Q: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
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) ||||| Whatever questions come flying at Herman Cain at Tuesday’s night Republican debate in Las Vegas, there is one big one he has to answer: Are you serious? 
  
 It is a measure of Cain’s success that anyone would care to ask. For much of this year Cain seemed to be enjoying his role as political novelty act — an entertaining sideshow at debates, and even an occasional presence on the early-state campaign trail — when he wasn’t otherwise occupied with speeches, television appearances and book-tour publicity. 
  
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 reset VandeHei on Cain’s credibility Cain imagines pizza - 1991 POLITICO 44 
  
 But now that Cain, buoyed by bulging poll numbers, is demanding to be viewed as a credible contender for the GOP nomination, Cain’s greatest peril is that primary rivals, journalists and the political world broadly will grant that wish. 
  
 Very little in recent days suggests Cain is adequately prepared for the coming test on his understanding of foreign policy, on his advisers and the origin of his most provocative ideas and, not to put too fine a point on it, on whether he has a factual command of issues equal to what would be expected of the typical congressional candidate. 
  
 NBC News anchor David Gregory seemed perplexed, then astonished, on “Meet the Press” Sunday when Cain responded quizzically to questions about whether he is a foreign policy neoconservative before stating that he is “not familiar with the neoconservative movement” — never mind a decade of roiling debate among Republicans about the neocon agenda to remake the world. 
  
 Cain said he subscribes to the foreign policy wisdom of Henry Kissinger and John Bolton — never mind, again, that these two men have diametrically opposed views of the world. 
  
 As for Cain’s suggestion at a campaign rally Saturday in Tennessee that he would fight illegal immigration by building an electric fence along the Mexican border, he told Gregory that the remark was “a joke.” 
  
 Evidently aware that Cain’s presidential bid is entering a new phase — a test which could either make him the main alternative to Romney or return him to novelty status — campaign manager Mark Block told POLITICO his operation is rapidly adding policy advisers. 
  
 He said the recruitment and hiring of new advisers is being handled by Rich Lowrie, the Ohio accountant who is Cain’s chief economic adviser. “I’m not trying to dance around the question,” Block said. “I quite frankly don’t know who they are.” 
  
 Lowrie said he can’t reveal the identities of the advisers because he’s unsure of the campaign’s policy on doing so. 
  
 “I don’t know what the policy is for releasing their names,” he said. “There are some who said, ‘We like you guys; we’ll help you as much as we can, but don’t use my name.’ … There are people who want to stay neutral, and if they said, ‘Don’t use my name,’ we’re going to respect that. I don’t think that’s unusual.” |||||
A:
Herman Cain’s sudden meteoric rise from political novelty to poll-topping candidate should put him in the spotlight at tonight’s debate—which might be a very dangerous place to be. The big question for Cain is “are you serious?” Politico’s Reid Epstein writes, noting that Cain has done “very little” to show he “has a factual command of the issues,” particularly on foreign policy. On Sunday, for example, he said he was “not familiar with the neoconservative movement.” No one doubts Cain’s intelligence, but he has a weak infrastructure and few advisers to prep him for debates like this. Still, Cain’s campaign thinks his outsider charm will win out. “We’re just making sure that Herman stays Herman,” his top economic adviser said. Of course, Cain won’t be alone onstage; Mitt Romney will be trying to show he can “be a good, strong conservative,” one Republican strategist tells Reuters, while Rick Perry will be out to upstage his past underwhelming debate showings. Click for more on tonight's debate, which airs at 8pm ET on CNN.