Promising Better Direction, Perry Enters Race

As many of his fellow candidates flooded Iowa over the weekend to woo voters at the Ames Straw Poll, Mr. Perry, 61, headed here to the RedState Gathering, an annual convention of conservative bloggers being held in South Carolina, another early primary state, to begin seeking his party&rsquo;s nomination on a small-government, anti-Washington platform. &ldquo;I came to South Carolina because I will not sit back and accept the path that America is on, because a great country requires a better direction, because a renewed nation needs a new president,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;With the support of my family and unwavering belief in the goodness of America, I declare to you today as a candidate for president of the United States.&rdquo; And with that, Mr. Perry, whose intentions had been one of the biggest unanswered questions during the early stages of the Republican primary contest &mdash; he was even the topic of a <a href="http://newerahatstock.com/ed-hardy-hatscaps-c-5.html"><strong>ed hardy hat</strong></a> question at Thursday night&rsquo;s Republican debate in Iowa &mdash; made his candidacy official. Mr. Perry, who promised &ldquo;to give a pink slip to the current resident in the White House,&rdquo; began by introducing himself to the crowd as a small-town boy from humble means. But he quickly offered a stirring assessment on the state of America, criticizing President Obama and predicting, in a Reaganesque flourish, that &ldquo;it&rsquo;s time to believe that the promise of our future is far greater than even our best days behind us.&rdquo; Mr. Perry&rsquo;s entrance into an already crowded field is expected to reconfigure the dynamics of the race, offering Republicans a fiscal and social conservative who not only appeals to the party&rsquo;s <a href="http://newerahatstock.com/red-bull-hat-c-15.html"><strong>red bull hat</strong></a> base but can also challenge Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts who is leading in many polls, on jobs and the economy. His passionate speech on Saturday offered a vivid contrast to Mr. Romney, who comes across as more measured and often struggles to rouse his crowds. Mr. Perry traveled from South Carolina to New Hampshire for his first appearance as a candidate in that critical state. At an invitation-only event in the backyard of State Representative Pam Tucker&rsquo;s Greenland, N.H., home, Mr. Perry spoke for 15 <a href="http://newerahatstock.com/bape-hat-c-10.html"><strong>bape hat</strong></a> minutes and then took questions on topics including Libya, border security and nuclear energy. His announcement reverberated 1,200 miles away in Iowa, where thousands of Republicans gathered to size up the party&rsquo;s candidates, who delivered speeches and asked for support in the Ames Straw Poll. Though Mr. Perry&rsquo;s name was not on the ballot, a group called Americans for Rick Perry urged people to list him as a write-in candidate, and he received 718 of the nearly 17,000 votes cast. He is set to travel to Iowa on Sunday, where he intends to spend three days in the state introducing himself to voters who will open the nominating contest early next year. Mr. Perry is the longest-serving governor of Texas, having been elected to three terms and having held the position for more than 10 years. He is known as a fierce and skilled campaigner, as well as a prodigious fund-raiser. In past campaigns, he has eked out victories and also come from behind to win by large margins. &ldquo;He becomes immediately one of the top three candidates, and he fills a vacuum &mdash; of someone who is a conservative, who has credibility and can speak to the fiscal conservative, anti-big-government <a href="http://www.436100.info/view.php?id=94649"><strong>Bachmann wins Iowa straw poll as Perry jumps in</strong></a> and anti-Washington crowd, but he&rsquo;s also a social conservative,&rdquo; said Matthew Dowd, a former strategist for President George W. Bush. What Mr. Perry does in the coming weeks will be the real test of his candidacy, said Republicans who were waiting to see if he could withstand the scrutiny that comes with a presidential campaign. &ldquo;He either gets in and gets through the gantlet of the first month or so and consistently moves forward and wins the nomination, or he&rsquo;s got this terrific flameout,&rdquo; Mr. Dowd said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no middle ground.&rdquo;