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Texas Gov. Rick Perry said today that using foreign aid to combat human rights abuses against homosexuals in foreign countries is “not in America’s interests” and attacked President Obama’s decision to require U.S. agencies operating abroad to promote equal rights for gays as part of the administration’s “war on traditional American values.” “Just when you thought Barack Obama couldn’t get any more out of touch with America’s values, AP reports his administration wants to make foreign aid decisions based on gay rights. This administration’s war on traditional American values must stop,” Perry said in the statement. “Promoting special rights for...

PHOENIX - After first apologizing for suggesting an electric fence along the border, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain told reporters here Monday that he still thinks it's a good idea for controlling illegal immigration. "I'm not walking away from that," he said. Cain has spent the last several days explaining a controversial comment about building an electrified fence along the U.S. - Mexico border that he said could kill people trying to enter the country illegally. On Sunday, he said his comments were "a joke." But talking to reporters here after a meeting here with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio,...

ORLANDO, Fla. — Rick Perry went out on a limb Thursday by refusing to back off his support as Texas governor for granting in-state tuition to some of the children of illegal immigrants, and painting critics of the law as heartless — remarks that landed him in the crosshairs of his GOP rivals. The three-term Texas governor said he still supports the program "greatly" and that the Lone Star State needs "to be educating these children because otherwise they’ll "become a drag on society." "If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for...

Full title: Perry: "I Don't Think You Have a Heart" If You Oppose In-State Tuition for Children of Illegal Immigrants Perry's response was forceful and personal. "I don't think you have a heart," Perry told his critics. "If you say that we should not educate children who come into our state for no other reason than that they've been brought their through no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," Perry said. "We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society. I think that's what Texans wanted to do....

Thank you Senator Lucio. President Nevarez, UT-Pan American is to be commended for its vision and leadership in hosting this unprecedented border summit in the beautiful Texas town of Edinburg. My friends from Mexico, including Governor Tomas Yarrington Ruvalcaba of Tamaulipas, and Governor Fernando Canales Clariond of Nuevo Leon, it is an honor to be in your presence. I want to extend my gratitude to our Mexican neighbors for hosting me this July as I sought to learn one of the world’s great languages, Spanish. I enjoyed your hospitality, and was grateful for your patience as I worked on my...

“The American way is not to give taxpayer-subsidized benefits to people who have broken our laws and are here in the United States illegally,” Bachmann said at the CNN/Tea Party Express debate. Perry defended the law, saying it was a states’ rights issue. “We were clearly sending a message to young people that, regardless of what the sound of their last name is, that we believe in you,” Perry said.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry has taken the wind out of fellow candidate Michele Bachmann’s sails ever since he entered the race Aug. 13. Now the Minnesota congresswoman is ready to go back at the Texas governor during a candidates debate in Tampa, Fla., Monday, The Washington Examiner reports. Bachmann is poised to attack Perry over his comments that Social Security is a “monstrous lie” and a “Ponzi scheme.” A Bachmann adviser told The Examiner: "Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America. Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does....

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez slammed fellow Gov. Rick Perry over immigration on the Laura Ingraham show today, albeit with only partial facts at her disposal: Ingraham: “I asked you about Rick Perry’s approach to immigration. Is his approach, including that DREAM Act, something that we should be pursuing nationally and is it something that you support?” Martinez: “No, I don’t. It is not comprehensive reform to put people who are here illegally, who violated the law, and put them in front of the line for those folks who have been waiting and doing all the right things to come...

Perry's word "1200 miles from Brownsville to El Paso two things how long do you think it will take to build that, and then if you build a 30 foot wall from Brownsville to El Paso the 35 foot ladder business is real good, you got to have people on the ground." This is stupid and this line of argument, when it came from the pundits and the talking heads has been busted before. No one is saying that just build the fence and leave it there. Proponents of the fence have always said that the fence is only ONE...

Show up at a Rick Perry campaign event, whether a book signing in New Orleans, a prayer rally in Houston or a speech to enthusiastic Republican faithful in South Carolina, and you may notice a hulking, gray-haired man standing on the fringes of the crowd. He rarely gives interviews these days and is not yet well-known outside political circles. Yet, Dave Carney is, without question, the most important person in Perry's presidential quest outside of the candidate himself. Almost every presidential election cycle, the spotlight illuminates a campaign guru whose tactical acumen seemingly propels his client to heights unreachable alone....

