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Texas Gov. Rick Perry this morning endorsed David Dewhurst for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison... In a tweet this morning, Dewhurst (@DavidHDewhurst) declared, “I’m honored that veteran and conservative champion @GovernorPerry is endorsing our campaign for U.S. Senate"... Perry praised Dewhurst’s loyalty and said he was glad to return the favor.

In his circuitous path to the top of the primary polls, Rick Santorum has presented himself as the pure conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. But an extensive review of newspaper archives and interviews with officials involved in his successful 1990 congressional race against Rep. Doug Walgren (D-Pa.) suggests that Santorum was cut from a similar GOP cloth as his current adversary. Rick Santorum Used to Cast Himself As Progressive Conservative and Non Reaganite In His First Campaign In his circuitous path to the top of the primary polls, Santorum has presented himself as the pure conservative alternative to Romney. But...

From Public Policy Polling, this is really bad news for Rick Perry -- although at this point it cannot be unexpected: Rick Perry's Presidential campaign is doing about as bad in Texas now as it is everywhere else in the country. When PPP last polled the state in September he was at 49%, leading Mitt Romney by 39 points. Now Perry's support has declined by 31 points, leaving him in 3rd place at 18%. Mitt Romney at 24% and Newt Gingrich at 23% lead the way with Rick Santorum at 15%, Ron Paul at 12%, and Buddy Roemer at 0%...

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

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...

OSCEOLA, Iowa -- In what the Texas governor calls a "transformation," Rick Perry on Tuesday said that he has reversed his acceptance of abortion in some severe circumstances, saying that he now opposes the procedure even in cases of rape and incest. Perry said the change came after seeing the "Gift of Life" film produced by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. He told an audience of Iowans at Clark Electric Co-op in Osceola that he was moved by the story of a woman who introduced the film during a screening earlier this month in Des Moines.

November 28, 2011 Get ready for a Perry comeback By Bryan Fischer Newt is the current flavor of the month in the GOP race for the presidential nomination, and grabbed a coup in New Hampshire with the endorsement of the Union-Leader. However, Newt has enough baggage with enough rocks in it to drag him below surface again. His amnesty stance on immigration puts him to the left of Perry on that issue, and we now know he took $1.8 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac right when they were dragging the housing industry to the bottom of the sea....

"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.".......

When Texas Gov. Rick Perry entered the Republican presidential race in mid-August, he was touted as the candidate conservatives had been waiting for — the antidote to the more country club sort of appeal of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. No longer. Three months into his campaign, a new Washington Post-ABC News survey reveals that his numbers have not only fallen considerably among self-identified conservative Republicans, but also lag behind Romney and the majority of the other candidates for the GOP nomination. Among all Republicans, 42 percent view Perry favorably while 38 percent see him in an unfavorable light. Perry’s...

The five reasons I asserted that Governor Perry would have the best shot at beating Obama were simple ones: He decisively created more jobs than Obama. He greatly respects and tries to encourage small businesses. He has a clear understanding of federalism and what states shouldn't be forced into. He has solid core convictions that replicate most of America. And he could unite the core conservative Democrats, Republicans and Independents across the nation on economic, social and defense policy. All five of those reasons remain -- even now -- solidly relevant and valid. However, he's certainly nowhere near where I...

By facing the issue and joking about it, Perry frames his gaffe as a funny moment rather than a serious, and seriously stupid, one. He takes control of the discussion. Every minute he's on the air being interviewed about it is one more minute his moment isn't being replayed, one more minute some panel of pundits isn't fretfully analyzing its stupendous terribleness. By allowing his memory glitch to be the topic of discussion and owning up to it, he helps exhaust the subject. Most of all, Perry is being humanized, albeit not in the way any politician would wish. For...

he Perry campaign wants to reboot, having retooled and refined its message and tried hard to get back on the jobs message. Okay, fine, but first the Perry camp needs to answer a basic question — why should supporters who went all in for him and wound up feeling burned give him a second shot? I asked him about that and it was, perhaps, a good sign that he stayed on the jobs message. The jobs message, though, raises a question about his flat tax — won't it just help the rich? Also, what about President Obama's approach and his...

WASHINGTON – Rick Perry, after calling Mitt Romney a “fat cat,” today also called on the former Massachusetts governor to release his income tax returns, an indication that Perry will increasingly make an issue of Romney’s wealth in the Republican presidential primary. The strong charges from Perry are striking coming from a candidate who himself two months ago accused President Obama of “trying to engage in class warfare and shooting high-powered bullets at people who have corporate jets.” Now, as Perry tries to gain an edge on Romney – by far the wealthiest candidate in the race – the Texas...

