What Perry needs to do

John Dickerson:
When Rick Perry brought on a new team of advisers, the assumption was that he was about to initiate a scorched-earth campaign against anemic front-runner Mitt Romney. These advisers, who had helped Gov. Rick Scott win a rough-and-tumble race in Florida, were supposed to know how to play nasty. They would surely pummel Romney because time is short, no one has been able to lay a glove on him, and there is such ample opportunity.
That might happen someday. But if the new Perry team is smart (and it is), it’s not going to go after Romney before repairing Perry's image first.
 Perry's problem is within the Tea Party. In a CBS poll five weeks ago, 30 percent of those affiliated with the Tea Party said they supported Perry. Now only 7 percent do. That number is not going to be improved by exposing the wires in Romney’s control panel.  Those voters are not looking at Romney. They are looking for the best candidate to carry their values forward. Right now that candidate is Herman Cain.
OK: So Perry's new team of vicious junkyard dogs will go after Cain, right? (Please, let’s have some fighting here, because we're all bored!) No, they're not going to go after Cain either. That's not going to win hearts back. To replace Cain, Perry will have to do two things: Let voters come to the conclusion Cain is wonderful but not ready to be president, and rebuild Perry as the alternative once voters are ready for a second look at him. 
Cain is sustained by his outsider status, which covers a multitude of sins. He is also very appealing. But as Dan Balz reported, in a focus group in Cincinnati, pollster Peter Hart identified the ultimate weakness for Cain: Though the respondents were over-the-moon for him, his support hit a brick wall when they started thinking about him in the Oval Office.
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There is much more.

I think Perry is on his way to rebuilding his image with his energy/jobs program and his new tax plan.  He is taking his campaign to the conservative media to get his message out through filers that do not hate him and his policies.  We will know in a few weeks if it is going to work. 

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