An advocate of abolishing the Federal Reserve, he got questions unlike those other candidates receive, including one about monetary policy that concluded, “My thought is: maybe the silver standard?” He responded by earnestly weighing silver against gold, the pol as metallurgist.

He terrifies more pragmatic conservatives like the commentator Michael Medved, who has called him “Dr. Demento.” Medved wrote in The Daily Beast last week that a strong showing by Paul in the caucuses and beyond would be “disastrous to Republican prospects,” validating the impression that “today’s Republicans have become a wild and crazy bunch, harboring oddball, irresponsible notions that place them far outside the American mainstream and make them untrustworthy when it comes to the serious business of governance.” He added, rightly, that Paul’s associations aren’t helpful to a party whose future may depend on its appeal to Hispanic and black voters.

That future was lost on Perry, too. I caught up with him on Wednesday in Pella, where he was introduced by Joe Arpaio, the polarizing Arizona sheriff who once marched 200 immigrants awaiting deportation through the streets and is widely loathed by Hispanics. Perry spoke of Arpaio’s support as a compliment higher than any imaginable. And when one of the Iowans who got to ask Perry a question commenced a vicious tirade against “these Mexicans” who come to America and “fly their flag above the United States flag,” Perry didn’t push back one iota.

Image Frank Bruni Credit... Earl Wilson/The New York Times

IN response to weak poll numbers, he also doubled down on God. Early in the week he toughened his already tough stance on abortion, saying he was now opposed to it even in instances of rape and incest. In Pella and elsewhere he crowed about how many Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas he had shut down. He quoted the Bible, telling voters they must, like the prophet Isaiah, offer their service to the Lord — by voting for Perry.

The symbolism in one of his television ads included stained glass, a church steeple, a cross: religious imagery that was par for the pious course in Iowa. As the political strategist Mark McKinnon told the Times’s Jeremy W. Peters, vote-desperate, subtlety-bereft candidates “will light a fire and stand by a burning bush in order to send a signal to evangelicals, ‘I’m one of you.’ ”

A prior ad of Perry’s questioned the end of the United States military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” prohibition concerning gays. They remain favorite punching bags for conservative Republicans, and that’s another way in which the party jeopardizes its future. Surveys make clear that younger Americans are much more supportive of gay rights than older ones. You wouldn’t know it from the likes of Perry and Santorum.