James Dobson and Don Wildmon will meet about a Romney alternative. | AP Photos GOP elites eye 'consensus' candidate 
 
 A group of movement conservatives has called an emergency meeting in Texas next weekend to find a “consensus” Republican presidential hopeful, POLITICO has learned. 
 
 “You and your spouse are cordially invited to a private meeting with national conservative leaders of faith at the ranch of Paul and Nancy Pressler near Brenham, Texas, with the purpose of attempting to unite and to come to a consensus on which Republican presidential candidate or candidates to support, or which not to support,” read an invitation that is making its way into in-boxes Wednesday morning. 
 
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 The meeting is being hosted by such prominent conservative figures as James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Don Wildmon, onetime chairman of the American Family Association; and Gary Bauer, himself a former presidential candidate. 
 
 Many of the individuals on the host list attended a previous closed-door session with Rick Perry this summer. But Perry’s candidacy stalled out, though he’s pledged to take his campaign on to South Carolina despite a disappointing fifth-place finish in Iowa. 
 
 Movement conservatives are concerned that a vote split between Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum among base voters could enable Mitt Romney to grab the GOP nomination. A source who shared the invitation said the meeting was about how to avoid such a possibility. 
 
 But Bauer said the meeting was entirely aimed at finding consensus behind one Republican and not part of any Stop Mitt movement. 
 
 “There’s only one person I’m interested in stopping and that’s Barack Obama,” said Bauer. 
 
 He said if there are any signs that the meeting will be focused on an effort to defeat Romney, he’ll withdraw from being involved. 
 
 Bauer, who has not backed any candidate, said that the Texas gathering was an extension of an effort that began with the 2008 campaign in which conservatives sought to interview the candidates and come up with an endorsement. 
 
 Many of the same individuals, dubbed as “The Arlington Group” four years ago, have been meeting this year, but it has been more informal. 
 
 Other hosts have weighed in on the race. Wildmon, for example, is backing Gingrich and the Presslers are Perry backers. 
 
 If the conservatives are to reach any consensus, they have little time to do it. With Perry deciding to go forward and three contests this month, it seems that the base’s votes will continue to be split. 
 
 Romney edged out Santorum by eight votes in the Iowa caucuses, and Gingrich placed a distant fourth, behind Ron Paul. 
 
 Santorum seems best positioned to take on the mantle of Romney-stopper, particularly given his own appeal to evangelical voters in Iowa, but his sudden surge has left him heading into future contests short of cash and on-the-ground organizations in upcoming states. 
 
 Gingrich praised Santorum in his concession speech Tuesday in Iowa, but showed no sign of dropping out of the race — pledging to assail Romney as a “Massachusetts moderate” while campaigning in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Michele Bachmann, who never caught fire with conservative elites, ended her campaign Wednesday. 
 
 On Tuesday night, a prominent Iowa conservative, Bob Vander Platts, called on Republicans to unite behind Santorum in hopes of stopping Romney. Vander Platts, who has backed Santorum, suggested Gingrich should reassess his candidacy. 
 
 If Republicans are going to put up a “pro-family conservative against Mitt Romney, some decisions need to be made,” the former gubernatorial candidate told reporters at a Santorum rally. ||||| Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who said after the Iowa caucuses that he would return to Texas to “assess” whether there was a path for him to the Republican nomination, decided on Wednesday that there is a way forward. 
 
 A person close to the Perry campaign said that the governor and his inner circle made the decision to move forward around the same time that Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota decided to pull out of the race. 
 
 Mr. Perry’s decision to continue and attend the next Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire on Saturday surprised some advisers. The governor’s wife, Anita, was in favor of pushing forward in the campaign, according to two Republicans who spoke on condition of anonymity. 
 
 The campaign has been divided with disagreements on strategy, the Republicans said, and Mr. Perry’s decision provided the latest example of competing arguments among his advisers. Donors and other supporters also reached out to Mr. Perry and urged him to stay on at least through the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21, given the volatility and unpredictable nature of the race. 
 
