CORPUS CHRISTI — Gov. Rick Perry is under attack for trying to prevent a cancer whose yearly death toll exceeds this nation’s 9/11 losses by more than a thousand. On this issue, we are compelled to defend him — an unfamiliar role — and to wonder whether the master politician hand-picked his attackers. We speak, of course, of the other Republican presidential candidates and their assault on Perry’s 2007 executive order that all sixth-grade girls be vaccinated against HPV, a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer and genital warts. The order was soon overturned in a hail of criticism...