Free Republic

AUSTIN - Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Sunday that he is undaunted by his failure to win the backing of leading social conservatives and expressed confidence that he can still rally conservative voters in Saturday's South Carolina primary with his message of job creation and economic recovery. ....Perry was unapologetic about describing front-runner Mitt Romney's business activities as "vulture" capitalism, despite criticism from a number of leading Republicans, who warned that Democrats could exploit Perry's use of the term if Romney becomes the nominee. Perry said the issue of job creation and Romney's record at Bain Capital is certain to...

...“We’ll make that decision on Saturday,” [Perry] said on ABC’s This Week. “It’s our intention to win SouthCarolina and go forward from there. But to try to plan out your campaign months in advance, I think is a little bit of a stretch.” The governor, who trailed in the Iowa caucuses and in the NewHampshire primary, said Sunday that his service in the AirForce will play well with the Palmetto State’s large veterans population. He has also tried to gain votes by attacking front-runner MittRomney as a “vulture” capitalist, a phrase that conservative commentators say sounds like an attack on...

Rick Perry says he's going on to campaign in Florida's Jan. 31 Republican presidential primary - no matter how he fares in South Carolina.

"Rick Perry Will Not Depart From His Conservative Record or Path" - The Real Record, The Real Man Musings of a Rick Perry supporter... I don’t think the American people know Gov. Rick Perry. He burst onto the national stage and seemed like a Texan, okay, a politician with some nerve, some courage, some outspokenness, who was taking on the sacred cows and telling it like it is. But the debates reversed that image...the early ones. Then there are the lies...oh so many, many MANY lies about him. Because of them, people might be forgiven for their confusion, for not...

Explain a few things to me. One: Why did he announce publicly last night that he was “reassessing” if he truly hadn’t decided to quit yet? If you want to push the talking point that Iowa doesn’t mean anything and that the real race begins in South Carolina, then push it. Don’t show everyone that the caucuses have left you so badly shaken that you’re thinking of getting out. And if that was simply a ploy to give him an excuse to skip campaigning in New Hampshire, where he has no shot, then why immediately turn around this morning and...

Thursday, January 05, 2012 Bachmann off, Perry on Republican rollercoaster By Eric Johnson and Steve Holland DES MOINES, Iowa/MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Michele Bachmann was out, Rick Perry was back and Rick Santorum was up in the most volatile Republican presidential nominating contest in decades on Wednesday, as conservative Republicans searched for an alternative to frontrunner Mitt Romney.............. An afterthought in the race until now, Santorum could have difficulty scaling up his campaign to compete in other states. On Wednesday, his website apparently crashed under a deluge of traffic. Santorum has escaped close scrutiny so far, but rivals have...

If Rick Perry leaves the Republican race, there will not be a candidate in the field who authentically represents smaller government. While many conservatives don’t mind activist government so long as the ends are conservative, the willful use of activist government for conservative ends leaves in place a government perfectly capable of activist liberal government when conservatives lose. The only way to fully turn the tide of big government is therefore to support someone who is willing to scale back government. Unfortunately, the only candidate with both an agenda to significantly cut government and a record of actually doing so...

"This is quirky place and a quirky process to say the least," Perry said of Iowa and its caucuses. "We're going to go into places where they have actual primaries and there are going to be real Republicans voting."

After finishing fifth in the Iowa Caucuses, Governor Rick Perry returned to Texas to reassess his presidential campaign. Early this morning, there was word ftom a Perry source in "First in the South" primary state South Carolina that "It looks like he is not coming this week. He has definitely canceled his plans." That certainly fueled the speculation that the Perry campaign was over. But now, a tweet from the candidate himself is strongly suggesting otherwise.

When a primary candidate suffers a substantial defeat and states that he will “reassess” his campaign while suspending his travel to the next state in the campaign, it generally means that the candidate has decided to withdraw.

Gov. Rick Perry said today he will continue his presidential campaign despite a fifth-place showing in the Tuesday Iowa caucuses and serious questions about whether he can continue. “I re-assessed,” Perry said as he left his West Des Moines hotel at about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. “We’re headed to New Hampshire and South Carolina.” Perry surprised the political world - and many of his advisers - when he Tweeted this morning that he would stay in the race. His Tweet included a photo from his morning jog. “I was out on the trail when it kind of came to me,” Perry...

What can you buy for $130? A nice pair of headphones. A romantic dinner for two. Five hours of a typical worker's pre-tax salary. Or, if you're running for president, maybe you can buy a vote.If you combine the Republican presidential candidates' total direct spending on media with SuperPAC outlays and other television ad buys from outside groups, you come out to about $15.6 million spent on TV ads in an Iowa caucus with about 120,000 total voters. That means the average price of a buying a vote via media came out about $130 dollars, according to data collected by...

Jan 2nd - Jan 3rd Romney 43% Undecided 16% Paul 14% Gingrich 9% Huntsman 7% Santorum 6% Bachmann 2% Perry 1% Roemer 1% Karger 1%

"I hope he stays in." said Rush Limbaugh today on his radio show, after acknowledging that there was some confusion about whether Rick Perry had decided to stay in the race for president or not.{Snip}

Many point to the fact that different Republican candidates have captured our fancy over the past few months as a sign of weakness. In fact, it’s a sign of strength. Everyone is calling the field weak. Maybe it’s that there are a lot of facets to being President and actually we know that each and everyone of the candidates on the dais are better than the current occupant of the oval office. Republicans just want to let them macerate and pick the best one. The field may be stronger than the congnescenti think. I haven’t picked a horse to back,...

GovernorPerry 15 mins, 1 sec ago Twitter And the next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto State...Here we come South Carolina!!! yfrog.com/odz8ujrj

Last night, I wondered if four of the “Not Romneys” would “have the self-control to stop hitting the other Not Romneys and focus on Romney?” For much of this morning, it appeared there would be two fewer of them, with indications that Perry and Bachmann would depart the race. But now, perhaps not; Perry’s personal Twitter account just chirped, “And the next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto State…Here we come South Carolina!!!” It featured this photo:

Just heard from a tweet, someone elses tweet of course.

After a disappointing fifth-place finish in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses, Texas Governor Rick Perry said he is going home to Texas to assess "whether there is a path forward for myself in this race." "With the voters' decision tonight in Iowa, I've decided to return to Texas, assess the results of tonight's caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race," Perry told supporters at the end of the night. The candidate, once considered a frontrunner in the race for the GOP nomination, earned just 10 percent on Tuesday's contest with more

In a campaign speech late Tuesday night, Governor Rick Perry stated that he is "returning to Texas" to reassess whether he is going to continue running for President. The speech contained several emotional moments, in particular two moments. The first was when he read a letter from an adoring supporter who called him a "great man." The letter described a conversation that Mr. Perry had had with a soldier and how his supporter looked on in awe as he watched Governor Perry call the veteran his "Christian brother." The second was when Perry announced that he would be returning to...