If you get beyond the Banana Republic nature of Rick Perry calling the Fed Chair a traitor, you see that this is dangerous ground for Mitt Romney. Romney, who’s generally been supportive of Bernanke’s chairmanship, won’t be able to follow Perry into Paul-like Fed-bashing territory.

Here’s key context on the impact of Rick Perry’s entry into the GOP primary contest.

The key thing in my book is that Romney, so far, has been able to leverage the weak GOP field to spin up an inevitability narrative, mainly by ignoring the other candidates and focusing his attacks on President Obama. Perry knocks that whole house down.