We won't have Ole Rick Perry to kick around anymore, dang it! I read someplace yesterday that if he isn't doing well by sometime in September, that'll be it. 

But with Perry's campaign strapped for cash, it appears he'll be the first to do it this way. Barbour said Perry's financial prospects might brighten after the Iowa caucuses in February — that finishing in the top three "gets a lot of money off the fence."

There is one obstacle to this strategy: a law that bars a candidate from coordinating with an outside group regarding the campaign's "plans, projects, activities or needs." In 2012, the first presidential race with superPACs, Republican Mitt Romney even exclaimed that if coordination occurred, "we go to the big house."

But enforcement concerns are fading, as the Federal Election Commission has avoided tackling big issues such as coordination.

Perry's operation is "not going to be able to pull this off without coordinating," said Larry Noble, senior counsel at the pro-regulation Campaign Legal Center and former general counsel to the FEC. "If they do it and succeed, it'll be the new benchmark."

This cracked me up