“The only person in 30 years to get a fourth ticket out of Iowa was [John] McCain last time,” said West Des Moines-based consultant John Stineman.

But McCain had New Hampshire as a stronghold to fall back on, and had very deliberately pulled himself out of contention in Iowa. Perry doesn’t have an early state of his own — South Carolina, where he launched his campaign and was expected to be a leader, has slipped away from him.

If Perry has a weak finish in Iowa, and follows that by coming in at the back of the pack in New Hampshire — where he scored an approval rating lower than Barack Obama among GOP voters in a poll released last week — and a middling showing in South Carolina, it’s hard to see how the Perry campaign won’t quickly disappear…

Dave Roerderer, who chaired the state efforts for McCain in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2000, said it’s difficult to see how Perry gets the kind of finish he needs.