Perry's Twitter Traffic Twice Bachmann's

Texas Gov. Rick Perry seems to be stealing some of Michele Bachmann’s fire. The Minnesota congresswoman scored a big victory in the Iowa Straw Poll but appears to be getting lost in the wake of Perry’s late entry into the GOP presidential sweepstakes, The Washington Post’s blog The Fix reports.

Throughout July both Bachmann and Perry were getting about the same amount of Twitter mentions but Perry has had more than 4,000 mentions each day of this week, while Bachmann cracked 2,000 mentions just once and that was on the day she won the straw poll, the Post reported.

“Bachmann’s challenge is to transfer her ideological strength to a narrative that includes electability,” GOP strategist Scott Reed told the Post. “She is still the queen of the Iowa State Fair, but the caucus is months away, and she needs a second strong state.” Democratic pollster Fred Yang said she “may need to find some other issues to gain traction other than constantly attacking President Obama.”

The Fix notes that “Bachmann has essentially two options: let Perry do his thing and hope that it doesn’t pan out, or start competing with him. The former risks letting him define the race, while the latter risks bringing them both down and opening the door wide to the man who remains the race’s favorite — Romney. Either way, though, Bachmann needs to regain her buzz or risk being labeled an Iowa-only phenomenon.”