THE HYPOTHESIS Human papillomavirus may increase the chances of heart disease by suppressing an important gene. THE INVESTIGATOR Dr. Kenichi Fujise, University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and colleagues. A new study suggests that a common sexually transmitted virus already linked to cancer may also cause cardiovascular disease. Women infected with the human papillomavirus, or HPV, are two to three times as likely as uninfected women to have had a heart attack or stroke, according to a report published on Monday in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology. HPV is known to cause cancer of the cervix,...

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...

I spoke to a feisty Rick Perry this morning who said he agreed with his wife’s comments that his campaign has been “brutalized” because of his Christianity and Perry came out of the gates attacking Herman Cain’s now famous 9-9-9 plan. “I’ll stand by my wife. I think she’s right on both cases. My understanding is that she said I’m the most conservative candidate in the race and ‘he’s a Christian.’ So I haven’t got anything I can add to that and she’s hit me on my mark both times there,” Perry said on “GMA.” While campaigning for her husband...

HANOVER, N.H. -- After a two-hour debate on the economy, earnest GOP operatives headed straight to the spin room to tout the merits of their respective candidates. As for Texas Gov. Rick Perry,he headed straight to the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house. "Debates are not my strong suit," Perry told about 100 fraternity brothers gathered to see him at the house, a few blocks from the debate site on the campus of Dartmouth College. No keg stands were in view.

DALLAS - Last year, Texas taxpayers spent $184 million so kids on Medicaid could get free braces. Taxpayers did not just pay orthodondists for doing work many in the middle class consider a luxury. Under Medicaid, the public spent $13 million on orthodontic transportation.

[Can't say if I'll vote for Perry but hope Jewish voters understand that Obama is not their friend.] It could have been an awkward moment even for a seasoned politician like Texas Governor Rick Perry. Surrounded by a group of Orthodox rabbis in black hats and black suits during a Hanukkah ceremony at the Texas State Capitol, Perry, now a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, was swept into a hora dance, holding hands with the Jewish leaders as they surrounded the lighted menorah. But Perry did not seem to mind. “That was a real ‘Dancing With the Stars,’”...

.....Drudge's editorial decisions replace Perry's message of solid, inspirational, conservatism with an inept, flagging candidate. And while Drudge doesn't exert the broad influence over the scattered media landscape that he did over a more concentrated media five or ten years ago, he still wields immense power, .... Drudge's relationship with Romney's campaign manager is seen by some Drudge-watchers as a kind of Rosetta Stone, but I've never thought he was quite that predictable. Perry could have emerged on the page as the larger-than-life cowboy political hero his campaign depicts. Instead, he's the bumbling, cartoon version of that character.

There's an old curse that begs, "O that mine enemy would write a book." That's a desire getting a big play in the debates between Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who are both trashing my Dad Ronald Reagan's so-called "11th Commandment," that Republicans must refrain from attacking each other in public. Like just about everybody else I'm being wearied by both Mitt Romney and Rick Perry citing passages from each other's books to prove a point. All they do is prove that they can read and write. We need more than that in a president. As my Jewish...

"But the real question is: Does Governor Perry continue to believe that Social Security should not be a federal program, that it's unconstitutional and it should be returned to the states, or is he going to retreat from that view?" In other words: Is my opponent an extremist who'd lead the party to ruin or a weasel who can't stand by his guns? On the Texas economy, Romney said, "I think Governor Perry would agree with me that if you’re dealt four aces, that doesn't make you necessarily a great poker player." Earlier Romney had sounded the same note, saying...

If you watched the Fox/Google debate that kicked off the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida this week, you'll know which video clip we're going to embed below. If you didn't, you're in for something of a treat. Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, created waves when he entered the GOP race for the presidential nomination. His entry scared off other vultures who were circling, like Giuliani and Palin perhaps, and he robbed momentum from the now almost absent Michele Bachmann. Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul all saw their own figures give way as the Governor of...

I just read the text of Rick Perry’s remarks to the Border Summit on Aug, 21st 2001. How in the hell is this stuff slipping through the cracks without a single mention in the conservative press? If this had been Obama, Sean Hannity would have been talking about it 24/7 during the last presidential campaign. There are many passages in the speech that are of great concern to me, but this one really caught my attention. …Legislation authored by border legislators Pat Haggerty and Eddie Lucio establishes an important study that will look at the feasibility of bi-national health insurance....

Until the most recent GOP debate took place, I was starting to think that perhaps Gov. Sarah Palin had waited too long to get into the race (if, in fact, she is getting in). Everything seemed to be solidifying around a match-up between Gov. Perry and Gov. McRomney, and it appeared that everyone else was simply fighting for their place on the periphery. But a strange thing happened on the way to deciding who the Republican nominee is going to be, and that strange thing was Perry’s inexplicable refusal to recant his support for a Texas tuition waiver for illegal...

