Poll Watch: Where do things stand in the Republican presidential race?

The 2012 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial race has been noth­ing if not enter­tain­ing, as the writ­ers for The Dai­ly Show with Jon Stew­art will undoubt­ed­ly attest.

A new poll com­mis­sioned by Roger Ailes’ Fox Noise net­work, con­duct­ed from Sep­tem­ber 25–27, finds that Mitt Rom­ney is now the fron­trun­ner for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion. The poll showed Rom­ney at 23 per­cent, Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry at 19 per­cent, and for­mer God­fa­ther’s Piz­za CEO Her­man Cain in third with 17 per­cent.  Fox had Per­ry ahead with 29 per­cent almost three weeks ago. At the time, Rom­ney had 22 per­cent, while Her­man Cain was not in the top five.

Next week, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor will take the stage at the annu­al Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit, an event orga­nized by a group of reli­gious right-wing lead­ers and activists. Among those expect­ed to be in atten­dance is Bryan Fis­ch­er, the issues direc­tor of the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, who could prob­a­bly con­tend for the title of most big­ot­ed polit­i­cal oper­a­tive. Here’s Moth­er Jones:

He has said that Mus­lims should be banned from serv­ing in the mil­i­tary; that a whale at Sea World should have been stoned to death for killing its train­er; that inbreed­ing makes Mus­lims stu­pid and vio­lent; and that gay sex is a form of domes­tic ter­ror­ism. So nat­u­ral­ly, he has been invit­ed to speak to a huge gath­er­ing of con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal activists this week­end, along­side such GOP lumi­nar­ies as Rick San­to­rum, Mike Huck­abee, Mitt Rom­ney, Sen. Jim DeMint (R‑S.C.), and Rep. Michele Bach­mann (R‑Minn.).

Rick Per­ry, con­sid­ered by the media to be Rom­ney’s most for­mi­da­ble rival, once talked about Texas seced­ing from the union, but he recent­ly denied ever using the word seces­sion in an appear­ance on Sean Han­ni­ty’s show.

When Han­ni­ty asked why his use of the word was so heav­i­ly report­ed he replied, “I have no idea, to be real hon­est with you, because it was nev­er a real­ly fac­tu­al piece of report­ing. It was shout­ed out by an indi­vid­ual at an event — at a Tea Par­ty, actu­al­ly — and I said ‘Lis­ten, Amer­i­ca is a great coun­try. We have no rea­son why we would ever dis­solve this union.’ ”

Per­ry has also dis­avowed a book he wrote only a few months ago — a con­ser­v­a­tive man­i­festo titled “Fed Up”. A cam­paign spokesman has claimed the book “is not meant to reflect the gov­er­nor’s cur­rent views.” What the spokesman real­ly meant to say is that the book was con­ceived and pub­lished before Per­ry real­ized he want­ed to be a pres­i­den­tial candidate.

Are these guys the best the Repub­li­can Par­ty can do? Their field looks pret­ty weak. No won­der much of the par­ty’s base seems to be pin­ing for anoth­er can­di­date they can ral­ly around. If they could some­how res­ur­rect Ronald Rea­gan and run him against Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, they prob­a­bly would.