ideas, but just because it's innovative and bold doesn't mean it's good." 
 
 "NOT PART OF THE PROCESS" 
 
 Jennifer Duffy, an expert at the non-partisan Cook Political Report, said Cain is the latest to benefit from conservatives looking for someone other than Romney because they have doubts about the depth of his conservative beliefs. 
 
 "Part of Cain's appeal is that he is not part of the process, he's not a politician," said Duffy. "He's a very plain-speaking guy ... He's the only one out there now who actually has a 'new' idea." 
 
 Conservatives had first been captivated by Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and then Perry before flocking to the Cain camp, an example of the wide-open nature of the race to find a Republican nominee with less than three months to go until voting in primary elections starts. 
 
 Romney has had steady debate performances throughout and retains solid support in polls. Republican strategist Scott Reed said he needs to show he is a "good strong conservative." 
 
 Romney told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Republicans will be persuaded to take his side based on his experience and a 59-point plan to turn the economy around. 
 
 "I hope that as people take a closer look at my record and my vision, they'll say, 'That's the guy for us,'?" Romney told the newspaper. 
 
 Perry has the task of recapturing the excitement when he first announced his candidacy two months ago. His debates, plus a position favoring college tuition assistance for illegal immigrants, has hurt him among conservatives. 
 
 Perry told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that voters would swing his way when they "take a look at who it is on that stage that is conservative, that's always been conservative and that has a record of job creation." 
 
 (Additional reporting by Kay Henderson; Editing by John O'Callaghan and Paul Simao) ||||| Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a fan of Herman Cain, but not necessarily of his “9-9-9” economic plan. 
 
 
 
 Gingrich, who’s vying for the Republican presidential nomination, noted on Sunday that in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire, there is no state sales tax, so voters there would be paying much more under the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO’s proposal. Cain’s plan would set a national sales tax rate, corporate tax rate and an income tax rate of 9 percent. 
 
 
 
 "If Herman figures out how to do it all right and if he can explain a 9 percent sales tax so people decide they want it, he has a good chance to be the nominee," Gingrich told CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.” "If, however, in New Hampshire, for example, where they have no sales tax at all and no mechanism for collecting it, or in Iowa where senior citizens are going to say, wait a second, as my 79-year-old mother-in-law said on her Social Security, in her fixed income she's now going to pay 9 percent more?" 
 
 
 
 "As people look at 9-9-9 and disaggregate it, it gets to be a lot harder sale, I think," Gingrich added. 
 
 
 
 Gingrich also played strategist, saying that Mitt Romney has hit a “natural ceiling” of support among Republican primary voters and that Texas Gov. Rick Perry probably would’ have gotten the nod had he not faltered in recent debates. 
 
 
 
 “Perry was the natural alternative to Romney and, if Perry had a flawless campaign, he would’ve been the nominee,” Gingrich said. 
 
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 Technorati ||||| Call this one the stay-on-message debate. 
 
 The candidates stuck to their talking points in Hanover, N.H.. The moderators focused narrowly on the subject of the economy. Herman Cain talked about his “9-9-9” plan – a lot. 
 
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 In an exceedingly well-mannered debate, it was Cain and his catch phrase-driven campaign that drew much of the attention on stage. 
 
 Cain has thrilled Republican primary voters with his proposal to toss out the U.S. tax code and replace it with 9 percent taxes on business, income and sales. And with the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO riding high in the polls, for the first time, some of his opponents tried to blunt his political momentum. 
 
 “How many people here are for a sales tax in New Hampshire?” Rick Santorum asked the debate audience at Dartmouth College, drawing little response. “There you go, Herman. That’s how many votes you’ll get in New Hampshire.” 
 
 Jon Huntsman was also dismissive of Cain’s plan, jabbing: “I thought it was the price of a pizza.” 
 
 Michele Bachmann even joked that turning the “9-9-9” plan upside down would show that “the devil is in the details” – a crack about the symbolic sign of the symbolic satanic number “666.” 
 
 Cain was unflappable, saying that his opponents were thinking too small. 
 
 “They want to pass what they think they can get passed, rather than what we need, which is a bold solution,” he said. 
 
 Compared to the Republican presidential debate season, however, the Washington Post/Bloomberg News debate was a polite, substantive affair lacking in the kind of moments likely to change the direction of the GOP primary. 
 
