“They got soft,” says Paul Burka, a longtime political columnist for the Texas Monthly. “A Democrat hasn’t won statewide in Texas since 1994. Their opposition has been almost non-existent. There was this aura of invincibility.”

The aura made Perry’s team complacent. Despite evidence that Perry has been considering a run for higher office for more than a year – his last state budget made a very political statement and he formed fundraising organizations in Iowa and South Carolina a year ago – they entered the campaign unprepared. Though Carney disputes this, several sources say they did little opposition research on their own candidate–a staple of modern presidential campaigns–assuming that he’d already been vetted by his six statewide wins. After Perry’s first two weeks on the national stage when he aggressively promoted his record of job creation, the campaign did little to promote his achievements in Texas or provide a narrative for his candidacy. (They finally returned to his jobs resume in the first television ads their running in Iowa this week.)

Instead, Perry allowed his opponents to define him. After several scrappy debates, the only thing Republican voters knew about his health care record in Texas was that he had mandated the HPV vaccine for teenage girls; all they heard about his immigration record was Romney’s assertion in the last debate that Texas has let more undocumented workers into the country than any other state, and that Perry provided in-state college tuition to many of them. Perry, who refused to debate or speak to newspaper editorial boards during his 2010 gubernatorial reelection, was clearly ill-prepared to defend himself. His staff now says that he may not participate in future debates after Nov. 9.