Free Republic

"Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., who calls himself “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” will endorse Texas Gov. Rick Perry next week, a source with knowledge of the endorsement told ABC News.".......

Do not believe the haters and the left-leaning media. Rick Perry has the strength, conviction, and solid record to turn America around. It is time. Time for a REAL change.

It’s been a long, hard road for Rick Perry the last few months, what with his unforgettable “oops” moment, that strange speech in New Hampshire, the birtherism interlude, the Mormon “cult” distraction and — well, you get the idea. But with the constant struggles on the campaign trail, Perry has been able to count on a solid phalanx of support from Texas Republicans. Wait? He hasn’t? Uh, oh. By the latest count, Perry has won endorsements from only eight of his home state’s 23 Republican House members and neither of the state’s two senators.

COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — Rick Perry arrived on the campus of Texas A&M University in the tumultuous fall of 1968, cut his hair short, regulation military style, and donned a uniform. College students across America were rising up against the Vietnam War, but Mr. Perry, a member of the Corps of Cadets here, would not be among them. “There will be no Columbia, no Berkeley here,” the university president, Earl Rudder, declared that fall. When a small band of antiwar protesters took to the steps of the Memorial Student Center, a building ... “I don’t want to use the word...

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry unveiled a sweeping economic agenda Monday highlighted by a plan to level a voluntary 20 percent “flat tax” on all taxpayers who will accept it in place of what they’re paying now.

The Iowa caucuses are now just 72 days away. Once Iowans vote on Jan. 3, the 2012 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination ceases to be about debates and gaffes and spin, and begins to be about actual results. This week’s uproar over Herman Cain’s CNN interview with Piers Morgan will likely be a distant and irrelevant memory by Jan. 3. Despite Cain’s rhetorical difficulty in consistently articulating a pro-life position, his bona fides on the issue have long been established, as demonstrated in 2006 when he led a $1 million effort to encourage black voters to vote pro-life. What...

Thursday, October 20, 2011 Reflecting national trends, businessman Herman Cain has now jumped to the front of the Republican pack in Iowa. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Iowa caucus-goers shows that Cain is in front with 28% followed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at 21%. Congressman Ron Paul is a distant third at 10% followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 9%, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann at 8%, and Texas Governor Rick Perry at 7%. The sixth place finish for Perry is a sharp decline from early September when Perry was the frontrunner both nationally and...

Last month, Insider Advantage had him leading Romney in the state 29/20. A month later, “He now barely has a heartbeat.” When I saw Perry’s topline number of three percent, I figured the “Ponzi scheme” talk must have sent Florida’s seniors running screaming into the night. Not so. He’s actually doing (marginally) worse with other age demographics in this poll, and in the last poll he did reasonably well with the 65+ crowd, finishing second to Romney in that group with almost 23 percent. That poll was taken on September 13, which was almost a week after Romney started attacking...

Las Vegas, Nevada— One day before a CNN Western Republican presidential debate, a new national survey indicates that Mitt Romney and Herman Cain are essentially tied for the lead in the race for the GOP nomination, with Rick Perry dropping to a distant third. .....According to the poll [CNN/ORC International Poll], only one third of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say they will definitely support the candidate they are currently backing, with two thirds saying they may change their minds. "With only 33% of all Republicans saying that their minds are made up, it's far too early...

Romney has had a big boost from the Republican establishment, which decided a while back he's the serious candidate with a chance of beating President Obama. The establishment also decided that upending Texas Gov. Rick Perry's chances is the best way to ensure a Romney victory, since none of the other candidates in the race are very serious and the establishment utterly failed in coaxing NJ Gov. Chris Christie into the race. Cain and Romney are also buddies. Cain endorsed Romney last time around and Romney finds various ways to praise Cain, even going so far as telling a NH...

Gov. Rick Perry has released a jobs plan. Or is it an energy plan? Or it is an EPA-reform plan? Or is it a trade-deficit plan? The plan is a bit of each, and it is a very good one. Governor Perry, under whom Texas enjoyed the strongest job-creation record of any large U.S. state, proposes to open up oil and gas production in areas in which American producers are either shut out or heavily restricted: the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida coast, and Alaska, among others. Perry’s plan also entails the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and the...

