Posted on 08/29/2015 10:29:38 PM PDT by Red Steel
Former governor gets little attention
AUSTIN — Former Gov. Rick Perry started out with flair. Not even a felony indictment could keep down his campaign spirit as he went after the presidency.
He can boast being the longest-serving governor of one of the largest, most prosperous states in the union, one who called down border guards to address a national crisis, and one with the message that his state’s economic prosperity could be modeled and put into practice for the nation at large.
Yet several months after his June 4 presidential campaign launch, he is floundering. A recent Public Policy Polling in New Hampshire put Perry at 2 percent. Reports surfaced that certain campaign staff weren’t getting paid. And he didn’t make the cut for a highly publicized, first debate table. He received a speck of media attention for debating Donald Trump, the businessman mogul front-runner, but in the same New Hampshire poll Trump reached 35 percent in the 17-candidate race.
“They obviously had a couple weeks of bad press on that decision to cut back spending,” said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak. However “I think he has gotten a good response in Iowa and South Carolina.”
Perry was able to play to his strengths on the military and agriculture, and “people know him” already, Mackowiak said.
He isn’t a high-profile candidate in the large field, but states such as New Hampshire are small enough that voters can catch fire with a grass-roots campaign, Mackowiak said.
Brandon Rottinghaus, an associate professor of political science at the University of Houston, said Perry “doesn’t have any luck left to lose.”
“He is not getting any free airtime,” and his message “is being swamped by momentum from a different direction,” Rottinghaus said.
Perry’s message is about being the governor of a big state with a good economy, but GOP primary voters seem to want a political outsider, someone like Trump or neurosurgeon Ben Carson or former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
Though not from D.C., Perry ”is the most elected candidate in the field,” Rottinghaus said.
Nancy Martorano Miller, an associate professor of political science at the University of Dayton, said Perry’s failure to reach the first debate means “it’s probably unlikely that he is going to make it to the second debate.”
While in the past the establishment candidate U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona fell far behind but eventually took the nomination, a 17-candidate field makes such a feat harder to pull off, Miller said.
It takes a large amount of money and attention, especially this far in advance of February and March.
“It’s going to be harder for candidates who haven’t raised tens of millions of dollars to last that long,” Miller said.
Perry would need a strong, emotionally driven event to shift attention back to him, Rottinghaus said.
“There has to be some kind of serious emotional moment where the issues voters care about” become critical, he said.
Such a moment could come from military or border issues, for instance, he said.
“He has got to find a way to make an organic moment in political time gel with the justifications for his candidacy,” Rottinghaus said.
Perry’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the state of his campaign.
He did, however, address the lack of funds in an interview on Fox News.
“Most of us in this country have had challenges in finances from time to time,” Perry said. “We cut our spending. We cut back. I’m in this for the long haul.”
Not that there is a pool or anything but, I will take Feb 2nd.
Oops...
To the title:
Why??
Me too.
““Former Director of Media Outreach for Rick Perry 2016....”
duties included stuffing envelopes, licking envelopes, putting stamps on envelopes, writing addresses on envelopes, and taking envelopes to the post office ...
Made strategic decisions about where to buy envelopes. Was allowed to use campaign credit card to buy envelopes ...
” what dimension is this “ -————
*Let me guess— it’s not a dimension in which you are familiar. I gave example of what I meant. As usual, on the subject of Trump, you may have preferred drawn pictures, with crayons.
Moe Green glasses. Has he ditched those yet?
You described Trump in a way that does not match reality
I thought about what you said. How about this— his intellectual “grasp”, rather than gravitas. He hints at times he may actually possess gravitas, in some interviews. Not all, but mostly he is serious. So, if gravitas was too much for you and maybe even premature (I’m not too sure though), then grasp is as far as I intend to back up.
I like the way he covers the planet on my thoughts and my issues in practically two sentences. He fades in and smashes this and smashes that and fades out to a broader theme and then he’s back in.
I follow him just fine. When he’s done, I realize it takes all my other favorite candidates weeks to cover all that ground.
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