“The governor wants to get everything over by Labor Day,” Carney said in a phone interview. “We’re working really quickly to try and see if we can get things lined up. We’re doing things in preparation. We’re talking to donors, to potential bundlers, political leadership around the country.”

Carney cautioned that, “It’s not a microwave oven when we’re waiting for a timer to tick down. We just don’t have a specific timetable.”

At the same time, he acknowledged that “time is rapidly evaporating.”

Carney also pushed back against media reports that Perry is certain to run.

 “Very smart people said that about (Mississippi Gov. Haley) Barbour and (Indiana Gov. Mitch) Daniels and also (former Alaska Gov.) Sarah Palin, and others,” he said. “The professional guessing class always gets ahead of themselves. They’re just a cynical bunch of people who need to get out in the sunshine and get out and meet real people. They always think that something has been decided when it hasn’t been decided, or that it’s definitely a done deal although many times they’re wrong.”

The way Carney described it, the Perry team is doing everything they need to to determine whether a run is feasible, and those happen to be the same things that they’d need to do were he to run.

Though he himself said he’s eager for the current phase to be over, “Believe me, I’m looking forward to him getting in the race, or not getting in the race, so I don’t have to answer these stupid questions anymore.”

I also asked Carney whether he thought it would hurt a late entrant like Perry if the primary calendar moved up. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has said that she wants to move her state’s primary into January, which could push Iowa and New Hampshire to move up their primaries to as early as December of this year.

Carney said that wouldn’t affect Perry’s thinking since it’s out of his control, and totally up to states and the Republican National Committee.

“If he’s in the race, we’ll show up where the dance is,” Carney said. “Whether you have another four weeks to campaign or not, you of course love that. On the other hand, it is what it is.”

As for the added possibility primaries being bunched together, he said, “Obviously, it limits your time if you have one election after the other after the other in quick succession, there won’t be as much time to campaign in those states, but we will do our best to have campaigns going and be running them and trying to be as competitive as possible.”