Free Republic

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry on Tuesday reaffirmed his position that candidates should be forthcoming with their tax documentation, finding himself again at odds with Mitt Romney, his party's presumptive presidential nominee. Perry first called on Romney to release his tax returns when running for the GOP presidential nomination, and in late January, Romney released his records for 2010 and an estimate of his liability for tax year 2011. He has since said that he does not intend to release additional years, as Democrats - and an increasing number in his own party - have called for. Perry addressed...

In a campaign speech late Tuesday night, Governor Rick Perry stated that he is "returning to Texas" to reassess whether he is going to continue running for President. The speech contained several emotional moments, in particular two moments. The first was when he read a letter from an adoring supporter who called him a "great man." The letter described a conversation that Mr. Perry had had with a soldier and how his supporter looked on in awe as he watched Governor Perry call the veteran his "Christian brother." The second was when Perry announced that he would be returning to...

Last month, Insider Advantage had him leading Romney in the state 29/20. A month later, “He now barely has a heartbeat.” When I saw Perry’s topline number of three percent, I figured the “Ponzi scheme” talk must have sent Florida’s seniors running screaming into the night. Not so. He’s actually doing (marginally) worse with other age demographics in this poll, and in the last poll he did reasonably well with the 65+ crowd, finishing second to Romney in that group with almost 23 percent. That poll was taken on September 13, which was almost a week after Romney started attacking...

Here is the Rick Perry comeback plan: Wow voters with specific jobs-policy proposals, and then charm them, one handshake at a time. When Perry skyrocketed in the polls after entering the race, he did so thanks to his reputation of being a conservative governor who had an astounding job-creation record to tout in our era of persistently high unemployment. But after several debate missteps (most notably, saying that those who disagreed with him on in-state tuition for illegal immigrants had no heart) and a relentless barrage of attacks from the Romney campaign that highlighted his flirtation with dramatically changing the...

Gov. Rick Perry has released a jobs plan. Or is it an energy plan? Or it is an EPA-reform plan? Or is it a trade-deficit plan? The plan is a bit of each, and it is a very good one. Governor Perry, under whom Texas enjoyed the strongest job-creation record of any large U.S. state, proposes to open up oil and gas production in areas in which American producers are either shut out or heavily restricted: the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida coast, and Alaska, among others. Perry’s plan also entails the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and the...