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Posted on 01/05/2012 6:57:35 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Explain a few things to me. One: Why did he announce publicly last night that he was “reassessing” if he truly hadn’t decided to quit yet? If you want to push the talking point that Iowa doesn’t mean anything and that the real race begins in South Carolina, then push it. Don’t show everyone that the caucuses have left you so badly shaken that you’re thinking of getting out. And if that was simply a ploy to give him an excuse to skip campaigning in New Hampshire, where he has no shot, then why immediately turn around this morning and announce that you’re back in? (“I was out on the trail when it kind of came to me.”) Lie low for a few days as the New Hampshire scrum gets going and then announce that you’re back in and headed for Carolina. Even some of his advisors are confused about the reversal: “It seemed like everything was going to wind down and life was gonna be good, and now there’s an explosion and I don’t know what’s going on.”
Two: He says in the clip that he’s looking forward to a primary with real Republicans, not the Democratic infiltrators for which Iowa is known. But … South Carolina’s an open primary. If you want to make mischief for a conservative, it’s probably easier to do it there than in Iowa. And even if Iowa’s teeming with independents and liberals, how did that hurt Perry last night? Ron Paul was the big beneficiary of the non-Republican vote and surely will be again in South Carolina. Perry’s problem isn’t squishes lining up to torpedo him, it’s conservatives who have given up on him after one too many goofs. What he’s really saying here, I take it, is that he’s looking forward to a primary of southerners, which is fair enough — but then so is the guy who beat him out for fourth place last night.
Three: How does he win South Carolina? The Times has a theory:
While the campaign spent millions of dollars in Iowa, Mr. Perry may still have enough money to compete effectively in South Carolina, where television is less expensive than in New Hampshire and Florida, and his super PAC will likely provide additional firepower. While Mr. Perry will probably need to reboot his fund-raising to raise enough money to compete strongly in Florida’s primary on Jan. 31, his supporters believe the results in Iowa, however inauspicious for Mr. Perry, showed a hunger among Republicans for a more conservative alternative to Mr. Romney.
“Think how early we are in the process,” said a person with knowledge of the campaign, who asked for anonymity in order to discuss deliberations among Mr. Perry’s aides. “The reality is, not one delegate was committed yesterday. We are still early enough in the process that if the candidate has the drive to go forward, he ought to.”
“If we can get this back to a Perry versus Romney field,” the person said, “Perry can win.”
If he does well there, he’ll burst Santorum’s bubble, finish off Gingrich, and lay to rest whatever remains of Huntsman’s campaign after his likely defeat in New Hampshire. But that all depends on how well Santorum does in NH, of course. If Santorum gets a major bounce from Iowa and finishes a respectable second to Mitt up north, he’ll arrive in South Carolina as the presumptive social-con Not Romney, which makes things very hard for Perry. Perry fans, in fact, are now in the strange position of needing a Romney landslide next Tuesday to prove that Santorum’s a paper tiger whom South Carolinians shouldn’t bother taking a chance on.
And even if that Romney landslide happens, that’s dangerous too. The big rap on Mitt is that he has a low ceiling because most of the party hates him, but once there’s solid proof to the contrary of that in some state, it might shake loose undecideds elsewhere. Plus, Romney will have Nikki Haley campaigning for him in South Carolina, so if he shows up with lots of momentum, lots of endorsements, and a four-way split among the Not Romney vote, I wonder if he ends up winning there and suddenly looks so inevitable that no one can catch him even in a two-way race. That is to say, the assumption all along has been that anyone in the field (except Ron Paul) has a good shot of taking Romney out head to head. But maybe not. Maybe, if Romney runs the table early, the media buzz about inevitability and electability becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy in which even undecideds who prefer Perry or Santorum ideologically choose to opt for the guy with all the money and organization who can beat O. And on top of all that, for Perry to come back in South Carolina would be unprecedented: Since 1980, everyone who won there had also won in either Iowa or New Hampshire. Perry finished a distant fifth in the former and will do similarly in the latter. Are those long odds good enough to justify continuing, knowing that his participation will deepen the split in the conservative vote and inadvertently help Romney?
Next debate is Saturday night, by the way. Yesterday that looked like it was going to be an “everyone against Romney” affair, but with Perry back in and eager to take Santorum down, Mitt now has himself an unlikely ally.
Perry, among REAL Republicans in Ia, you got hammered as well. Santorum won these, 27-25% Bob
Perry was PAID megabucks to “reassess” himself back into the race, by a Romney supporter, I suspect.
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If Perry had not started out with a huge war chest... we would not know his name.
You got that right.
Perry spent over $6 million for fifth place. After his debate flops, his campaign "stressed" his so-called strengths----quirky to say the least:
<><>he trucked in an army of Texans to tell Iowans how to vote;
<><> he brought California pols to Iowa (California?);
<><> he spent millions on non-stop ads on local media and Fox news;
<><>he stressed his faith (proving once again religion is the last refuge of a scoundrel).
Money can't makeup for his amateurish campaign. Perry was in single digits throughout---and sank like a rock on election day. Perry was a dismal miserable disaster ---one of the worst candidates in political history. Hopefully he will drop out and do America a favor and never appear again.
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BACKSTORY Perry blew $6 million for a fifth place Iowa ribbon--billed as his "first" election loss.
Actually that was Perry's second election loss----he did not officially enter the first go-round---the Iowa straw poll---but manipulated the vote from Texas. That was supposed to take a self-assured Perry over the top. Instead he garnered a pitiful 700 write-ins. Michelle Bachmann won with 4000 votes. Perry came stomping into Iowa flashing the victory sign as if he had actually won. In fact...he was the front-runner for a short period of time....until the first debate.
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How much money does Perry have......who is sending him donations?
Perry entered the prez race with three PACs (that we know of).....teeming with money.
He was raising 2012 money while campaigning for governor, promising trusting Texans he would not run for president if they reelected him....b/c he knew a sitting governor running for president was more credible.
One crony PAC---Make America Great Again---raised $55 million. Probably some of that was used for Perry's ploy to make himself look good early in the Iowa caucuses----saying he had "raised more than any other candidate"----$17 mill.
So there's lots of money standing by.
We'll soon be looking at Perry crowing that his fifth place loss garnered him a huge chunk of "donations."
I never once complained about Perrys debate performances.
I knew about his back pain and gave him a pass on most of his missteps. The pass can’t last forever. And what the
h#ll is quirky suppose to imply? You haven’t been advising
Perry, have you?
“You haven’t been advising Perry, have you?”
LOL. No. I don’t advise him. You’re one up on me having seen him twice. I never have except on the news. But, I read everything Ican get my eyes on. I said “quirky” because that was the word de jour out of Iowa.
Have a good day, I will, 62 degrees here today !
Note tagline.
Thanks Liz.
Fact is he has plenty of money, we will see how far that takes him.
Once Perry got out of the stockyards with all the BS, got some fresh air. Why do you think Romney hauled A** to Carolina. HE fears PERRY.
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