Perry launches home-stretch run in Iowa

AUSTIN (KXAN) - With just three weeks before Iowa casts the nation's first votes in the 2012 presidential election, Gov. Rick Perry is embarking on a near-50 stop bus tour through the Hawkeye State.

It usually shakes out that only the top three candidates survive after Iowa . Polls suggest Perry has an uphill climb.

His advisers hope television commercials like the one he released Tuesday set him apart from the other candidates as the only Washington outsider in the group.

"Washington is the capital of political correctness where double speak reigns and the truth is frowned upon,” Perry says in the ad, titled "Politically Correct."

His 16-day bus-tour approach across the state is just ahead. If he does well in Iowa, some analysts suggest he could do even better in the South Carolina primary -- the first race in the South.

New surveys show Perry might be on the upswing. Real Clear Politics has taken an average of Perry's poll numbers and found he has risen from about 6 percent at the first of the month to about 10 percent now. But the NBC-Wall Street Journal Poll out Tuesday shows Perry mired in fifth place among the GOP candidates nationwide.

But to place third in Iowa, he will have to knock out fellow Texan, Congressman Ron Paul, who has tremendous support there and is only behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's second place position by a few points.