POLITICO's Ken Vogel passes along an email sent by Perry contributor Norman Adams that contained a separate email from Steve Hotze, also a Perry bundler based in Texas. Both emails make donor solicitations that underscore Perry's position helping to kill a bill similar to the Arizona immigration legislation, for instance. The upshot is that these are not necessarily positions that either primary and caucus voters know about Perry, or that will sit well with them. As I noted in another post, it's not clear that immigration is the driver of voter interests in presidential primaries that some believe it to...

Speaking to hundreds of Granite State voters at a private reception, the Texas governor was asked whether he supported a fence along the Mexican border. "No, I don't support a fence on the border," he said, while referring to the long border in Texas alone. "The fact is, it's 1,200 miles from Brownsville to El Paso. Two things: How long you think it would take to build that? And then if you build a 30-foot wall from El Paso to Brownsville, the 35-foot ladder business gets real good."

So what does a complete review of Perry's record reveal? As it turns out, he sent a letter during his tenure as Texas Agricultural Commissioner that praised Hillary Clinton's 1993 health care reform efforts. "I think your efforts in trying to reform the nation's health care system are most commendable," he wrote. "I would like to request that the task force give particular consideration to the needs of the nation's farmers... Rural populations have a high proportion of uninsured people, rising health care costs, and often experience lack of services." He concluded by noting, "your efforts are worthy, and I...

Watch the video. It's Rick Perry in his own words.

I spoke to a group of politically active, so-called conservatives last week at a hotel here in my New Mexico hometown. One of the topics that kept coming up was whether I despised Texas Gov. Rick Perry as much as I despised most other candidates that the Republican/Democrat regime is trying to force me to pick from in the next election. Let’s think through some deep thoughts and do fact-checking on Perry and the entire Left/Right paradigm as most people seem to see it right now: You can spend about five minutes on the governor’s official website confirming that Rick...

At first glance, Labor Day weekend looks like it could be a lot of fun for Rick Perry and his fans. The odds of a Sarah Palin candidacy continue to shrink to irrelevance as she wrestles with incompetent local Tea Party organizers in Iowa over a long-planned appearance just outside Des Moines. Mitt Romney’s temporary triumph in securing top billing at a Tea Party Express event in New Hampshire, meanwhile, is being spoiled by protests from Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks organization. And Mitt is also looking a bit humiliated by his last-minute decision to change plans and appear at a candidate...

RedState's Erick Erickson tweeted that something's going on between Sarah Palin and the Iowa Tea Party., just as the Wall Street Journal reported.I looked up the reference Mr. Erickson gave, and there's definitely something going on, but it's "private, for now."Christine O’Donnell is off the guest list – again – and Sarah Palin is a “maybe.” In the latest episode in the drama over the speaking lineup for Saturday’s Tea Party of America rally in Iowa, organizer Ken Crow said Palin’s staff called this morning to say Palin’s appearance at the rally was “on hold” until three changes were made....

Mitt Romney is going into the lion’s den today. Romney is neither a veteran nor a Texan, but he is heading to San Antonio, Texas to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention one day after Gov. Rick Perry, who is both a veteran and a Texan, fired up the crowd with a patriotic paean to American exceptionalism. But with poll after poll showing Romney slipping into Perry’s wake, the former Massachusetts governor is keen to show that he’s not backing down. The latest CNN survey has Perry nearly doubling Romney among all candidates running or considering a run and...

Rick Perry’s letter earlier this month to DHS Secretary Napolitano demanding $349 million in compensation for having to house illegal-alien criminals is, I’m afraid, a political stunt — basically, shooting a coyote to distract attention from his bad immigration track record. And there’s a lot to distract attention from: * Perry supports amnesty for the illegal-alien population, wanting to relabel them “temporary” workers, while playing the same semantic game as other amnesty supporters in denying that his amnesty is an amnesty. * Ten years ago he signed into law a measure offering taxpayer-funded in-state tuition subsidies for illegal aliens attending...