The Midday Brief: Oct. 28, 2011

Your afternoon reading:

• "Perry still has a decent shot at the nomination. The media loves a good comeback story and his campaign is the most established, well-staffed and well-funded of all of the alternatives to Romney. But in order to fix things, Team Perry needs to figure out what went so wrong so fast. Admitting that there was a problem has not been something that the campaign, or at least those who ran it until this week, have been willing to do. 'We don’t want to dwell on the past, we’re looking forward,' says Perry communications director Ray Sullivan. 'We generally don’t indulge in navel gazing.'" — Where Rick Perry’s Campaign Went Wrong, Time

• "Gov. Rick Perry filed his paperwork today to appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot. And he spent 20 minutes amid a crush of reporters and photographers, in Secretary of State William Gardner's office, taking questions. 'I'm here to win,' he said, brushing aside talk that front-runner Mitt Romney has the first-in-the-nation primary locked up." — World Series as metaphor: Perry says don't count me out til the last inning, Trail Blazers

• "Playbook has a sneak peek at George F. Will's Sunday column, which fires a shot through the growing GOP establishment consensus that Mitt Romney would be an acceptable, electable nominee: 'Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable, he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate.'" — George Will column on Mitt Romney: 'Has conservatism come so far ... for THIS?,' Politico

• "While the Republican presidential campaign trail bristles with talk of moats, militarization and electrified fences when it comes to immigration, the view among some Congressional Republicans has become more nuanced and measured." — Beyond 2012 Field, Nuanced G.O.P. Views on Immigrants, The New York Times

• "The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed revisions to its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule don’t satisfy Texas’ concerns about whether the state and its utilities can comply, a top state official told the agency today." — Texas takes its case against revised EPA emissions rule to the agency, Texas on the Potomac

New in The Texas Tribune:

• "Legislators and other concerned groups are preparing for a thorough review of the conflict of interest policies — or lack of policies — that apply to regents of the state’s public university systems." — Regents’ Potential Conflicts of Interest to Receive More Scrutiny

• "Every time a student drops out of public school, taxpayers save money. That’s one fewer student, at an annual savings of more than $11,000 per year from state and local sources." — School Dropouts, Politicians and the Funny Arithmetic of State Budgets