Well, That Was Quick... [Politics]

Rick Perry's presidential bid appears to be fading just two months after it started. Perry announced his candidacy on August 13 and quickly became the media darling of the GOP field. By September 13, following a month of media coverage any politician would love, Perry led all candidates by as many as 12 percentage points and seemed unstoppable in his bid for the Republican nomination. But the three-term Texas governor quickly became the target of his GOP rivals who blasted his decision to force girls in Texas to get HPV vaccinations as well as his support for in-state tuition rates for the children of illegal immigrants if those children graduated from a Texas high school. Those are two hot-button issues of the unforgiving, ideologically pure Tea Party movement.

Those attacks were followed by back-to-back poor performances in Republican debates in Florida and New Hampshire where the governor seemed uncomfortable with both defending his own record and in clarifying his criticisms of Mitt Romney and the other candidates. His now infamous flubbed criticism of Romney as a candidate that changes positions too easily generated its own mini media arc and reminded too many voters of George W. Bush, a president whose misstatements and poor public speaking skills generated at least six books of quotations.

Perry had been largely successful in distancing himself from George Bush through media stories about his antagonism with Karl Rove and his different governing style from Bush. But his latest campaign argument in defense of his poor debate performances is a direct quote from a George Bush defense. Perry's surrogate Michael Williams told a Florida audience, "We're not electing a debater-in-chief, we're electing a commander-in-chief." In 2004, following the first Bush-Kerry debate, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman said of the performance, "Americans aren't electing a debater-in-chief, they're electing a commander-in-chief." That's a problem for a governor desperately trying to forge a new brand that distances himself from George Bush, and the latest polling shows it.

In the NBC/WSJ poll released last night, Herman Cain leads Mitt Romney 27 percent to 23 percent, with Perry coming in a dismal 16 percent, down more than 15 points since August and unlikely to climb back to front runner status. With the first primaries now just two months away, it remains to be seen if Perry can recover in the upcoming debates and turn around his sagging poll numbers.