Invicto

La MSNBC le ha dedicado un perfil bastante amable a Rick Perry. Me pregunto cuánto durará esta tregua.

Spend a few days hanging out with political operatives in Austin and you’ll come away with two things: A list of restaurant recommendations as long as the margarita menu at Guero’s Taco Bar, and a hard time arguing that Gov. Rick Perry won’t be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.

In The State Which Must Not Be Messed With, the governor’s political skills are the stuff of legend, and the economic robustness over which he has presided is the subject of a steady stream of brags by his fans nationwide. Friends and foes allies alike are impressed with Perry’s deft negotiation of the Tea Party and business wings of the GOP. He’s a farmer’s son who spent a decade building a huge political apparatus in a state so vast that its tourism office advertises that “It’s like another country.”

And every indication — including Saturday’s prayer and fasting event in Houston — suggests he’s getting ready to take his Texas show on the road.

“Rick Perry is the best politician to come out of Texas since LBJ,” says Jason Stanford, a Democratic political consultant who managed Perry opponent Chris Bell’s gubernatorial campaign in 2006. “His abilities are probably on par with Obama’s.”

(...) The man has never lost an election, they say, and most things have already been tried.

Opponents have run against Perry's 2002 transportation plan, a system of new toll roads and railways that would have required a massive land acquisition by the state and could have increased consumer costs. They've tried to paint him as a wine-drinking career politician who has reaped a small fortune from political cronies. They've slammed him for mandating that young girls receive a cervical-cancer vaccine unless their parents opted out. And the governor became a late-night comedy laugh line when he appeared to flirt with secessionism at a Tea Party rally.

After all that, his last really close race was in 1998.

Chief Perry strategist Dave Carney, a man who has worked with Perry for over a decade, doesn't see chinks in his potential-candidate's gubernatorial armor, either. Asked what items on Perry's long record might keep him up at night as a strategist anticipating attacks by political opponents on a national scale, Carney replies bluntly. "Nothing." (...)