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry says he opposes a fence along the U.S. border with Mexico. Speaking to hundreds of New Hampshire voters at a private reception Saturday afternoon, the Texas governor says a fence would be ineffective and take too long to build. The comments, which produced one angry shout, expose a rift with some conservative voters over Perry's immigration record. Tea party activists in Texas have been particularly upset by his steady opposition to the fence. He also signed a law giving illegal immigrants in-state tuition for Texas universities.

Advisers and elected allies of Texas Gov. Rick Perry tell Whispers that the Republican will join the crowded field of presidential hopefuls by the end of August... Perry's entry will be a "game changer," said Mark Meckler, cofounder of the Tea Party Patriots, the nation's largest umbrella group for the movement. "It changes the equation because he has a record to run on." That record, added Meckler, is the "Texas miracle" of growth and economic prosperity.... Polls show substantial support for Perry. Gallup today has him winning in the South and within striking distance of leading the pack in the...

Shortly after the 2006 gubernatorial election, a young Democratic activist invited me out for coffee to tell me how I screwed up as the campaign manager for Democrat Chris Bell. And such was my fragile state after the grueling, two-year campaign that I accepted. It wasn't that the Democratic donor base had abandoned its party's nominee in favor of Comptroller Carole Strayhorn, who had abandoned her own Republican Party to run against Rick Perry. And it wasn't that satirist Kinky Friedman had made cynicism cool and captured thousands of disaffected white Democrats. It was that he thought Chris Bell wasn't...

GrowPAC, a group founded by former New York Senate candidate David Malpass, will air radio ads in Iowa urging people to write Perry's name onto the Ames straw poll ballot. "President Obama is making things worse. We need a president who will stop this," Malpass says in the spot. "Iowa has a chance to turn things around for America. At the Ames Straw Poll write in Rick Perry, he can win and make America secure again. I worked for Ronald Reagan and I know how countries create growth and jobs. Let’s give Rick Perry a chance." Continue Reading The 60-second...

<p>As I have been saying, Perry is not a fit conservative candidate.</p>

Supposedly he was set to declare even earlier but decided to wait until after the Ames straw poll. Why rush into Iowa if you’re not on the ballot and half the big names in the field can’t be bothered to compete? While Perry has focused on determining whether he can raise the funds necessary to run a credible campaign, his strategists have begun locking down verbal commitments from vendors and other potential top staff who would fill out a campaign organization. One who was contacted about a senior staff position was told, “This is a 99 percent sure thing.” Another...

......The last attempt to campaign on the appeal of the 10th Amendment was made in 1996 by Bob Dole, who carried a well-worn version in his breast pocket. The strategy amounted to unilateral policy disarmament. While Bill Clinton described improvements in education and public safety, Dole talked of procedural limits on federal power. The domestic centerpiece of Dole’s campaign was a void, a negation. Given President Obama’s record of federal overreach, the 10th Amendment may have more political appeal this time around. But the problem with a sweeping application of the amendment is not merely political. [snip] For the most...

Many conservatives and Tea Party activists across the country are eagerly anticipating the entry of Texas Governor Rick Perry into the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Yet Fox Business correspondent Charlie Gasparino suggests that many New Yorkers on Wall Street, presumably of both political parties, are not at all excited about the possibility of a Perry presidency. Gasparino warns: “I talk to a lot of Wall Street guys . . . you know I don’t think a guy from Texas can win again. I just think there’s a Texas taint to it all. And I know the big money...

If Gov. Rick Perry opts to run for president, a passel of polls released this week indicates that he would enter the race for the GOP nomination as a top-tier candidate. Four national polls had Perry running second to fourth among Republicans surveyed in July, surpassing many established — and long-announced — candidates, including Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. "He's top three if he runs," said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist. "I think it's (Mitt) Romney and (Michele) Bachmann and Perry. The others, so far, have not been able to generate any real...

As governor of Texas, Rick Perry has argued that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has strangled business and interfered with state environmental efforts, and he has championed a half-dozen lawsuits challenging federal air pollution and greenhouse gas regulations. The dispute with the EPA serves as a proxy for larger Perry arguments about states' rights versus federal power. It "illustrates how Washington's command-and-control environmental bureaucracy is destroying federalism and individuals' ability to make their own economic decisions," Perry wrote in his book "Fed Up! " So, should he run for the White House and win, how would a President Perry treat...