 While his campaign spent heavily in Iowa, Mr. Perry still has enough money to compete in South Carolina, where television advertisements are less expensive than in New Hampshire and Florida. His “super PAC” will likely also provide additional firepower. But Mr. Perry would need to reboot his fund-raising to compete in Florida at the end of the month. His fifth-place finish in Iowa, while not auspicious, showed a hunger among Republicans for a more conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. 
 
 “Think how early we are in the process,” said a person with knowledge of the campaign, who demanded anonymity before discussing the deliberations of Mr. Perry’s aides. “The reality is, not one delegate was committed yesterday. We are still early enough in the process that if the candidate has the drive to go forward, he ought to.” 
 
 “If we can get this back to a Perry versus Romney field,” the person added, “Perry can win.” 
 
 Supporters said he planned to skip the New Hampshire primary but still intended to participate in the two debates there this weekend. 
 
 For now, aides said, Mr. Perry plans to campaign next week in South Carolina. 
 
 Mr. Perry, the only sitting governor in the race, had significant support early on from conservatives and evangelicals but his poor debate performances hurt his standing. His campaign in South Carolina, despite a sluggish showing in Iowa, indicates just how wide open the nomination race remains. 
 
 Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report. ||||| You’re not going to lose a lot of bets by inferring that a candidate who says he is “suspending” his campaign is in fact about to drop out. But Rick Perry’s reconsideration of his role in the Republican nomination race appears to have been genuine and he is pressing forward for the time being. 
 
 Why did Mr. Perry decide to remain in the race? Knowing the answer is crucial to understanding whether Mr. Perry has any chance of mounting a comeback — and how his decision might reverberate upon Mitt Romney and the other Republican candidates. 
 
 Let me posit two hypothetical (and deliberately exaggerated) scenarios on how Mr. Perry’s decision came about: 
 
 Hypothetical Scenario A: Although most of Mr. Perry’s strategists were urging him to drop out of the race, he prayed on the decision, talked it over with his wife, and decided to ignore their advice. There was a strong emotional element to the decision: Mr. Perry felt embarrassed by his performance in Iowa and wanted the opportunity to redeem himself and go out on a better note. Hypothetical Scenario B: Mr. Perry was prepared to drop out of the race, but his advisers saw a credible path to victory and urged otherwise. Moreover, he received a string of phone calls, text messages and e-mails from major donors, Republican elected officials and conservative activists who expressed their support and told him that he should press on. These party elites were concerned that Mr. Romney was going to waltz to the nomination, and they were either poorly disposed toward Rick Santorum or convinced that Mr. Santorum lacked the resources to seriously challenge Mr. Romney. 
 
 In Scenario A, Mr. Perry would have made a highly idiosyncratic and personal decision, and one that was somewhat willfully disconnected from the realities of the Republican nomination race. Scenario B is just the opposite: a highly informed and strategic decision, one made expressly because Mr. Perry had credible reasons to believe that he was still viable. 
 
 Scenario B is potentially very bad news for Mr. Romney. It implies that party elites are not coalescing around him. In fact, it suggests that a subgroup of party elites are so dissatisfied with Mr. Romney that they are behaving strategically in an effort to maximize their chances of denying him the nomination. 
 
 Scenario A is potentially very good news for Mr. Romney. It implies that Mr. Perry is continuing along in the race despite having no chance of winning the nomination, the consequence of which is that he is consuming scarce resources like cash and votes that might otherwise go to one of Mr. Romney’s more conservative opponents, like Mr. Santorum. 
 
 Political scientists tend to prefer explanations like Scenario B. In the maximal expression of this philosophy, any candidate who displays any interest at all in running for the presidency is in fact running for it, whether or not they take official steps like forming an exploratory committee or raising money. According to this philosophy, candidates like Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour and Sarah Palin actually ran for president in 2012, but were winnowed from the field during the invisible primary once it became clear to them that there was not much support for their bids. 
 
 Pundits tend to prefer explanations like Scenario A. Candidates almost always offer personal explanations for their decisions (“I’m withdrawing to spend more time with my family”). Sometimes these are taken too credulously, without consideration of the strategic factors at play. 
 
