E.J. Dionne's post-debate "hunch" is spot on:
Cain will take a hit in the polls and some of his support may go back to Perry, where it appears to have come from.
If any phenomenon has demonstrated the erratic superficiality of the far-right/tea party vote, it's Cain, who followed Perry, who followed Bachmann, who followed Trump in transient popularity. For tea partiers are as children, fascinated by toylike splash and shine, and always ready to leap to the next political bauble.
Yet Cain's momentary appeal possessed deep historical roots. The pizza guy shrewdly underscored the simplicity of his 9-9-9 plan, and ever since Barry Goldwater's '64 dictum that "The big trouble with the so-called liberal today is that he doesn't understand simplicity," the far right's journey to love and embrace even the most preposterous versions of simplicity has been a long and devoted one.
In Cain, they found a voice as shallow as their comprehension.
Cain's blunder? That final "9" -- the one that more than doubles most states' sales tax. Had Cain nixed the triad and gone with a duet, he might have survived his fellow rightists' assaults. It goes without saying that the rest of his plan is idiotically unworkable as well, but that never stopped the right-wing horrors of Reaganomics or W.'s balanced-budgets-through-higher-spending-and-revenue-gutting.