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By September, the Romneyites were relieved that their man had survived what they feared to be the most threatening challenges. “I’ll tell you who really worried us was Governor Pawlenty,” said a senior adviser. “If he was able to run the tortoise campaign that he was running and win [the] Iowa [caucuses], surprise people and just win it, or even surprise people and come in a strong second, he was the candidate who could do Iowa and New Hampshire. We really felt like he was just perfect—he was the personality, he was the background, he was the candidate that could have done that. And so we had no desire to run against him in New Hampshire, especially if he was strong in Iowa. Governor Pawlenty can roll into a pool hall in New Hampshire and just grab a beer and connect with people, he just could.” But, the adviser said, with an almost rueful sympathy, “He got caught out in Iowa, man. I’ve been there. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen that movie.” In Iowa in 2008, after great effort and expense (about $10 million), Romney had been badly beaten in the caucuses by Mike Huckabee, which is one reason why Romney avoided the Iowa straw poll this time around.

Bachmann had missed her chance. Said the adviser: “After the straw poll, she should have shifted her focus on Perry, not done a victory lap on every Sunday show where she got, where the target was her.”

Governor Rick Perry of Texas was the real threat—or at least that’s what the pundits were saying as the pre-primary campaign turned into the backstretch after Labor Day. If he got in the race, the conventional thinking went, then the Tea Partyers would flock to the Texan, who was so anti–federal government and pro–states’ rights that he had once suggested that the Lone Star State consider seceding from the union. One Romney adviser ticked off all the reasons to worry about Perry, including the governor’s Texas financial base, but he observed: “One other thing to watch with Perry, though, is that we’re going to do really well with women, Republican women, and he won’t. He doesn’t poll well with women. He does with evangelical women. It’s the same old stuff, he’s a bit of a swaggering cowboy, and women have a real aversion to that. They want to date that guy in high school. They don’t want to marry him.”

The reverse implication was that women might not want to date Romney—and guys might not want to watch a game with him. But they were likely to see the stolid Romney as a more reliable long-term relationship than a former fighter jock good ol’ boy who still wore cowboy boots. The Romneyites were reasonably confident that Perry would beat himself. Still, they began quietly preparing a negative campaign to tear down Perry, just in case.

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Perry finally decided to run in part because he could not abide Romney. “He basically told me, Hell, I’m not going to concede this thing to Mitt,” said one top political operative who often spoke, as he put it, “in depth” with Perry.

Asked if Perry disliked Romney, Perry’s chief strategist, Dave Carney, offered a roundabout answer, but one with a clear meaning. “Perry looks at things, particularly in politics, that when you say something … your word is important,” he began. The wide-waisted Carney, fifty-two, had rolled up to a Peterborough, New Hampshire, diner in a beat-up, cherry-red Ford Explorer with stickers on the back for the Perry campaign and the ConVal (New Hampshire) Regional High School Cougars, for whom his son plays football. Wearing shorts and a ball cap on a crisp fall morning, he ordered a three-egg omelet with sausage. Lounging on a bench, Carney was uncharacteristically inarticulate as he fumbled for a way to describe Perry’s attitude toward Romney. He finally settled on describing Romney as “just not his cup of tea, is the best way to say it.” So Romney and Perry were not going to be pals? “They are just different personalities and they really don’t have much in common,” responded Carney.

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Perry’s entry into the race on August 13 was the biggest threat