The conventional wisdom is dumping hard on Rick Perry. Politico blared Friday, in the wake of his fumbling debate performance, that he might already be “Texas toast.” This tells me now is exactly the time to buy Perry stock....... ....The conventional counterargument, of course, is that the establishment will circle the wagons around Romney. ..... But I can mount a highly plausible counter-counterargument for why it may not.....All we've seen these past two years is establishment Republicans accepting one extreme demand after another. My case then extends to the question of who will make up the GOP primary electorate.... Henry...

Rick Perry Is Scary to GOP Opponents, Obama Texas Gov. Won Fla. Republican Debate Hands-Down; Here’s Why John Tures September 23, 2011 Before the Orlando, Fla., debate, Perry had been blasted by the media for not being very intelligent and having views that were too conservative for mainstream voters. ... Perry proved them wrong on both counts. It was a performance that had to have President Barack Obama worried... .... Much of the night was spent fending off zingers from others on stage that would have felled a lesser candidate. For example, there was ex-Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen....

Rick Perry Still Center Stage in GOP Debate in Florida Orlando Snipe-Fest Continues to Pit Frontrunner Perry Against GOP Stalwart Mitt Romney Owen Rust September 23, 2011 According to CNN, the Republican debate in Orlando was a hurricane of sharp words aimed at new frontrunner Rick Perry, whose actions as governor of Texas over the last decade have come under intense scrutiny by his fellow GOP competitors. ..... The heat Perry's facing is also a sign of his recognized power among the field of Republican candidates: Their collective focus on him instead of on one of the less-viable candidates may...

The Fox commentators noted that Rick Perry's best moment was his anecdote about a cancer survivor whose "lobby[ing]" convinced him to mandate Gardasil. It appeared to be his one good moment in an otherwise dreadfully bad debate performance. Unfortunately, as National Review Online contributor Katrina Trinko exposes, it was all a fib: When Michele Bachmann lobbed the crony capitalism charge at Rick Perry, he said that the lobbyist who had impacted him was 31-year-old Heather Burcham. “I got lobbied on this issue,” Perry said. “I got lobbied by a 31 year old young lady who had stage 4 cervical cancer....

Mitt Romney is an incredibly vulnerable Republican candidate, from his numerous policy reversals to his championing of the Massachusetts health care law that served as the basis from Obamacare. But for him to lose, somebody else has to beat him. And like Tim Pawlenty before him, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is blowing his chances to exploit Romney’s weaknesses. The defining moment in this debate may well have been the point at which Perry went on the attack against Romney for being a flip flopper. As I noted earlier, there’s a long file to choose from. And Perry had clearly rehearsed...

SAN ANTONIO -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry remains one of the front-runners for the Republican Presidential Nomination, and depending on who you ask, many think he'll get it. John Sharp, the recently confirmed Chancellor of Texas A&M University who ran against Perry in the 1998 general election for Lieutenant Governor, gave his take on the race while visiting Texas A&M- San Antonio on Tuesday. "It's a full time deal running against Rick Perry, and anybody who sells him short is an idiot, because it will be a tough campaign," Sharp said. Sharp has known Perry since his college days, where...

Two bioethics professors have said that they are willing to pay $11,000 for medical records that could prove that the story Rep. Michele Bachmann told about the toxicity of HPV vaccine, after Monday night's GOP presidential debate, is true. Bachmann first raised the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine issue during the presidential debate, attacking Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who issued an executive order in 2007 mandating that girls get the HPV vaccine as part of a school immunization requirement. She questioned the state's authority to force "innocent little 12-year-old girls" to have a "government injection" that was "potentially dangerous." The following...

Texas Tea Party leaders are unhappy with Gov. Rick Perry’s immigration-related positions and want him to call another special legislative session to give state lawmakers a third opportunity to ban sanctuary cities. “This is an issue that is simmering and bubbling up to the surface … We are tired of lip service. We are fed up. We are fed up, too, Gov. Perry,” Texas Tea Party Caucus Advisory Committee chair JoAnn Fleming of Tyler said Monday. Perry declared sanctuary cities an emergency issue in January and put it back on the legislative agenda in June after lawmakers failed to approve...

The new Gallup poll of the Republican contenders is out, this time with USA TODAY branding. Just looking at the frontrunners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney in isolation, it looks like Romney is gaining. What I find interesting though is where that support appears to be coming from. Romney’s support may be coming from Michele Bachmann. Facts of the September poll real quick: 439 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, MoE 6. August’s poll had an MoE of 4 for the Republican subsample, using mobile and landline phones. Obviously there are other explanations for these movements from August to September, but just...

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has told Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat to immediately suspend the cervical cancer control vaccination programme for girls. The programme is part of a two-year study to look into the utility of a vaccine in public health programmes and acceptability of Gardasil, the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine made by Merck. Gardasil, available in medical stores across the country, is marketed in India by MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd. The programme was marred by controversy after four deaths and complications among 120 girls were reported after vaccination. The girls complained of stomach disorders, epilepsy, headaches and...

