Rick Perry has weathered . . .

He's going the distance.

. . . a series of mishaps that would have killed just about any other campaign and his vital signs appear to be improving.  In the absence of empirical data, anecdotal evidence has to suffice — and while it’s not dispositive, anecdotal evidence isn’t totally meaningless, either.  And political analysis is very often a gut-level pursuit — especially as it is practiced here at Damn Dirty RINO Global HQ. So, what’s the anecdotal evidence behind the gut instinct, you may ask?  Well, the first indication is some good press coming out of Iowa (H/T to Zombie Reagan in the comments) following a Perry appearance in Scott County:

The crowd was appreciative of Perry’s sense of humor. “He’s handled it probably the only way he could have handled it,” said Davenport Alderman Bill Edmond. “I think he’s done very well.” Judging from Perry’s speech, it appears that his new strategy is to project himself as a Washington reformer. “I’m running not to appease the Washington establishment, but to dismantle it.” Perry struck all the right chords with the Quad Cities audience. “I thought it was good,” said attendee Jim Goff. “I thought he got to his points quickly. He didn’t mince words. I’d be comfortable with him in the White House.” If Rick Perry is able to effectively sell his “reformer” strategy, it’s possible he can regain some of the momentum he lost in the last two months.

This follows a favorable review of his debate performance Saturday night from the same source, which noted:

Rick Perry: After the “Perry Plunge” on Wednesday, I thought his campaign was over. Now, I’m not so sure. This was Rick Perry’s best debate. He was relaxed and provided lots of substance. He scored with the audience by joking about Wednesday’s brain freeze. Perry gave a terrific answer in regards to foreign aid. “The foreign aid budget in my administration is going to start at $0.” He later added that Pakistan doesn’t deserve any aid and stuck to his answer later in the debate when asked if his $0 policy would include Israel. Perry even got a compliment from Gingrich in regards to his answer. This might signal a rebirth in the Perry campaign.

This kind of press obviously doesn’t mean a great deal by itself, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.  And after Perry’s horribly embarrassing lapse just four days prior to the write-up, it’s just short of miraculous that any political analyst in Iowa would countenance the notion that his campaign could bounce back.  That’s why retail politics is important.  It doesn’t necessarily move numbers in and of itself, but the positive coverage that it can generate when done well has a considerable impact. Further evidence that Perry is getting the wind back in his sails comes from Robbie Cooper at Urban Grounds, who notes the surprisingly positive reactions to the Perry campaign’s recent performance from some rather unlikely sources:

Even the unhinged far-left blogger No More Mister Nice Blog thinks that Perry could be positioned not only for a rebound, but to peak at the right time, as does Time’s Michael Scherer (also not a fan of Rick Perry or Conservatvism):

All that said, I still think it’s a great ad, his best so far in this cycle. Perry comes across as he wants to, an energized outsider who will clean house in Washington, and represent the outraged conservative base. And he looks past the primary field, taking his campaign straight at President Obama, in a way that demonstrates how his general election campaign might look.

He also notes reactions from other unlikely sources from mainstream press outlets, so be sure to click on over and read the whole thing.  If you’re a Perry supporter looking for a ray of sunshine, it’ll do you some good. And, finally, one more reason to suspect Perry will continue to rise is the seemingly inexorable implosion of the Cain campaign.  One might argue that, were it not for Herman Cain’s presence in the field, Rick Perry might well have been hopelessly doomed after the Saturday night debacle.  But, when you have an opponent who can be counted on to create a whole new perspective on haplessness everyday, your own foibles can seem relatively minor by comparison. It seems the Cain camp is bent on not only running an “unconventional” campaign, but setting a new benchmark for the level of tolerable incompetence in a candidate and staff.  First, after an utterly disastrous display of foreign policy ignorance in meeting with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board — for which the campaign offered tiredness and editorial chicanery as an excuse — Cain packed up and headed south to Florida, where he demonstrated yet another stunning degree of cluelessness (H/T to zane in the comments):

And, as if that weren’t enough to drive home the point that Herman Cain hasn’t the foggiest notion as to where he stands on the most basic of foreign policy issues, or even where he is supposed to stand in order to placate the constituencies he’s going to need in order to have a chance at the nomination, he goes and does something like this:

Herman Cain has canceled an editorial board meeting with the influential New Hampshire Union Leader in a dispute over scheduling.

Cain’s campaign requested that the 10 a.m. meeting be shortened from a scheduled hour to just 20 minutes, said Drew Cline, the paper’s editorial page editor. Cain then canceled the interview.

Cain had previously demanded that the interview not be videotaped — unlike those of other GOP candidates — following a stumble in a similar interview earlier this week when he was asked to evaluate President Obama’s policy toward Libya.

So, with one of Perry’s biggest obstacles slowly dismantling itself, and the fact that his newly emerging obstacle can reliably be counted on to self-destruct at some point given enough time and visibility, things are shaping up nicely for the Texas governor.  They’re certainly shaping up much more nicely than the vast majority of professional pundits and commentators insisted they would.  Which leads me to my ultimate point in all of this . . .

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