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Thursday, January 12, 2012

Perry Skipped New Hampshire and went straight to SC.

 

A Texas Tradition -- Big Bucks, Few Delegates

January 11, 2012 | 3:04 PM

 It must be a Texas thing. Barring a big rebound in South Carolina, Gov. Rick Perry is at risk of joining two other Texans in the political hall of fame for most dollars spent for the least results. The reigning champion is former Gov. John Connally, who famously spent almost $12 million for a single delegate in the1980 presidential campaign, Ada Mills of Arkansas.

Then, along came Sen. Phil Gramm in 1996. He started his campaign raising more than $4 million at a single dinner and boasting that "ready money is the mother's milk of politics." Gramm had lots of ready money. But things dried up for him pretty quickly. His campaign was dead even before he got to Iowa when he was defeated in the Louisiana caucuses by Patrick Buchanan. After finishing fifth in Iowa, he dropped out after having spent more than $21 million for ten delegates.

Now, it's Perry's turn. And he seems to be following in the Texas tradition of Connally, Gramm and former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (who flamed out in 1976, though without the excess spending of the others). Perry spent more than $6 million in Iowa, but finished a weak fifth with only 10.3 percent of the vote. Lots of money, but no delegates since the caucuses only send people to a county convention. Actual national convention delegates will not be apportioned until the state party convention June 16.

That took Perry into New Hampshire. Sort of. His name was on the ballot. But he was there only for debates, preferring to make his stand in South Carolina. The result was not pretty for Perry. While Romney drew 97,000 votes, Perry could not crack 2,000, getting less than one percent of the vote. And no delegates -- making South Carolina possibly his last chance to get that first delegate and avoid breaking Connally's record. 

 Perry Begs Voters ‘Not to Quit’ Him

Updated: January 11, 2012 | 8:55 p.m.
January 11, 2012 | 8:54 p.m. 

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry speaks during a campaign stop in Iowa last month.
NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. – For several weeks, Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign has looked like it was on its last legs. Now it’s starting to sound like it is.
As he traveled the western part of South Carolina on Wednesday, Perry urged voters not to give up on his candidacy as he fights to eke out a win in the state’s Jan. 21 primary after his disappointing last-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

“Over the next 11 days, I’m gonna challenge you not to quit,” Perry told a group of about 150 people at a town hall meeting in Aiken. “Don’t quit on our country, don’t quit on my campaign. We’ll do whatever we have to do to go share with as many people in South Carolina as we can a story about a great future for this country, that there’s somebody that not only has done it, somebody that doesn’t just talk about it, but that has got the record of job creation.”

Perry has refocused his stump speech in the state to spend nearly 20 minutes at each event talking about the importance of constitutional protections of states’ rights, his record of job creation in Texas, and his flat-tax and energy plans. In an appeal to the state’s many tea party voters, he has done away with some of the social-issues themes that held appeal in Iowa, such as his condemnations of activist judges and of what he called the Obama administration’s war on religion.
“God bless the tea party because if nothing else … they clearly showed Americans that they need to pick up the Constitution of the United States and read it,” Perry said during his last stop of the day in North Augusta, joking that the document has probably been read more times in the past two years than it had been in the past 50.