By TODD J. GILLMAN
The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON -- Rick Perry now sits solidly atop the GOP field. With his debate debut on Wednesday night, and two more debates looming, the campaign moves from honeymoon phase to trial by fire.
Rivals have begun throwing elbows, as the goal shifts from being the last one standing against Mitt Romney to a scramble to survive the Perry juggernaut.
For them, it's no longer enough to sit back and hope Perry flames out. For him to stay on top, he's got to prove that he deserves the buzz - and that he can offer more than boasts about a job boom in Texas, as far as that's taken him in three short weeks.
"Perry had a great opening act. Now he's got to figure out what the second act is," said Charlie Black, chief strategist to the McCain campaign in 2008. "How long can he keep momentum just by saying, 'Look at the jobs in Texas?' People want to know where you're going to take the country."
Perry's late entry to the GOP race left him untested on the national stage. His last-minute decision to skip a South Carolina conservative forum Monday - to oversee wildfire response in Texas - meant delaying his first confrontation with rivals until an even higher-stakes event: the debate at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in California.
With fresh polls showing Perry's national lead persisting, he has emerged as the man to beat in this new, intensifying phase. But at the debates and on the stump, outside strategists said, he'll need to show more heft when it comes to national policy, if he wants to stay on top.
Among his short-term tasks: Define himself before Romney and others can do it, and "make people comfortable that he can handle a foreign policy crisis," said Scott Howell, a Dallas-based GOP strategist who advises Senate and gubernatorial candidates nationwide.
His clients have included Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, whom Perry beat last year on his way to re-election, so he speaks from experience when he says that "Perry's going to be formidable. ... Mitt Romney is better organized and better experienced than he was last time, but Rick Perry has a Texas success story to tell, and he is an extremely effective retail campaigner.
"Neither candidate can play it safe. They have to play to win," he said.
No more than 5 months remain before Iowa and New Hampshire kick off the nomination voting. So time is running short for Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul, quickly eclipsed by Perry, to regain voters' attention. And other candidates with little to show for their efforts so far in polls, such as Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum, must keep from being lost in the crowd.
Tea party activists and sympathizers will play a vital role.
Romney didn't seem to be making much effort at reaching them until he began to hear Perry's footsteps. FreedomWorks - founded by longtime North Texas congressman Dick Armey - even organized a protest at a Romney appearance over the weekend, accusing him of opportunism after all but ignoring the conservative grassroots movement.
Others say activists are keeping an open mind, but want to hear concrete plans for fixing the economy.
"I don't think any of them have articulated a plan on how they'll get Americans more prosperous," said Sal Russo, chief strategist for Tea Party Express, a national group. "Perry and Romney are in the lead, but that's today. We're a long way from the Iowa caucuses. ... It's very fluid."
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