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Texas Gov. Rick Perry leads the Republican presidential field in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday morning, confirming the findings of other recent national polls that show the Texas governor as the clear Republican frontrunner. Perry places first in the poll with 38 percent, and is followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is second with 23 percent. In the previous poll, conducted in mid-July, about a month before Perry officially announced his bid, Romney led the pack with 30 percent and Perry registered just 11 percent support. Rep. Ron Paul , R-Texas, is at 9...

Capturing a rapid erosion of confidence through the summer months, the poll found 72 percent of voters believe the country is either strongly or somewhat headed in the wrong direction, a jump of 12 percentage points since May. Only 20 percent of voters say the country is going in the right direction, a 12-point drop in the same period. --snip-- Mirroring other national polls, Texas Gov. Rick Perry moved to the front of the Republican class, emerging as the first choice for 36 percent of voters only three weeks into his campaign. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney came in second...

A plurality (47%) of Likely U.S. Voters believe it is at least somewhat likely that Palin will enter the presidential race, but that includes only 13% who feel it’s Very Likely. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 35% think a Palin bid is unlikely, but just five percent (5%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Eighteen percent (18%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Only 18% of voters think it would be good for Republicans if Palin entered the race. Sixty percent (60%) say it would be bad for the party, while 11% predict...

The Republican "establishment," such as it is, is quickly coming to the realization that the 2012 GOP presidential nomination is Texas Governor Rick Perry's to lose. He leads in Iowa and he hasn't even really campaigned there yet. He's running second in New Hampshire, which is all he needs to do. And he's running comfortably ahead in South Carolina (again, without much campaigning), which is the gateway to the South. The South is the base of the modern Republican Party. Perry has become, in less than a month, the Southern states' de facto favorite son. Two obstacles stand between Perry...

Rick Perry’s dramatic entrance into the Republican presidential race has triggered within a few short weeks a remarkable amount of invective, clucking, and alarm on the part of leading critics. Perry, we are told in worried tones, cannot and must not win the presidency: he is too Texan, too Christian, too “extreme,” and altogether too provincial. Never mind that these concerns issue mainly from a Northeastern liberal-leaning commentariat that is amazingly inward-looking in its definition of worldly wisdom. The central fear seems to be that Perry is another George W. Bush – in a word, a cowboy. --snip-- Here’s a...

When Rick Perry signed the Susan B. Anthony List’s pro-life pledge last week, it raised a few eyebrows among those who recall his endorsement of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2008, a noted pro-choice Republican. Perry insisted that a President Giuliani would appoint conservative jurists to the bench and that his personal views would not be relevant. Four years later, Perry now says that, if nominated, he will make sure his running mate is not just pro-life, but an advocate for the cause: Surging Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, the Texas governor, has pledged to influential Christian...

Raleigh, N.C. – If there was any question that Rick Perry is the new Republican presidential frontrunner before now, PPP’s latest poll of South Carolina confirms it. A week ago, PPP showed Perry jumping to a narrow lead in first-caucus Iowa. Now, he has a double-digit lead in what will likely be the third-voting state. Perry tops with 36% to Mitt Romney’s 16%, Michele Bachmann’s 13%, Herman Cain’s 9%, Newt Gingrich’s 8%, Ron Paul’s 5%, Rick Santorum’s 4%, and Jon Huntsman’s 2%. This is a sea change from when PPP last polled the race in June, with Perry not included....

Washington (CNN) – A new national survey is further proof that Texas Gov. Rick Perry's entrance earlier this month into the race for the White House has dramatically altered the battle for the Republican presidential nomination. According to a CNN/ORC International Poll of Republicans and independent voters who lean towards the GOP, Perry now sits atop the list of Republican presidential candidates, with strong support from most demographic groups. The survey, released Monday, indicates that 27 percent of Republicans nationwide support Perry for their party's nomination, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who's making his second bid for the White...

Texas Governor Rick Perry delved into foreign policy this morning as he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in San Antonio, warning that the United States “cannot concede the moral authority of our nation to multi-lateral debating societies.” “I do not believe that America should fall subject to a foreign policy of military adventurism. We should only risk shedding American blood and spending American treasure when our vital interests are threatened and we should always look to build coalitions among the nations to protect the mutual interests of freedom loving people,” Perry told thousands of veterans today. “It’s not...

