Afternoon Fix: Perry makes $1 million Fox News buy

Rick Perry is going big on Fox News, Herman Cain laughs about Anita Hill, Clark Durant thinks the income gap should be wider and Newt Gingrich thinks he has more substance than anyone else.

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EARLIER ON THE FIX:

Senate recruits Mack, Heitkamp and Carmona have a lot to prove

Rick Perry: Is he the worst presidential debater ever?

The 11 best/worst political quotes of 2011

Newt Gingrich reclaims frontrunner status as Cain stumbles

Keystone XL pipeline unites left and right

Rick Perry’s rough path back to relevance

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* Texas Gov. Rick Perry has made a major Fox News buy, spending $1 million on ad time with the network. We’ve said before that Perry’s money means he can’t be counted out yet; we’ll see if this aggressive television campaign can turn his numbers around at all.

* Herman Cain says his joke suggesting Anita Hill might endorse him was “in no way intended to be an insult” to the Brandeis law professor. The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO was caught on video laughing when a supporter brought up the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Hill, for her part, said earlier this week that she had “no comment on Herman Cain” but that it was good to see that “we have evolved tremendously in discussing these kinds of issues.”

* Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) commented today on the Occupy Charleston protesters who disrupted her foreign policy speech in South Carolina yesterday, calling them “ignorant” and “disrespectful.”

* Michigan Senate candidate Clark Durant (R) told a group of college students yesterday that he thinks Occupy Wall Street protesters should “go find a job” and of the divide between rich and poor, “I think it should be wider.” He also called himself “[Democratic Sen.] Debbie Stabenow’s worst nightmare.” Durant faces the better-known former Rep. Pete Hoekstra in the Republican primary.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN’T MISS:

* Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is rising in two new polls, is feeling good. “I have more substance than any candidate in modern history,” he told radio host Laura Ingraham today. “None of the other candidates have any real experience in Washington.”

* Another big-name conservative endorsement for former Rep. Mark Neumann (R) — Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is backing the Wisconsin Senate candidate. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) endorsed Neumann — who faces former governor Tommy Thompson and state Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald in the primary — on Thursday.

* Veteran Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.) might face a primary from Newark councilman Ron Rice in his heavily Democratic district. Rice told the Newark Star-Ledger he was forming an exploratory committee to challenge Payne, the state’s first African-American congressman.

* Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) dominates in a new Quinnipiac poll of the Florida Senate race, garnering 32 percent of the vote in the primary while no other candidate breaks double digits. In a head-to-head with Sen. Bill Nelson (D), Mack takes 40 percent to the senator’s 42 percent — a statistical tie. But as we wrote today, Mack still has a lot to prove.

THE FIX MIX:

Not as cute as the movie, but twice as crazy.

With Rachel Weiner and Aaron Blake