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Tuesday, Rick Perry's campaign announced it could no longer pay his staffers around the country and released them to find other work. His fundraising had dried up. It's potentially an ignominious end to a noteworthy political career that spanned more than 30 years. Fundraising acumen was considered one of Perry's strong points four years ago when he belatedly announced his run for the White House and raised $17 million in the first seven weeks of his campaign. In 2015, it's a different story. His campaign is on the ropes and out of money. Not even Texas is solidly behind the...

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania gets agitated when political analysts question why he is still in the race for the GOP presidential nomination when he is scoring less than 2 percent in the polls and has barely raised $1 million in campaign funds – a pittance compared with many of his rivals. He notes that when he ran for president last time, he had little money and low single-digit standing in the polls in January 2012 – just before he went on to beat Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses. This time, Santorum is so far behind the large...

The Rick Perry campaign took another blow it absolutely did not need. Late Monday, National Journal reported that the former Texas governor's campaign has stopped paying its South Carolina staff. By Monday night, there were reports that all paid Perry staff had been taken off the payroll, and that the campaign's top brass gave staff the green light to apply for other jobs. "Pay is only one reason people do this," Katon Dawson, the governor's South Carolina state director, told the National Journal. He told The Washington Post that "money is extremely tight" and that everyone "moved to volunteer status,"...

Former Texas governor Rick Perry's presidential campaign is no longer paying its staff because fundraising has dried up, while his cash-flush allied super PAC is preparing to expand its political operation to compensate for the campaign's shortcomings, campaign and super PAC officials and other Republicans familiar with the operation said late Monday. Perry, who has struggled to gain traction in his second presidential run, has stopped paying his staff at the national headquarters in Austin as well as in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, according to a Republican familiar with the Perry...

Staffers for former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign are working without pay, CBS News has learned. National Journal reported Monday that Perry's team in South Carolina was no longer being compensated by the campaign. "Pay is only one reason people do this," Katon Dawson, Perry's South Carolina state director, told National Journal. "We'll be able to live off the land for a while." But the problem isn't just limited to Perry's team in South Carolina. Jeff Miller, Perry's national campaign manager, told campaign staff on Friday that the only expenses moving forward would be for travel, a source close...

The Big Conversation The two Texans on the separate GOP debate stages Thursday didn't throw many punches at fellow Republicans. Speaking at the earlier debate, former Gov. Rick Perry talked up Texas' economic performance under his tenure, saying "nobody's done it like Rick Perry's done it." Perry continued to blast Donald Trump, who was in the later debate, but Perry avoided directly attacking the six others who joined him on stage. And as The Associated Press notes, there was no "oops moment for Perry," who "appeared confident and well-rehearsed." The often-combative U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, decided to stay "largely...

<p>With the parade of Republican nominees stepping onto the stage in Cleveland and using social media to reserve their place at the electoral starting gate, the candidates read as an anthropological study of the Grand Old Party.</p> <p>From establishment favored moderates like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush to Tea Party favorites like Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the first debate stage in Cleveland will serve as a lesson in the progression of the Republican Party from Eisenhower onward.</p>

CLEVELAND — He wasn’t among the seven GOP presidential candidates selected by the Fox News Channel to take part in today’s pre-debate, but Donald Trump was criticized by two of the candidates. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Trump is “using his celebrity rather than his conservatism.” Trump has mocked Perry by saying he wears glasses to appear smarter. When asked about Trump, former CEO Carly Fiorina responding by asking her six rivals on stage if any of them had received a call from Bill Clinton before they jumped into the election. She said that was probably because they hadn’t...

CLEVELAND, Ohio — In his only sitdown interview while preparing for the first GOP primary debate on Thursday, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry discussed exclusively with Breitbart News his plan to get Americans back to work amid a crisis with the lowest workforce participation rate since 1979.

