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Competitive people don’t like to lose, so they choose carefully when and if to compete.

Perry has NEVER lost an election, so you can bet dollars to donuts he is making sure he can win, before he decides to play.

Perry has NEVER lost an election, so you can bet dollars to donuts he is making sure he can win, before he decides to play.

Agreed, although after he got 39% of the vote in the general election in 2006, he went off and supported Rudy Giuliani for President, which was an odd choice for somebody who was only able to win because the left was so heavily divided. Luckily Perry only had to deal with Kay Bailey Hutchison and a Clinton Crony last year.

As for planning, Perry benefits from running for office in Texas where his billionaire backers can give him as much money as he needs. In a national race, they'd have to be extremely careful since they are limited on the amount they can donate. Perry won't have access to the kinds of money that he has now, and I doubt he wants to spend it defending his record against other Republicans. Other Republican contenders are not going to let his record of supporting illegal immigrants for nearly 10 years pass unnoticed, nor will they allow the TTC, him helping his friends out time and time again, etc. to all go unnoticed. That would get very expensive for Perry to have to defend against really fast.

My guess is that Perry is angling to be on somebody's ticket as VP. This way he doesn't have to put as much energy into defending his record until the primaries are over, and he doesn't have to worry about most Americans finding out about the past 10 years until he's already on the ticket.