Texas Gov. Rick Perry has turned in so many underwhelming debate performances — and talked down his own debating skills so often — that he is no longer the center of attention going into tonight’s Republican debate in Las Vegas. But the GOP field is still so fluid, and so capable of changing suddenly, that Perry is still in the game, and a good performance in Las Vegas could cause voters who once placed great hope in him to take another look.
Perry’s strategy for tonight? “We’re going to pay a little less attention to the rules,” says a source in the Perry camp who asked to go unnamed. “One of the things the governor tried to do in New Hampshire [at the Bloomberg/Washington Post debate] was to live by the time limits set by organizers. No one else did. As a result, one could view the governor’s performance as having less to say, when in fact he was simply trying to live up to the rules of the debate. They’ve rarely been enforced, and we’re not going to pay much attention to them.”
A number of observers remarked that Perry seemed to check out of the New Hampshire debate for long periods of time. Whatever the explanation — whether he was trying to abide by the rules or simply wasn’t engaged in the conversation — it appears Perry will try to take a more active role in Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, Team Perry remains determined to push forward. “Clearly Romney has a significant problem sealing the deal with Republican voters,” the source says. “He’s been running for six years and his numbers have stayed in the low- to mid-20s for much of that time. The challenge is who will emerge as the standard-bearing conservative to counter Romney’s flip-flop, inconsistent, not-very-conservative record. That continues to be our challenge and our task. There’s no magic wand, we need to just continue to grind it out.”
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