Rick Perry may not have a prayer but he's still got the money to stay in the race.
Campaign season often starts with a group of starry-eyed candidates who quickly find they don't have what it takes, the money dries up, and they drop out in fairly short order. Think of someone like Democrat Bill Richardson in '08 or Republican Rick Perry in 2012. But for Republicans this year and their 17 candidates, the shakeout might not come as quickly as they would hope. Why? Because the unlimited amount of cash flowing through the super PACs might keep many of their candidates in the mix long past their "sell by" dates.
That's already proving true for Rick Perry and Rand Paul, who have made incredibly weak showings, reports Politico:
Unlike previous cycles, the tiering of the 2016 Republican presidential field appears unlikely to result in the quick exit of the GOP laggards. That’s because each is the beneficiary of super PACs that in many cases have raised orders of magnitude more than the campaigns themselves. The PACs, in effect, become a bridge to viability, sustaining struggling candidates who may genuinely believe they can surge or who simply want to stick around long enough to amass delegates and wield clout with the eventual nominee.
“I don’t think there’s any incentive to drop out as long as you can put gas in the truck and there’s PAC money out there,” said Sam Clovis, an Iowa adviser to the Perry campaign, who said Perry’s as upbeat about his chances as ever. “There will be some adjustments, but again it’s just a matter of resetting the stride.”
Republican activists say that Perry’s staff problems, in an earlier time, might’ve been the prelude to an early withdrawal from the race. Instead, he can put his campaign on autopilot while his affiliated super PACs — helmed by Mississippi operative Austin Barbour — deploy a $17 million haul, enabling Perry to regroup and hope for a revival later.
The extended campaign life of flimsy candidates could really be a brilliant unintended consequence of
Citizens United this campaign cycle. The longer it takes for the GOP to separate the wheat from the chaff, the harder it will be for the party to coalesce around one candidate. Let's keep that field diverse and fractured. Long live Rick Perry!