Though Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have had an often bitter rivalry over the past few months — and Romney challenging Perry to a $10,000 bet during Saturday’s debate added more fuel to this conflict — ironically, Perry could play a key role in Romney’s efforts to thwart Newt Gingrich.
Given that 75-80 percent of the GOP electorate has consistently favored somebody other than Romney, his chances of winning the nomination have always hinged on conservatives having difficulty settling on any one alternative, carving up the vote, and allowing Romney to sneak through kind of like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, did in 2008.
Right now, polls are showing Gingrich with commanding leads in the early primary states of Iowa, South Carolina and Florida — while he eats into Romney’s lead in New Hampshire (the gap in NH stood at 9 points in the most recent CNN survey). If Gingrich wins Iowa by double digits and rolls into New Hampshire with a full head of steam and wins there, it could be an early lights out for Romney given that he’d be unlike to catch Newt in South Carolina and Florida.
So Romney’s path to the nomination depends on Gingrich either imploding in Iowa, or barely winning there — so that any momentum heading into New Hampshire is blunted. It’s unlikely that Romney will surge in Iowa himself, so his best hope is that one of the other conservative candidates experiences a late surge that eats into Gingrich’s support. No doubt, that other candidate could be Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., or Rick Santourm. But Perry might be in a better position to experience a late surge, because he has money to spend on an ad blitz, and his performance in debates has been steadily improving.
Today’s American Research Group poll provides us some evidence of this phenomenon — Perry is up 8 points, Gingrich is down, and his lead over Romney is just 5 percent. A lot of people are skeptical of ARG polls, and Gingrich fared better in a University of Iowa poll also released today. But overall, according to the RealClearPolitics average, Perry has shown some modest movement in Iowa recently — up from 6 percent to nearly 10 percent in the past week and a half. If the result in Iowa ends up being a Gingrich loss, or narrow victory, followed by a scrum of Perry, Romney and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., it could deprive the former House Speaker of the type of momentum he’s going to need heading into New Hampshire, which is supposed to be Romney’s firewall.
It’s a delicate balancing act, for sure. But it may be time for Romney fans to start hoping for a late Perry surge that’s just enough to undercut Gingrich without being strong enough to make him a fully viable candidate again.