 And for all the expectations that Cain would come under a harsher spotlight Tuesday, thanks to his Florida straw poll victory and swift rise in national polls, the businessman did not appear to break a sweat. 
 
 Nor did any of the other presidential candidates, a group rounded out by Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich. 
 
 A placid debate like this one is most helpful to Romney, who has regained his national frontrunner as Perry has stumbled in the polls. The former Massachusetts governor won a high-profile endorsement earlier Tuesday from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie – a development likely to overshadow the low-drama debate. 
 
 After three back-to-back debates featuring harsh attacks between Romney and Perry, the two avoided each other for nearly the entire evening. 
 
 In the only direct exchange between the two, Perry challenged Romney to defend his Massachusetts health care law from charges that it’s identical to the Democratic-backed Affordable Care Act. 
 
 Romney said he was “proud” of his universal health care law and fired back a well prepared jab at Perry’s own health care record. 
 
 “We have the lowest number of kids uninsured … of any state in America,” Romney said. “You have the highest.” 
 
 He continued: “We have less than 1 percent of our kids who are uninsured. You have a million kids.” 
 
 Perry’s performance may have been most notable for the swipe he didn’t take. When one of the moderators pressed Romney to defend the 2008 Wall Street bailouts – which Romney supported and Perry opposed – the Texas governor didn’t jump in. 
 
 Indeed, Perry seemed content to run out the clock on the debate, which was the second to last in the five-debate series that started after Labor Day. 
 
 His campaign has hinted that Perry intends to gain his footing against Romney over a longer period of time and outside the format of debates. The Texas governor, who raised $17 million last quarter, may find paid media to be a more useful campaign tool. 
 
 Even without pressure from Perry, Romney defended the Troubled Assets Relief Program as an imperfect fix for a country “on the precipice [of] a complete meltdown of our entire financial system.” 
 
 “Was it perfect? No,” said Romney, adding: “Should they have used the funds to bail out General Motors and Chrysler? No, that was the wrong source for that funding.” 
 
 That last comment could have resonance in a general election, when Democrats will seek to portray Republicans as hostile to the auto industry on which several Midwestern states depend. 
 
 In the context of the GOP primary, the consequences are likely to be minimal. 
 
 What’s more, Cain stepped in to back up Romney’s position on TARP, which he also supported. 
 
 “The implementation was at fault,” Cain said. ||||| In a campaign chock full of unbelievable storylines, none was more remarkable than the rise of Herman Cain. 
 
 
 
 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain bowed out of the 2012 presidential race on Saturday in Atlanta. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro) 
 
 That Cain — on the strength of his speaking ability and the curb appeal of his “9-9-9” economic plan — spent more than a month as a leading candidate in the race for the Republican nomination provides a telling window into the mood of the GOP electorate on the verge of 2012. 
 
 That Cain collapsed in a heap of allegations of sexual impropriety and titanic levels of muddled messaging — all of which culminated in his decision to suspend his campaign Saturday — is proof that an unconventional approach to politics can only get you so far. 
 
 “To a base desperate to support change, a fresh face with exciting marketing sizzle but real problems handling policy substance ended up like most new network sitcoms: an interesting concept that gets great ratings early but is cancelled by midseason because the same thing happens over and over with no plot development, even while a dwindling viewership keeps rooting for the show to somehow make it to renewal,” explained Eric Ueland, a prominent Republican strategist. 
 
 Steve Schmidt, who managed Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential race, offered a far harsher assessment of the Cain moment. 
 
 “That Cain’s candidacy was taken seriously for longer than a nano-second in a time of genuine crisis for the country raises fundamental questions about the health of the political process and the Republican party,” Schmidt said. 
 
 At the heart of Cain’s attractiveness to Republican primary voters were two concepts: simplicity and unconventionality. 
 
 Cain’s much-discussed — by him — “9-9-9” plan was the essence of simplicity. Scrapping the current tax code, which is universally loathed by Republicans, and replacing it with a 9 percent corporate tax, 9 percent income tax and 9 percent national sales tax has inherent political appeal. 
 
 It’s easy. It seems to make sense. And for a party desperately looking for new ideas around which to rally, “9-9-9” seemed to be a perfect fit. 
 
