Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry failed to submit enough valid signatures to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot, state GOP officials said Friday evening. Perry’s campaign told state election officials it had submitted 11,911 signatures, but a Virginia Republican familiar with the situation said that the Texas governor did not submit the required 10,000. Earlier Friday, the Republican Party of Virginia certified former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) to appear in the March ballot. Four candidates — Romney, Perry, Paul and former House speaker Newt Gingrich — turned in thousands of signatures by the deadline. State...

JACKSON, MISS. - As president, Rick Perry would not uphold spending cuts required if the congressional supercommittee fails to meet next week's deadline for a plan to reduce federal spending by $1.2 trillion, the Republican presidential candidate said Thursday. "Not at all," Perry told reporters here when asked whether he would allow the draconian cuts - including $600 billion from the Pentagon -- to take place if he is in the White House in January, 2013. The Texas governor insists that his plan to lower taxes and reduce regulations will make the cuts unnecessary by stimulating the economy. Perry decried...

We’ve all been there, which may have been what made Rick Perry’s gaffe during Wednesday night’s televised Republican debates extra grimace-inducing. In a media interview on Thursday morning, the Texas governor defended his failure to recall the name of the third government agency he wanted to abolish – a glitch punctuated by an embarrassing “oops” – by pointing out that “All of us make mistakes. I’m a human being.” But what’s actually happening in our brains when we screw up? ....When our brain becomes narrowly focused – as Perry’s brain was when it was suggested that the name of the...

GOP regulars claim the "electability argument" will deliver the Republican nomination to Mitt Romney. They say things like, "Mitt Romney can win the general election by appealing to the middle. Rick Perry can't win in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Milwaukee." Simple enough -- but wrong. Romney's no stronger on this front than Perry, the frontrunner in the polls. The core reasons: Perry's support among the party's base, and his strength on the key issues of the economy and job creation. Based on what we know today, next November's election will be decided on the economy and as a referendum...

Washington Post op-ed writer Richard Cohen is concerned that “Climate Change May Be Ruin of Perry Campaign.” Far less clear was whether he regards that imminent ruination to be a bad thing, or rather, a cause for celebration. There are excellent reasons to suspect the latter. Cohen doesn’t hold a very high opinion of the Texas governor, of anyone who doesn’t buy into the notion of a looming global man-made global warming disaster, or of Republicans. Referring to Perry in an Aug. 22 Washington Post article, he opined “It’s not his thinking I fear, it’s the lack of any at...

Honestly, some weeks I don't even have to write this column. It just falls from the heavens like manna. I pick it up and post it. This was one of those weeks. Rick Perry. The name alone is enough to elicit chuckles. Big hat. Silly boots. Cowboy swagger. The Texas governor likes to hold stadium-sized prayer rallies in which he fills a fraction of the stadium and talks to God. Two years ago he held a rally to ask God for rain. Today, Texas still bakes in a historic drought, suggesting that if there is a God, he's got better...