Texas is seeing job growth at a pace that is the envy of the nation. Approximately 40% of the nation’s job growth since June 2009 occurred in Texas. Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is hopeful voters will remember this fact when they enter the election booth next year, while Perry detractors argue Perry is merely the inadvertent beneficiary of luck and happenstance. -snip- Yes, Slate, the success of the Texas economy has been driven by wise policy decisions rather than blind luck, and Rick Perry deserves a Texas-sized share of the credit.

After grousing for months, Republicans are growing more satisfied with their choices for president and, so far, they like what they're hearing from the newest candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

When you hear every single liberal media outlet in the country say, "We will know more about Rick Perry after we vet his 11 years in office," you need to understand that what they vindictively mean is: "President Obama and his followers will be proud of us after we are done with the mother of all smearing campaigns against the conservative governor of Texas." Not since Ronald Reagan has a Republican candidate for president evoked such outright fear and loathing from the mainstream media and the far-left. They are flat-out petrified of Perry and are desperately trying to kill off...

Rick Perry has pole-vaulted over Willard Mitt Romney in the race to become the top Republican to face President Obama on Election Day 2012. Texas’s governor beat Massachusetts’s former governor 29 percent to 17 percent, Gallup reported Wednesday, in the second national survey to find Perry leading by double digits among Republicans. Perry deserves this distinction. While he lacks the pro-market purity of Milton Friedman, Perry’s record should satisfy limited-government conservatives far more than Romney’s.

Not all conservative firebrands are created equal, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday afternoon. The poll shows that 41% of GOP primary voters said there is no chance they would vote for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, should she run for president. And two-thirds of all voters said Ms. Palin wouldn’t get their vote, the highest percentage of any declared or potential presidential candidate. Another tea party favorite, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.), performed slightly better – 31% of the Republican primary voters said they would never vote for Mrs. Bachmann while 56% of all voters said...

It’s official: Mitt Romney is no longer the frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary. Major reputable poll after major reputable poll, conducted over the last ten days or so, shows Texas Gov. Rick Perry leading the former Massachusetts governor by significant margins. The polling data suggests not only that Perry survived his early stumbles on the stump – most notably, his suggestions that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke could be guilty of “treason” if the Fed prints more money, and that Texans would accordingly treat Bernanke “pretty ugly” – but that Perry is, in fact, picking up steam. The latest...

A closer look at today's striking Gallup poll showing Texas Gov. Rick Perry rocketing to the top of the 2012 Republican presidential field captures the threat his campaign could pose to Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who had previously been considered the front-runner. The Gallup results show Perry displaying broad reach across the party, with appeal that, for now at least, transcends lines of income and education. Those results underscore Perry's potential, as a staunch social conservative with a strong economic story in Texas, to build a primary coalition that bridges the divide between upscale, managerial Republicans and the...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has grabbed frontrunner status in South Carolina, ending several months of what had been a muddled race in this key Republican presidential primary state. Perry launched his campaign just over a week ago in Charleston, electrifying South Carolina conservatives who have been hungering for a candidate with Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s fire who they also deem electable and experienced. And while Republicans in the Palmetto State caution that Perry has months of vetting ahead of him and that the contest is still up for grabs, there is a general consensus that the late-entering Texas governor has...

Rick Perry is not the subtlest politician, but he looks like Pericles next to the liberals falling over themselves to discredit job creation in Texas. We'd have thought any new jobs would be a blessing when 25 million Americans are looking for full-time work, but apparently new jobs aren't valuable jobs if they're created in a state that rejects Obamanomics. Let's dissect the Texas record. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported this summer that Texas created 37% of all net new American jobs since the recovery began in June 2009. Texas by far outpaced every other state, including those...

Rick Perry, who declared just this Saturday, is now leading the Republican field by 11 points. Next up in the new Rasmussen poll is Mitt Romney with 18 percent support. Michele Bachmann, who triumphed in the straw poll this weekend, is in third place with 13 percent support, while Ron Paul — who only received about 150 fewer votes than Bachmann at Ames — is at 9 percent. Results via Michael Barone, who got an early peek; I’ll add the rest of the numbers when they’re made available. UPDATE: The full poll is now online. Remaining results: Herman Cain (6...

The fight for the Republican Presidential nomination is finally getting underway in earnest, with Texas Governor Rick Perry bull-riding his way into the race and Michele Bachmann winning Saturday's straw poll in Iowa. Both events show how unsettled the GOP contest still is, as voters search for a candidate who can beat a vulnerable President Obama. Mrs. Bachmann, the Minnesota Congresswoman, has emerged from cable-TV land in recent months to be a viable competitor. She is telegenic, a hard worker, and has planted herself at the front of the tea party parade in hostility to all things Washington. This posture...