Perry: Down, Not Out

Over at Slate, political handicapper John Dickerson questions the conventional wisdom that Rick Perry was positioning his campaign for a "scorched-earth campaign" against Mitt Romney when he recently brought in some new campaign advisors, and concludes that Perry likely has something else in mind:

In the 2008 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton and her campaign tried to take down Barack Obama by saying it was "time to pick a president." In other words: End your dalliance with the person who makes you feel good and start thinking about who has the attributes necessary to handle the job. That didn't work for her, but the non-Cain candidates hope a version of that same mindset will eventually kick in and give voters second thoughts about Cain.

When that moment comes, a candidate like Perry has to be ready. Right now he's got some work to do. In that same focus group, when attendees were asked to compare Perry to a character from fifth grade, they said "bully." (If only they'd meant it the way Teddy Roosevelt did.)

I think Dickerson's reasoning is sound, except he may have a tin ear for what a closer examination of Perry's record as a religious statist might sound like to the Tea Party. For example, Dickerson thinks Perry should play up his record of legislating Christian morality.

Of course, since this is the GOP, such a problem might not stand out against the other candidates, or for an electorate that does not see the conflict between religion and our secular state. This would mean that, unfortunately, Dickerson's error would be rendered moot.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Dave Kellog on the "joys" of both being a contrarian and being correct, when almost everyone else around you is wrong:

[B]eing a naysayer isn't fun work: for three years you sound like a whining, doubting-Thomas constantly on the back foot, constantly playing defense and then one day you're proven right. But there's no joy in it. And the naysaying doesn't help sell newspapers so you don't get much press coverage. And, in the end, all people remember is that "MicroStrategy was pretty cool back in the day" and "Dave's a grump."

Three cheers for those to whom truth is dearer than mere popularity!

Are the 2011-2012 Indianapolis Colts an eloquent, if very ugly, testimony to the greatness of Peyton Manning? Sports writer Bob Kravitz thinks so: "Dear Peyton: Every criticism I've leveled at you, I take it all back. It's now apparent you've been carrying a terrible team on your back for all those years."

Oh, great. Microsoft seems to have figured out a cute way to make it more difficult to install Linux on new computers. I am behind all efforts to persuade hardware vendors to make it easy to choose my own operating system, but will be vehemently opposed to any effort to coerce them (or Microsoft) to do so. There is a right to choose an operating system, but not to force someone else to make that choice easy (or even possible) for me.