 Cain’s “9-9-9” plan also reinforced the other key element of his campaign: his un­or­tho­dox approach to just about everything. 
 
 Cain proudly touted the fact that he was the only candidate in the race who had never held elected office before — though he had served in a decidedly D.C. job as head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s — and that he would bring the perspective of a businessman and an outsider to the process. He was “bold” he told Republican voters, willing to say and do things that his more cautious (read: political) opponents never would. (How true that wound up being.) 
 
 The Republican base, sick of politics-as-usual as practiced by both parties in Washington, loved Cain’s I-am-not-a-politician riff and were, for a time, willing to overlook his occasional flights of rhetorical fancy because, after all, he was touting himself as the unconventional candidate in the field. 
 
 “Herman Cain in many ways represented the same qualities that attracted voters to people like [2010 Delaware Senate candidate] Christine O’Donnell,” said Republican senior strategist Terry Nelson. “They thought he would shake things up, and that’s what they want.” 
 
 But then Cain blew up (in a good way). And that led to a blow up (in a very bad way). 
 
 The simplicity of “9-9-9” turned out to be over-simplification — watch Cain try to explain how his plan wouldn’t raise taxes in an interview on “Meet the Press” with David Gregory — and Cain’s unconventional approach to politics ensured that he had no ability (or willingness) to build a coordinated response against the charges of sexual harassment and an extramarital affair that were leveled at him once he became a top-tier candidate. 
 
 So, what does the race look like with Cain gone from it? 
 
 In truth, the contest had been moving on — and away — from Cain for the better part of the last month. “Whatever his departure means to the race that’s already happened, it happened a few days ago,” mused one GOP strategist. 
 
 The obvious beneficiary from Cain’s slow-motion collapse is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who rose rapidly as his fellow Georgian’s support cratered. 
 
 “Cain’s exit allows Newt the opportunity to coalesce the anti- [Mitt] Romney, conservative base in Iowa and South Carolina, endangering Romney’s path to the nomination,” theorized one adviser to another candidate in the Republican race. (We made a similar case earlier this week.) 
 
 It’s worth noting that the idea of Cain’s departure as a major windfall for Gingrich, while widespread, is not entirely born out by the numbers. A Pew poll conducted before Thanksgiving, for example, showed that Cain supporters split evenly between Romney and Gingrich when asked for their second choice. 
 
 “[Cain’s] absence mostly means Romney’s chances at top two out of Iowa are enhanced,” said one unaligned Republican operative. “And that matters due to perception of momentum coming into New Hampshire.” 
 
 There will also be a scramble among the remaining candidates to harvest the staff and activist talent that Cain had gathered. While Cain’s campaign was, largely, filled with little-known operatives, he did have some well-regarded backers — most notably Kathleen Shanahan, a former senior political aide to then Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. 
 
 But, Cain’s lasting legacy in the contest is almost certain to be his “9-9-9” plan — if not the specifics of it, the sentiment of simplicity behind it. 
 
 “Like or hate ‘9-9-9’, all the candidates now have seen the real and positive reaction you can elicit with a simple, clear, bold proposal that’s easy to understand and repeat,” explained Ueland. 
 
 Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s decision to come out in favor of a flat tax was undoubtedly influenced by the success of Cain’s “9-9-9” plan. Ditto Romney’s focus on his support for cutting spending, capping federal spending and a balanced budget amendment. 
 
 Viewed at the highest possible altitude, what Cain’s candidacy proved was the power — and limits — of simplicity and unconventionality in the Republican contest. 
 
 “When he started, Herman Cain never had any thought that he could win,” explained one adviser to another candidate in the Republican presidential field who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “ He figured he might be able to sell some books and double his speaking fees. Then something great and awful happened, the dog caught the car. And of course, dogs don’t know how to drive cars. So he had no idea what to do with it.” ||||| Herman Cain expressed confidence at Tuesday’s debate that his much-touted “9-9-9” plan to revamp the tax code would pass Congress, but the paid campaign consultant who scored the plan for Cain said the idea was more of a theory than a politically viable solution — and not the route he would suggest himself. 
 
