Rick Perry is nearly ready to throw his ten gallon, novelty cowboy hat into the ring and begin to formally campaign for president. So what effect will that have?
There is little doubt that Republican voters are, by and large, almost as unsatisfied with their announced candidates for president as they are with their announced candidates for the U.S. Senate in Florida.
However, the road to the GOP nomination for president is a lot more complicated than the nomination for Senate. There are a specific series of hurdles you must leap with some unique requirements and demands.
Number one, you must do well (and likely win) one of Iowa or New Hampshire. Once you’ve done that, you now have a good chance of parlaying that win into a victory in South Carolina (especially if you have won Iowa, whose Republican electorate is culturally more similar to South Carolina’s than is New Hampshire’s).
Frankly, once you’ve won two of those three, you’ve pretty much got things wrapped up. Yes, you will have to compete in some of the states that follow, the honest truth is, there is almost no chance of anyone catching up to you, because the primaries come so fast and furious that momentum counts for everything and you will have the momentum.
Rick Perry will have to put his eggs in the Iowa basket and count on one of two things happening. He wins Iowa and subsequently wins South Carolina (New Hampshire might be a bridge too far) or is perceived as having done ‘surprisingly well in Iowa’ and then goes on to win South Carolina without a single candidate having won both Iowa and New Hampshire.
I think the latter is is his best chance and that probably means that he needs Michele Bachmann to win Iowa. Right now, of the announced candidates, only Bachmann and Romney have a shot in Iowa. Because Romney is also favored in New Hampshire, a win in Iowa might all but give him the nomination, so Perry can’t let that happen.
Perry would instantly be a contender, but Iowa politics is tough slog.
The caucus system used (which I don’t have the time nor the energy to fully explain right now) makes local super activists – folks who know everyone who will be coming to a particular caucus location and can wheel and deal to secure voting blocs who had supported someone who didn’t reach the necessary threshold at that caucus location to be able to win it (this caucus system is complicated, I’m telling you).
That means that it’s not just a matter of turning out your voters. You’ve got to get these super activists (or super volunteers or local power brokers or opinion makers or whatever you want to call them).
Right now, Perry doesn’t have any.
Right now, there aren’t many left.
My guess is that Perry will have to do some serious poaching.
The conventional wisdom is that he is primarily competing for the same electorate as Bachmann, but here is also where it gets even more tricky. If he draws heavily from her pool of support, but doesn’t win and Romney takes Iowa, his campaign is already very nearly over. He could, conceivably, come in second and then beat expectations in New Hampshire, win South Carolina and try to drag this process out and win in a bruising, extended match with Romney but… you’ve got to give the edge to Romney.
If he can’t win, he needs Bachmann to win Iowa to keep Romney from developing too much momentum.
My guess is that his team starts targeting Pawlenty supporters. Pawlenty is polling in the toilet bowl in Iowa, but he’s gathered up a surprising amount of support from state legislators and activists. If he can pull enough of them, he might get enough support to finagle the result he needs.
The point is that even though there are a lot of macro factors in Perry’s favor – he’s got Tea Party, evangelical, donor, and establishment credibility and provides a viable option to the still not quite trusted Romney – the micro factors of the early contests are actually pretty heavily stacked against him and he’s got a narrow path to navigate.
the coffee philosopher 
Establishment credibility in my view means doing as your told by the establishment. What does it mean for you? To me Perry is just a lackey to the establishment – he’s their stooge. His establishment ties can be linked to his attendance of the elitist Bilderberg group confab in Istanbul 2007. This means he certainly has support in high places. But support at high places NEVER equates to the candidate representing the people. He’ll just lie and hoodwink as Obama has done so far.
So far as Tea Party credibility, well – maybe with newcomers and the less informed in the Tea Party landscape, but when you go back to Tea Party roots there’s only ONE candidate with real Tea Party values plus extremely numerous, diverse and activated grassroots support – his name is Ron Paul. He was the only candidate in the 2008 candidate’s debates who spoke seriously and openly about ending the wars and cutting spending, to rapturous applause by the way. The ridiculing and berating treatment of Paul by the panelists indicated that Ron Paul did NOT have establishment approval. But the establishment is just the status quo – more war, more borrowing, more spending and inflating/devaluing the money supply and the people have had enough with it! The status quo will not stand anymore.
Donor credibility? What are you talking about? Giving money, time and energy to Al Gore – the opposite team? In case you didn’t know in 1988 Rick Perry was campaign manager for Al Gore in the state of Texas! This shows that Perry is entirely ambiguous and swings both ways. He’ll take whatever is coming – principles and belief be damned!
This is in stark contrast to Ron Paul who has been stoic on issues of principle and for 30 years has been saying ‘If it’s unconstitutional I, by virtue of my constitutional oath, cannot support it’. He has a stellar voting record on all issues especially war and spending.
Mitt Romney is a dark horse and not quite a luminary in establishment circles – this is because he comes from his own private wealth and doesn’t need to rely on the establishment even though he’s doing the best to ingratiate himself into their sphere of influence. He’s playing the game as he thinks he must with the end of gaining establishment trust. I think he’s much more real than Perry, but not a patch on Ron Paul.
It’s a corporate media (TV news, Papers, radio) trick to ignore Ron Paul and I posit that the reason is that he is such a threat to the status quo that establishment won’t have it. I wonder why you ignore Ron Paul? Is it just to echo the mainstream agenda? He consistenly polls huge percentage points of support in Zogbi and Rasmussen polls – front running more often than not, and the dirty tricks waged against him by corporate media against him are well documented.
Are you pro status quo?
Rick Perry must have handled this the same manner Mitt Romney did! He should insist the question get asked in the civil manner the real key should answer the question then remind them that when they don’t really agree they could opt for someone else!!