The first line of Rick Perry's campaign obituary may have been drafted at Thursday's debate. Texas toast? Perry worries GOP

ORLANDO – The first line of Rick Perry’s campaign obituary may have been drafted Thursday night: He got in too late.

It’s not quite time for his camp to panic but in his third debate in a month – nearly as many as he’s done in the entire decade he’s served as Texas governor – Perry demonstrated why so few presidential candidates who parachute into the race mid-campaign win the nomination.


Perry gave a foreign policy answer that offered no indication he’s thought about how to respond to threats against America, twice bobbled attacks on Mitt Romney’s well-documented departures from conservative orthodoxy, called immigration hard-liners heartless and, in what was otherwise his best answer of the evening, stretched the truth in the course of delivering a well-rehearsed line about why he mandated pre-teen girls to be vaccinated against HPV.

A more seasoned candidate would be better informed on national security policy, fluent to the point of knowing by heart his chief opponent’s core vulnerabilities, and would never offend his party’s base with such a pointed attack. And a more sure-footed one would have recognized that he couldn’t get away with the claim that he issued an executive order on HPV after being “lobbied” by a cancer victim—because it has been publicly established that he met the victim only after he made the decision.

Instead, after a roaring August start, Perry’s second consecutive lackluster debate performance will reinforce the growing view among some Republicans that he’s not ready for the big leagues.

As conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News following the debate: “He’s still the rookie in the field.”

Equally threatening to the Texas governor, his stumbling appearances on national television have come as his on-the-fly campaign attempts to quickly build an organization and raise money ahead of the third-quarter deadline at the end of the month.

Grumbling has already begun about Perry’s operation and how they’ve not been prepared to handle the zero-to-frontrunner demands on the campaign.

One leading Republican said he’s given names of individuals – donors, former state party chairs — who want to be helpful to the campaign and that they’ve never gotten a phone call.

Recognizing the frustration, the National Committeewoman from Texas, Borah Van Dormolen, sent a blast email to fellow RNC members this week.

“I have received numerous calls requesting information on how to contact the Perry for President campaign team,” Van Dormolen wrote, including the email address for where to send the governor an invitation to appear at an event and the address of his finance director for those who want to help him raise money.

The upside of these growing pains, of course, is they reflect a campaign besieged with supporters. And, as Perry officials correctly note, it’s still early in the campaign—a contest that the governor only joined six weeks ago.

But it’s in part because he rocketed to the top of the field so quickly after getting in, creating such high expectations, that he’s now being damaged by sub-par debate showings.

In short, Perry’s command of the stage hasn’t matched his exalted status.

When he’s pitted alongside Romney, as he was Thursday, the discrepancy between Perry’s promise and his actual performance is glaring.

“Romney has the advantage of having run before and learned from it,” noted former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. “Perry got in late, and it will take him some time to get up to national speed. He has time to get up to speed, but he doesn’t have much margin for error.”

What may hurt Perry the most, though, is if the ongoing series of debates create the impression that he simply doesn’t have the capacity to get up to speed. If, after the four additional forums scheduled between now and the Iowa caucuses, Perry shows no ability to give a cogent answer on a foreign policy question or discuss the country’s domestic challenges in a way that veers from his top-line talking points, Romney’s slow and steady approach will have the former governor of Massachusetts positioned to take advantage.

“The bottom line is he’s failed to meet expectations in the last two debates,” said a veteran GOP operative who is neutral in the race but didn’t want to offend Perry. “He often starts off strong in replies but tends to wander, displaying a lack of intellectual discipline that doesn’t inspire confidence.”

Recognizing this vulnerability — call it a stature gap — Romney backers were ferocious in their assault on Perry following the debate here, suggesting that their rival was out of his depth.

“It really calls into question when he’s up for this,” said former Missouri Sen. Jim Talent, a Romney adviser. “When you’re consistently having difficulty articulating yourself in a forum like that, it’s a problem.”

Romney officials were particularly tough in their critique of Perry’s vague answer on what he would do if he got a 3AM call alerting him that Pakistan had lost nuclear weapons to the Taliban.

“It was clear he had no idea what he was talking about,” said Romney adviser Ron Kaufman.

“I think a lot of being president, of getting ready to be president, is understanding the complexity of the world that you have to deal in, and I think you either naturally have that countenance and that demeanor, or you don’t,” added Romney donor and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, adding that at such difficult moments, “I think you want to have the mental faculties, the experience and be able to surround yourself with good people and get the job done, and don’t make too many mistakes.”

Perry campaign manager Rob Johnson lashed back at the criticism on the foreign policy question and touched on Romney’s core weakness.

“For anyone in the Romney camp to accuse someone of not being prepared, when they have different answers to questions every 24 hours, is ridiculous,” Johnson said.

But the Perry campaign plainly recognizes they’ve got to make the best of back-to-back poor outings. They came to the post-debate spin room prepared with a trio of talking points that conceded the underlying point about his debate weakness: that he’s only been in the race for a short while, that his uneasy stage performance demonstrates that he’s more genuine than Romney and that there was another successful Republican who purportedly wasn’t so good at debates.

“He’s been in the debate for six weeks,” said Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback. “Some other people have been in the debate for six years.”

Pressed about some of Perry’s bumbling responses, Brownback invoked Republican royalty.

“People said that about Ronald Reagan in debates,” Brownback claimed. “They’d say, ‘You know he’s not as strong as he needs to be. He doesn’t seem to quite have the factual control the way I would like to see it.’ But you knew what was in Reagan’s heart, and that’s the thing about Rick Perry.”

“Perry’s plain spoken,” added Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon. “He’s not a slick politician. Romney’s run for president before so he likes to have these polished answers, but he’s also flip-flopped on everything from Race to the Top to Romneycare to taxes to abortion to guns. So I’d rather take a guy who’s not a slick, made-for-TV guy but who’s an authentic, real human being.”

Cannon added that the difference between Perry and Reagan, however, is that the Gipper had a knack for delivering memorable lines that more than made up for his meandering moments. In three debates, Perry hasn’t yet found a winning riposte to Romney along the lines of “I’m paying for this microphone” or “There you go again.”

And there is another distinction between the two: By the time he won the presidency, Reagan was on his third try.

Alexander Burns and Ben Smith contributed to this report.