In Texas, It May Have All Come Too Easily For Rick Perry

Source: www.npr.org - Saturday, September 12, 2015
Rick Perry phone-banking during his reelection campaign as governor of Texas in 2006. There was evidence of the problems that lay ahead in his presidential campaigns in those days in Texas. Michael Stravato/AP The seeds of calamity for Rick Perry had been sown years before in the fertile political ground that Texas became for the Republican Party. Perry suspended his campaign for president Friday evening, becoming the first candidate this year to get out of the crowded race for president. It was his second failed bid for the White House after leaving as Texas' longest-serving governor. But his 14 years as governor, and the ease of his reelections in what became a heavily Republican state, may have been the worst thing that could have happened to Perry. He did not have to do the kind of work that could have better prepared him for the rigors of a presidential campaign. It didn't have to be this way. Almost immediately, his mouth began to get him in trouble Rick Perry looked straight out of central casting. If anything, he was getting better looking as he grew older. And he had a swashbuckling personality to match. When the longtime popular leader of the largest Republican state jumped into the presidential race four years ago, he shot to the top of the GOP polls. Even though he got in late in the game, in August 2011, Perry looked poised to topple Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who found himself down double digits

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