 I find the political science perspective more persuasive on this issue. It can be taken too far and can sometimes overrate the rationality of political actors. But a politician’s decision about whether or not to run for president — or whether to continue to after a setback — is clearly not exogenous from the question of how viable he is. 
 
 Very strong reporting can sometimes help us to delineate between these two paradigms, and there happens to be some very strong reporting in the case of Mr. Perry’s decision, such as this pair of articles from my colleagues Nicholas Confessore and Katharine Q. Seelye. It suggests that both Scenario A and Scenario B played their part in Mr. Perry’s decision; it was partly personal but partly strategic. 
 
 Another very good piece of reporting, from Politico’s Jonathan Martin, adds some further context. Mr. Martin reports that a group of conservative leaders like James Dobson are thinking very explicitly about which candidate might have the best chance of toppling Mr. Romney. If Mr. Perry is among these candidates, it would make a lot of sense for him to wait out their decision. 
 
 But does Mr. Perry actually have a shot? This is a very difficult question to answer because of the highly ambiguous polling situation in South Carolina, where no public polls have been conducted in two weeks. My guess is that if you polled South Carolina today, it would show a close race between Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Perhaps Mr. Gingrich, who once held a large lead there, would still be ahead, but if so his support is likely to be soft, especially given his middling performance in the Iowa caucuses. 
 
 If that is the case, perhaps Mr. Perry does have some justification to continue his campaign. Mr. Perry’s polling in South Carolina has not been good recently. But if you need only 20 percent of the vote to lead the field there, or if the number of undecideds or weakly committed voters remains high, you would not need all that much momentum to contend. 
 
 Mr. Perry will probably not get that momentum unless there is some intervention to help him. His inertia is negative at the moment. He did not perform well in Iowa, which is geographically Midwestern but whose caucus demographics are closer to those of a Southern state. 
 
 But if there is some concerted effort to help Mr. Perry — if conservative elites rally to his defense and publicly promote the idea that he still has the best chance of stopping Mr. Romney — the rules of the game might be different, and Mr. Perry might have a chance of winning there. It may be relevant that Mr. Santorum, although reliably conservative on social issues, is a Northerner rather than a Southerner, a Catholic rather than an evangelical Protestant, and as much a policy wonk as a populist, qualities that would not traditionally play well to South Carolina’s electorate. 
 
 There are a lot of if-then statements here, and I would not assign high odds to Mr. Perry making a comeback — much less actually winning the nomination. And there is reason to be skeptical of the idea that conservative elites would throw their support to Mr. Perry now when it would have been more advantageous for them to do so before Iowa. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Perry does have some relatively unique strengths as a candidate, at least in comparison to this year’s Republican field, and sometimes optimal decision-making is clouded by the fog of war that accompanies the Iowa caucuses. 
 
 It may very well happen that Mr. Perry decides to drop his bid after all. He may drop it before South Carolina, particularly if Mr. Santorum’s near-victory in Iowa translates into clear signs of momentum in that state and in New Hampshire and if he begins to receive the support of conservative elites. 
 
 But we do not yet have enough evidence to conclude that Mr. Perry has been winnowed out, or that his interest in remaining in the race is merely perfunctory.
– Normally when candidates say they're "reassessing" their campaign, they're done for, but for some reason Rick Perry is soldiering on. Why? Nate Silver of the New York Times contemplates that question today, posing two exaggerated hypothetical scenarios: Either a) It was personal. Perry prayed on the decision, and ignored his strategists, or b) It was rational. Perry's strategists convinced him to stay in, after getting calls from elected officials, donors, and activists eager for him to supplant Rick Santorum as their conservative anti-Romney. Early reporting indicates it was at least partially the latter. Some donors did urge Perry to stay in, and conservative leaders are actively seeking a standard-bearer. Polling data in South Carolina is woefully out of date, but Silver suspects Perry could peel away some former Gingrich supporters and contend. "I would not assign high odds to Mr. Perry making a comeback—much less actually winning the nomination," he writes, but it's too soon "to conclude that Mr. Perry has been winnowed out."