Can Rick Perry make a comeback?

It’s been a rough few days for Rick Perry.

His performance in Thursday night’s debate among Republican presidential hopefuls was universally panned.

On Fox News Saturday, Mike Huckabee said Perry looked “dumbfounded” and “not prepared for the presidential stage.”

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, gave the Texas governor a thumbs-down as well.

“No front-runner in a presidential field has ever, we imagine, had as weak a showing as Rick Perry,” he wrote the morning after. “It was close to a disqualifying two hours for him.”

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin judged that “the cringe-worthiest moment … was when Perry botched what should have been his most potent attack on Mitt Romney’s chronic flip-flopping.”

“Any random high schooler at the CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference] in Washington could have done better than this,” she wrote. “If this is how Perry’s going to take Obama on in debates, we’re in trouble.”

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So does this open the way for Mitt Romney, who by most accounts did very well at the Orlando debate?

At times, Romney tried to sound like the most ardent tea partyer – especially when he went after Perry’s granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants enrolled at Texas colleges and universities.

But it depends on whether the tea party movement, which (philosophically, at least) is more in tune with Perry’s rhetoric, could ever see its way to support a former governor of liberal Massachusetts who enacted a health care law with an individual mandate.

There are differences of opinion about that.

“I don’t care if Perry is soft on immigration and tried to mandate a vaccination through executive order,” declares Tim Griffin at the conservative RedState web site. “Romney is the father of socialized medicine in America!”

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