Bachmann's campaign starts to fall apart as guru quits

It could just be Rick Perry blocking some of her sunlight. Or perhaps it was what she said about God, Hurricane Irene and government spending. Whatever the causes, there are signs that the rocket that shot Michele Bachmann to near the front of the Republican nomination race is starting to sputter.

Signalling trouble is news that Ed Rollins, the veteran Republican consultant who over his long career has advised Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, is leaving his day-to-day post as top strategist in Ms Bachmann's campaign, citing his health. While he has said he will still be available in a less hands-on capacity, his deputy, David Polyansky, is leaving her team entirely.

Even as he was stepping down, Mr Rollins, who is 68 and suffered a stroke last year, made the rounds this week acknowledging that since her victory in last month's Ames straw poll in Iowa, the race has essentially become a two-horse affair between Governor Perry of Texas and Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts.

That Ms Bachmann, the Minnesota Congresswoman who has carried the Tea Party banner into the contest, managed to snatch the straw-poll crown in Ames was put down largely to the presence on her team of Mr Rollins who gave her much-needed credibility. Replacing him with anyone as potent will be difficult.

Even with him, the hurdles would have seemed high. As Mr Perry has vaulted straight to the head of the pack since announcing his candidacy last month, he has eaten into her Tea Party constituency and pushed her back down to single digits in most national polls. He is creating fundraising problems also; purses that might once have been open for Ms Bachmann are snapping shut.

And certainly the "joke", as her campaign subsequently described it, that Ms Bachmann rehearsed to some Florida supporters about Hurricane Irene and the east -coast earthquake that preceded it being a message from God about over-spending politicians will have done nothing to close her credibility gap. "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?'," she told the crowd.

Staff turmoil is often seen as a sign that a campaign is in trouble. Other Republican hopefuls this season afflicted with it have notably included Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, and Jon Huntsman, one-time Governor of Utah. Both men have suffered large-scale defections, both are faring poorly. Attention is now focusing on tonight's televised debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. It will be the first in the series of encounters with Mr Perry in the mix. While the pressure will be on him to live up to his new front-runner status, Ms Bachmann will now also be hoping to recover lost momentum.

No one will say Mr Rollins was fired or that he left piqued. Yet, it was hard to ignore the coincidence of his stepping down and his commentary in the media about Ms Bachmann's declining chances. "The Perry-Romney race is now the story, with us the third candidate," he told The Washington Post.

On Monday, he also ceded that the Perry factor had not helped. "He has slowed our money down," he told CNN. "It took a lot of the momentum that we could have gotten out of the straw-poll victory."