Rick Perry and Mitt Romney continue to bash each other relentlessly, even as Herman Cain’s surge in the polls has jumbled the presidential race.
Though it hasn’t received a lot of media attention, Romney and Perry have been firing salvos at one another several times each day since the last GOP debate, when the Texas governor faltered.
Cain has weighed in, saying he could not support Perry as the nominee “for a host of reasons.” While some Cain supporters downplayed the meaning of that statement, the candidate was clear in a radio interview yesterday: 
“Now if it’s one of those other candidates up there, I am going to support them 100 percent. If Gov. Perry gets the nomination, I will still support him, but it won’t be 100 percent.”
Over at Redstate.com, they are convinced that Cain’s firm statement, well before any primary votes have been cast, shows that “he’s not a serious candidate and his sole purpose in the race was to help his old friend Mitt Romney.”
Another contender who has become a factor, inevitably, is the president himself. Criticism of Barack Obama has been a staple of each Republican candidate’s stump speech, of course, but now Perry is saying that Romney and Obama are “carbon copies.”
The statement is based on the perceived similarity between Romney and Obama on some environmental issues.
*   After signing executive orders in 2005 as Massachusetts governor, a Romney press release touted the Bay State as “the first and only state to set CO2 emissions limits on power plants.”
*  Two former Romney environmental advisers are now members of the Obama administration.
*  In 2003, Romney joined environmental activists outside an aging, coal-fired plant to show his commitment to the carbon emissions caps. “I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people, and that plant, that plant kills people,” he said.
Given that Cain has made a special point of thrashing Environmental Protection Agency regulations, it appears that the pizza magnate prefers Romney, even if that means Cain must ignore entirely the governor’s past stands on environmental issues.