To hardly anyone’s surprise, former Gov. Rick Perry was left out of the first Republican presidential debate on Thursday night. Fox News, the network that will televise the Cleveland debate, announced its line-up of 10 GOP hopefuls on Tuesday, which is led by billionaire Donald Trump and includes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, but excluded Perry, the longest serving governor in Texas history. For Perry and the six other GOP hopefuls who didn’t make the cut the consolation prize was an invitation to an earlier debate on the same stage. However, the second tier debate is set for 4 p.m. CDT,...

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is in danger of missing the first Republican debate, kicked off a GOP cattle call of candidates in New Hampshire on Monday vowing to secure the border if he’s elected president. “The American people don’t trust Washington, D.C., to deal with this issue of immigration reform until we secure the border,” Perry said. “And I know something about securing the border.” Fourteen Republican candidates are participating in C-SPAN’s Voter’s First forum in New Hampshire on Monday. The style is different from the debate - one by one, the candidates will take the stage to...

C-SPAN Partners with New Hampshire Union Leader To Bring August 3rd New Hampshire Republican Forum To A National TV Audience #Voters First (For Immediate Release: July 31, 2015) C-SPAN is partnering with the New Hampshire Union Leader and regional newspapers in early presidential caucus and primary states for the New Hampshire newspaper’s August 3rd Voters First Forum and will provide live nationwide coverage, beginning at 6:30 pm ET to 9:30 pm ET.Fourteen Republican presidential candidates* are participating in the two-hour Forum, which will start at 7pmET at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester on Monday, Aug. 3. Veteran New Hampshire political...

When the Republican candidates take stage in Cleveland for the first presidential debate, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry will likely be watching from his hotel room somewhere. The candidate who briefly dominated polling in the 2012 contest and began this campaign in the middle of the pack, looks to settle in 11th or 12th place when the debate cut-off is set. His relegation to the consolation stage hours before the main debate is largely a consequence of the ongoing Donald Trump boomlet. While almost all candidates have suffered in the polls as the real estate developer has surged to the...

The Talk Shows August 2nd, 2015 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, Republican presidential candidate; former Gov. Rick Perry, R- Texas, Republican presidential candidate; Michael Needham, CEO, Heritage Action for America super PAC.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz; Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus; Dr. Ben Carson, retired neurosurgeon, Republican presidential candidate.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate; former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., Republican presidential candidate; Steven Law, president and CEO, American Crossroads super PACTHIS WEEK (ABC): Donald Trump, Republican...

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“You only attack the king if you can kill him; otherwise you leave him alone, because the king will kill you,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster. “So the candidates better have something good ready if they come after Trump. Or they might try to find a way, in their responses, to remind Trump of something that another candidate said that really bothered him.”

July 30 -- Mark Halperin and John Heilemann discuss former Texas governor Rick Perry’s latest stumble on “With All Due Respect.”

We are now 467 days from the next presidential election on November 8, 2016, to elect the 45th president of the United States. In just 7 days, on August 6th, Fox News will be holding the first debate for Republican presidential candidates – in Cleveland, Ohio. Politico reported that there will actually be two Fox News debates on August 6th: a 5PM debate for all 16 announced candidates and a 9PM “main event” for “the 10 candidates with the highest average in national polls.” In preparation for the upcoming debates, we asked some Oregon Republican political insiders to give us...

Who would’ve thought an obscure hip-hop artist would go down in history as the most overrated political moment of all time? Sister Souljah — a name now always followed by “moment” — made headlines back in 1992 when she said of the Los Angeles riots: “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” This inflammatory comment incensed a majority of the American public. Then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton cemented Souljah’s name in political history when he denounced her comment at a convention for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition — an event at which...

In a thoughtful review of Ann Coulter's splendid new book, iconoclastic Democrat Mickey Kaus lists the open-borders advocates in American politics: ...the entire Democratic party, half the Republican party, half (secretly) of the politicians who claim to represent the other half of the Republican party, virtually the entire press (including Fox), virtually all of business, and virtually all big money political donors (including the Kochs!). The bit I've bolded helps explain the Trump bump in the GOP polls. A significant part of the Republican base thinks half their candidates are just schmoozing them to get through primary season, genuflecting toward...