A daring Michele Bachmann appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and faced grilling questions on the HPV vaccine, gay marriage and homosexuality. As the liberal host of the late night talk show thanked the GOP presidential hopeful for being a “good sport,” he said, “We’ve done a million jokes. Hopefully, you haven’t been watching any of them.” However, soon thereafter Leno appeared unusually serious as he threw questions at Minnesota Congresswoman Bachmann. Leno’s first question Friday evening concerned Bachmann’s attacks on Texas Gov. Rick Perry for supporting the HPV vaccine. “Is that bad? It’s a vaccine to prevent...

It's one thing to have a philosophical disagreement with the Texas governor on whether he should have mandated a vaccine for girls against a sexually transmitted virus. But it's an entirely different matter to spread false rumors about the vaccine, hoping to leverage parental fears for political gain. That's the depths to which Minnesota's Michele Bachmann has sunk in her bid to counter Rick Perry's surge in polls. It's conduct unbecoming a member of Congress, much less a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Bachmann used the issue last week at the CNN/Tea Party Express debate in Tampa to land...

Cancer treatment has made great progress in recent decades, but the tragedy is that so much of our effort to combat this scourge is just that: treatment. Once a disease appears, there is only so much that can be done. It would be far cheaper, more effective and less traumatic to prevent it. A vaccine for cancer would be a triumph for public health. Did I say “would be”? Actually, it is. Such a vaccine exists for one of the biggest killers of women. But Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is against it, and she’s not alone. Two different vaccines block...

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...

VIDEO

WASHINGTON - A 2007 executive order by Texas Gov. Rick Perry has become the latest post-debate headache for the Republican presidential front-runner, who was accused of "crony capitalism" Tuesday by Rep. Michele Bachmann. The fight over requiring vaccinations for young girls, which surfaced in Monday's Florida debate, involved government prerogatives and cancer. But it also had a strong moral subtext: Bachmann and other social conservatives objected to forcible inoculations against a disease spread by sexual activity

A CBS News/New York Times poll taken from September 10th-15th (both before and after the most recent debate) shows Rick Perry with a 7-point edge (23 to 16 percent) over Mitt Romney among registered voters who intend to vote in a Republican primary or caucus. Among the roughly half (49 percent) of Republican primary voters "who support the Tea Party movement," Perry has by far the highest net favorability rating (+53 percent), Of note, Sarah Palin's net favorability rating is only +12 percent among Tea Party-supporting Republicans.

Reporting from Costa Mesa— Michele Bachmann, struggling to regain her footing in the GOP presidential contest, Friday assailed rival Rick Perry, saying he abused his power as governor of Texas and rewarded political donors in a manner similar to President Obama. (snip) She compared it to the federal controversy unfolding around Solyndra, a solar equipment maker that received a $535-million federal loan guarantee and which went bankrupt last month. Republicans have suggested that the guarantee was pushed by the White House to reward a major campaign donor with ties to Solyndra's biggest shareholder, a charge the Obama administration denies. Bachmann...

Michele Bachmann is on the defensive about comments she made earlier this week suggesting that a vaccine against a virus linked to cervical cancer poses a danger to young girls. "During the debate, I didn't make any statements that would indicate that I'm a doctor, I'm a scientist or that I'm making any conclusions about the drug one way or another," the GOP presidential hopeful told reporters here who questioned her about the story she told suggesting that the vaccine had caused mental retardation. Asked whether she would apologize for comments that outraged medical experts say will discourage parents from...

Governor Perry has been criticized for his now-rescinded order mandating HPV vaccine for preteen girls. Here’s another side to the story that up until now has never been made public.

Curious. It's been two entire days now, and I haven't seen or heard from Sarah Palin on FoxNews explain how she knew something was wrong as far back as 2007.

Many supporters of Gov. Perry have come to his defense over this Gardasil matter. The arguments are: (1) Gardasil should have been mandatory with the "opt-out" provision; (2) No big deal because the Texas legislature killed the Executive Order; or (3) as Perry says today, he made a mistake, should have made it "opt-in." Now comes word that Perry's top donor was the Republican Governors Association and that Merck began donating to RGA when Perry became its head.

Thank you Senator Lucio. President Nevarez, UT-Pan American is to be commended for its vision and leadership in hosting this unprecedented border summit in the beautiful Texas town of Edinburg. My friends from Mexico, including Governor Tomas Yarrington Ruvalcaba of Tamaulipas, and Governor Fernando Canales Clariond of Nuevo Leon, it is an honor to be in your presence. I want to extend my gratitude to our Mexican neighbors for hosting me this July as I sought to learn one of the world’s great languages, Spanish. I enjoyed your hospitality, and was grateful for your patience as I worked on my...