At first glance, the Texas governor looks most likely to rain on Michele Bachmann’s parade by out-evangelizing her with the Religious Right and setting a high bar, as he did in her Iowa hometown, for practicing local politics as a contact sport.

But Perry’s well-financed campaign is going after Mitt Romney, too with a jab at him, “Take a look at his record when he was governor…Running a state is different than running a business.”

In Waterloo the other day, Politico reports, Perry arrived early, “working his way across the room to sit at table after table, shake hand after hand, pose for photographs and listen politely to a windy Abraham Lincoln impersonator, paying respect to a state that expects candidates, no matter their fame, to be accessible.

“But Bachmann campaigned like a celebrity. And the event highlighted the brittle, presidential-style cocoon that has become her campaign’s signature: a routine of late entries, unexplained absences, quick exits, sharp-elbowed handlers with matching lapel pins, and pre-selected questioners.”

As he goes after his top two opponents, Perry will undoubtedly be matched up with Ron Paul in a weird ideas contest by reporters who mine his record and writings in which he complains that practically everything is unconstitutional, but the Texan brings to the Republican race something unseen since the days of George W. Bush.

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