Perry Leads the GOP Field
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 31st, 2011 4:38 am by HL
Perry Leads the GOP Field
A new Quinnipiac poll finds Rick Perry has zoomed to the front of the line of GOP presidential candidates with 26%, followed by Mitt Romney at 20% and Michele Bachmann at 12%. All other candidates are in the single digits.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “Gov. Rick Perry has sprinted out of the gate as a candidate for the GOP nomination. Being the new kid on the block has benefited Perry. But with prominence comes scrutiny and both his Republican competitors and the Democrats are doing their best to convince voters he’s not Mr. Wonderful. The next few months will be a race between Perry and his Republican and Democratic opponents to define him for the vast majority of the American people.”
In general election match ups, Romney and President Obama are in a dead heat while Perry trails the president by 3 points.
However, the percentage of registered voters who say President Obama deserves a second term in the Oval Office has fallen to a negative 42% to 51%.
Quote of the Day
“I don’t worry about reelection. I feel like I’m playing with house money anyway. Nobody expected me to win this race. The more I start thinking about reelection and trying to calculate either my actions or my decisions based upon that, I’m probably moving closer and closer to not getting reelected. Be myself, be who I am, let the chips fall where they may.”
— New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), in an interview with the Daily Beast.
Perry Fires Up the Left
Politico notes that the entry of Rick Perry into the presidential race has “done something that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney could do: wake up the left.”
“Perry panic has spread from the conference rooms of Washington, D.C., to the coffee shops of Brooklyn, with the realization that the conservative Texan could conceivably become the 45th president of the United States, a wave of alarm centering around Perry’s drawling, small-town affect and stands on core cultural issues such as women’s rights, gun control, the death penalty, and the separation of church and state.”
