Mitt Romney officials believe it’s inevitable that they’ll soon clash with Rick Perry. | AP Photos Romney camp not panicking — yet

Rick Perry’s surge in the polls is prompting some high-profile Mitt Romney backers to urge the former Massachusetts governor to step up his efforts before it’s too late.

Romney’s high command said that was always the plan — and that they expect to engage Perry during next month’s debates, which will usher in the stretch run of the GOP presidential campaign.


The former Massachusetts governor also will accelerate his pace starting this Labor Day weekend, campaign officials say.

Romney will attend a tea party rally in Concord, N.H., on Sunday, a pancake breakfast in Manchester on Monday, then fly to South Carolina to attend a candidate forum held by Sen. Jim DeMint.

Romney had originally indicated he would not attend the DeMint event, but he changed his mind after a conversation with the influential conservative.

“He’s a good friend, and we wanted to do what we could to make it work,” said senior Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom of their schedule change. DeMint was a key Romney backer in 2008, but is holding out this election cycle. Romney’s reconsideration suggests that the South Carolinian hasn’t ruled out endorsing the former governor again.

Fehrnstrom said Romney will also conduct a more aggressive media strategy beginning next month, appearing more frequently on cable TV news and conducting local TV interviews in early primary states.

“You’ll see him take it up a notch,” the adviser said.

Further, Romney aides said the campaign plans to roll out more endorsements and work internally to bolster their grass-roots effort, identifying more committed voters and building coalitions.

September also will likely mark the first open skirmishing between Romney and Perry as they prepare to face off, along with the rest of the GOP field, for the first of three debates.

“A lot of the comparing and contrasting will take place on stage at the debates,” said Fehrnstrom, adding that Romney’s primary focus will still be “President [Barack] Obama and his failures.”

But Romney officials believe it’s inevitable that they’ll clash with Perry — in part because the brash Texan will give them an opportunity.

“Perry will throw the first punch,” predicted a top Romney aide. “He can’t help himself.”

The Boston powers insist they’re not panicking over Perry’s burst into the lead in a series of recent national polls. Two top officials separately said the numbers were inflated by the Texan’s strong early showing in the South.

Still, Romney supporters are starting to grow anxious.

“Perry has certainly changed the mix of the race,” said former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Romney supporter and fundraiser. “I do think [Romney] needs to step it up several notches. The low-key campaign has served him well to this point, but coming out of Labor Day, he needs to be a lot more aggressive. The low-profile strategy is not going to work this fall.”

South Carolina State Rep. Nathan Ballentine, also a Romney backer, said Perry had garnered “a lot of buzz” in the Palmetto State.

“For a lot of people who were waiting around, he’s going to be the one they hop on with,” said Ballentine, who, before learning that Romney had reconsidered attending DeMint’s forum, said he wished Romney would do just that.

Neither Lott nor Ballentine said they thought their candidate should directly take on Perry, but other senior Republicans believe the Texan could stand in the way of Romney’s path to the nomination.

“The world has changed in the primary,” said veteran GOP consultant Mike Murphy, who worked for Romney in his 2002 gubernatorial race. “They have to decide how and where they beat Perry. The passive strategy — where they have name ID and none of their opponents do — is not working anymore.”

Perry will be an especially formidable rival to Romney if Michele Bachmann and other GOP contenders fade, leaving primary voters with a stark decision between the former Massachusetts governor and an alternative who meets both ideological and electoral muster.

“A binary choice between somebody who appears to be an electable, clearly conservative candidate and Romney is a tough fight for Romney,” said Republican strategist Terry Nelson, who had been working for Tim Pawlenty.

But Romney’s gurus point to three important but as yet unknown factors to explain why they’re not ready to reach for their rifle.

As long as the final field remains uncertain, the caucus and primary calendar unset and Perry’s ability to hold up over a series of debates and heightened media scrutiny unknown, they say they’re reluctant to make any hard and fast strategic decisions.

In state-by-state terms, this means they’re going to keep playing wait-and-see in Iowa and South Carolina, where they’ve limited Romney’s presence this year, until it becomes more clear who will be in the mix.

Should Sarah Palin decide to run and Bachmann and Rick Santorum hang in the fight, for example, Iowa could be more appealing to Romney since the GOP’s social conservative bloc would be splintered among several candidates.

“It’s all a parlor game until you know who’s in,” said a senior Romney aide of Iowa.

But, partly because of the possibility that the caucuses could move up on the calendar to avoid being leapfrogged and partly because of Perry’s rapid growth, the window is closing on how much longer Romney can hold off.

“I think an offensive strategy has to include Iowa,” Murphy said. “In Iowa, they got Santorum and Bachmann taking votes from Perry and you don’t know if they’ll be around in the longer run. And can you beat him in South Carolina? I wouldn’t want a Southern populist with momentum coming at me in the South.”

Romney, who will return to South Carolina on Sept. 12th after doing DeMint’s Labor Day event, has only been to the state once this year and recent polls show him faring poorly there with Perry now in the race.

Romney backers note, however, that the possibility of other states moving up their primaries could alter the trajectory of the race.

“Is Michigan going to be there?” asked a former top Romney aide who is still supporting the former governor. “You don’t know what else is going to be when.”

The prospect that Michigan, where Romney grew up and won in the 2008 primary, could be among the first contests offers some hope that Perry won’t necessarily be riding a stream roller heading into Florida.

There may come a point, though, when waiting on unknowns to resolve themselves becomes more prayer than plan.

Hoping Palin gets in and Bachmann stays strong to take a chunk of Palin’s conservative votes, hoping the calendar shuffle works in your favor, and hoping Perry falters badly under the hot lights of the debate stage could ultimately be just that — a hope.

For now, Romney and his top aides are plainly concerned about Perry’s rise.

That was demonstrated in their decision to reverse course on attending the DeMint event (if the senator’s endorsement is up for grabs, Romney will need it to help him on his right flank).

And it was demonstrated by Romney’s remarks earlier in the day.

A week after he said, in response to questions about Perry, that anybody running for president should focus “on the person who is president,” Romney used an appearance at the national VFW convention in San Antonio to say: “Career politicians got us into this mess and they simply don’t know how to get us out.”

That’s the message his campaign will carry against Perry: the Texas governor is a government lifer who lived high on the public tab and doesn’t have the private-sector experience necessary to run the country.

“What career politician has done well with the tea party?” asked one Romney official.

The danger for Romney, however, is that if they don’t move soon, it may be too late to dissuade conservatives from backing Perry.

“In general, most tea party activists are focused on big things, like the country heading in the wrong direction, the debt, or leaving behind a weaker nation than we inherited,” said unaligned GOP strategist Todd Harris. “That’s what matters to them most, and if a candidate is right on those things, activists can be awfully forgiving of everything else. The kinds of attacks that might sink another candidate are written off as just politics as usual and virtually ignored. Once tea party activists line up behind someone, they can be awfully hard to peel off.”