 “You’re trying to go to a system that taxes income once and only once and quits double-taxing savings,” Gary Robbins told POLITICO on Wednesday. “That’s something that can really juice the economy, it’s probably worth 15 percent in growth. … The problem with the big-bang changes like that, the flat tax or the fair tax, is that they are so alien to the current system that it would be a great big shock.” 
 
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 Though Robbins says the plan would work fiscally and economically, he believes people would never accept such drastic changes. 
 
 Cain has repeatedly declined to name the people involved with crafting the plan besides Rich Lowrie, Cain’s chief economic adviser, a Cleveland-based wealth manager for Wells Fargo who is not a trained economist. But it was Robbins, an economist who has worked for Steve Forbes’s flat-tax campaigns and was a longtime Treasury employee, who conducted a 10-page analysis of the plan in September. Robbins found the plan to be revenue neutral, as Cain’s been trumpeting in recent debates and in interviews. 
 
 “Economically, it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with the plan and nothing wrong with the proposal,” Robbins said. “What Cain has done is really smart and saying if you go this route, this is the way to go. He’s done a very good job and the fellows who were beating on him last night were making a mistake.” 
 
 Robbins said he’s performed various economics-related tasks for the campaign. He said he answers questions from Lowrie as recently as this week in response to a scathing Wall Street Journal editorial that picked apart the 9-9-9 plan. 
 
 “They are really technical questions about how you describe things,” Robbins said. “He wanted to make sure he was describing faithfully what was happening.” 
 
 Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon confirmed that Robbins scored the 9-9-9 plan for the campaign but declined to address other questions about him. Lowrie did not immediately respond to emails sent to his personal and campaign accounts. 
 
 Robbins, who with his wife runs an Arlington operation called Fiscal Policy Associates, Inc., was once a senior fellow at the Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation. In 2003, Jude Wanniski, who is credited with coining the phrase “supply-side economics,” wrote in a Washington Times op-ed that Robbins is “arguably the most respected of all supply-side tax experts.” 
 
 Robbins said he served for 16 years in the Treasury Department, leaving in 1985 after working as economist in the Office of Tax Policy and for Ronald Reagan’s assistant secretary for economic affairs. He has a bachelor’s degree in math and physics from Texas Tech University and a master’s degree in economics from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. 
 
 While Robbins praised the idea of 9-9-9, he took steps during an interview to distance himself from its author. 
 
 “It’s not a plan that I concocted,” Robbins said. “There’s nothing wrong with the plan, it just wouldn’t be the one I picked.”
– Sudden GOP frontrunner Herman Cain defended his 9-9-9 tax plan on the talk show circuit today, shooting back at critics who say it would jack taxes for the poor, middle class, and elderly. "There are invisible taxes that are built into everything we buy," said Cain, adding that his plan replaces those "with a 9% visible tax." If people "do the math on their individual situation, I believe more are going to see it's advantageous." Questioned by David Gregory, Cain reaffirmed his February statement that liberals want to "destroy this country" by stunting the business sector, and said that Occupy Wall Street should take their grievances to the White House's door. Cain also shot back at critics questioning his wife's absence from the campaign trail, saying that Gloria Cain "is maintaining the tranquility of (our) family life," and "will be visible at some point, but it'll be based upon when we want her to be visible, not when the powers that be or the media wants her to be visible." Elsewhere on the Sunday dial, as per Politico: John McCain on Obama and creating jobs: “It’s time the president came off the campaign trail, sat down and negotiated with us [on areas of] common ground." McCain on Iran: “I think his policy of engagement with Iran has clearly been a failure. It’s time the American people were told by the president of all of the activities that the Iranians have engaged in." David Axelrod on Mitt Romney: “There’s a question about where his core principles are." Axelrod hammered Romney as a onetime "pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-environment candidate for office and then he decides to run for office and did a 180 on that … time and time again, he shifts.” Newt Gingrich on Cain's 9-9-9 plan: "If Herman figures out how to do it all right and if he can explain a 9% sales tax so people decide they want it, he has a good chance to be the nominee. "If, however, in New Hampshire, for example, where they have no sales tax at all and no mechanism for collecting it ... it gets to be a lot harder sale." Gingrich on his competitors: “Perry was the natural alternative to Romney and, if Perry had a flawless campaign, he would’ve been the nominee."