Alternate headline: “Perry now basically running Huckabee’s 2007 campaign.” Makes me depressed that a guy who had Texas’s shiny jobs record to run on is now desperate enough to start making empty promises about re-banning gays from the military, but you can’t go wrong in Iowa by playing to social conservatives in the home stretch. (Right, Mitt?) Or … can you? Three more data points from yesterday’s NYT poll:

There’s some potential for Perry among the 38 percent in that last question, but honestly — if gay marriage or DADT is so important to you that your vote might turn on it, you’re going to back Santorum or Bachmann. (Bachmann leads the field with 19 percent, in fact, on the question of which candidate most represents the values you try to live by, and yet she’s still just fifth overall.) Perry’s trying to thread the needle here, I guess, by positioning himself as the most socially conservative candidate who’s electable, but how electable is he right now? He’s just two points ahead of Bachmann in this survey and is tied with her in RCP’s poll average. According to PPP, his favorable rating in the swing state of Colorado is now 16/69, a few points worse than Herman Cain’s. If you’re an Iowan trying to decide between him and Bachmann, why prioritize his alleged electability over her Iowa roots?

Exit quotation from the Log Cabin Republicans: “[It’s] wrong for Governor Perry to assume being a person of faith does not afford one to support equality.”