Mitt Romney and Rick Perry Face off in GOP Debate
BLITZER: All right, anticipation already building right now for the next faceoff among the Republican presidential candidates. CNN will host the western Republican presidential debate next Tuesday, October 18, 8:00 p.m. eastern. Listen to some of the sparring in the debate last night between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. The subject, health care. Rick Perry pressed Mitt Romney.</s>GOV. RICK PERRY (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My question for you would be how would you respond to his criticism of your signature legislative achievement?</s>MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The great thing about running for president is you get the chance the talk about your experience as governor, and I'm proud of the fact we took on a major problem. We have the lowest number of kids uninsured in America. You have the highest. I'm still speaking. I'm still speaking. We have -- we have less than one percent of our kids that are uninsured. You have a million kids uninsured in Texas. Under President Bush, the percentage uninsured went down. Under your leadership it's gone up.</s>BLITZER: Let's bring in our chief political analyst Gloria Borger. Gloria, I think by all accounts Mitt Romney once again did a pretty good job last night.</s>GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: He did. "I'm still speaking." How did you like that? What he did was turned a weakness, which is his Massachusetts health care plan, into an attack. When he was asked about it by Rick Perry, he was very strong about it. I spoke with some Republican strategists today who said, look, it's become clear that if you want someone who can go toe to toe with Barack Obama in a debate, that it looks more and more like it's Mitt Romney. And again, what was interesting was he admitted that he supported for example the bank bailouts, which is not a popular position among conservatives. But he feels clearly that he's got to admit what he supports, and that if they don't like it, they can go somewhere else. But increasingly, it looks like there's nowhere else to go. And that's why David Axelrod of the Obama campaign had a conference call with reporters today in which he took on Mitt Romney. It's clear they've moved from this primary to the general, and they think Mitt Romney is the person they're going to be running against.</s>BLITZER: Rick Perry's performance last night by almost all accounts, not so fabulous.</s>BORGER: Well, he needed really to have a good performance. He didn't have it. He was given an opportunity to lay out his economic plan. And what he did was he said, well, I have a plan on energy, and then proceeded not to give you the details of his energy plan. So this is not his best format. And what was strange was that he had released a very brutal web ad earlier in the week about Mitt Romney, attacking Mitt Romney on health care reform, and then he seemed kind of oddly passive in this debate and let it continue kind of while he sort of sit back. So not a very strong performance.</s>BLITZER: And really for the first time Herman Cain came under attack.</s>BORGER: He did. His nine-nine-nine plan, which we heard over 20 times being mentioned, nine percent personal tax rate, nine corporate rate, nine percent national sales tax. Republicans don't like a national sales tax. They don't believe that the personal tax rate is going to be contained to nine percent. I think Herman Cain is now in a different tier of this campaign and he's got to be able to handle these attacks better than he did last night. He also can't say things like "I have no facts to back this up, but -- " He has to start having the facts So we'll see how he does in our debate in Las Vegas.</s>BLITZER: Next Tuesday night, 8:00 p.m. Gloria, thanks very much.</s>BORGER: Sure.</s>BLITZER: Millions of BlackBerry users not only in the United State but around the world practically on every continent are victims now to a mass three-day service outage, but now some possible, possible good news. Let's bring in our Silicon Valley correspondent, Dan Simon. He's got the very latest. What's the latest, Dan?</s>DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, first of all, this has been a problem of the highest magnitude for RIM, the maker of BlackBerry. It appears that service is being restored to some users here in the United States, but the company has yet to put out a statement saying that the problem is over. We should tell you that at this point, they say they don't know what the problem is. They know that there's some kind of issue with its key infrastructure, but they haven't said what has caused that outage. I want you to listen now to what a senior manager said earlier today. Take a look.</s>STEPHEN BATES, RIM'S UK MANAGING DIRECTOR: Also I'd like to say that we fully understand the frustration our customers are feeling on the delays on the messaging and</s>SIMON: Well, it looks like service is coming back online again for some users here in the United States, but this has been a PR nightmare for this company. As we all know, RIM has suffered some severe declines in its user base. They're losing to ground to Android's -- to Google's Android system and of course to Apple with the iPhone. The iPhone releasing a new version coming on Friday. And look, if people are on the fence, they might be thinking twice about purchasing another BlackBerry product -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: It's a nightmare for -- certainly for BlackBerry, for RIM, its manufacturer, but certainly for millions of people who don't have their e-mail service. All right, Dan. We'll stay in close touch with you. Thanks very much. When we come back, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, will talk about this alleged -- alleged Iranian plot to blow up the Israeli embassy here in Washington.