Anita Perry, Rick Perry's wife,
yesterday:
We are being brutalized by our opponents, and our own party. So much of that is, I think they look at him, because of his faith. He is the only true conservative – well, there are some true conservatives. And they’re there for good reasons. And they may feel like God called them too. But I truly feel like we are here for that purpose. [...] Last week, someone came up to Rick and gave him the scripture. He said Rick, I want to tell you God is testing you.
Rick Perry today:
I’ll stand by my wife. I think she’s right on both cases. My understanding is that she said I’m the most conservative candidate in the race and ‘he’s a Christian.’ So I haven’t got anything I can add to that and she’s hit me on my mark both times there.
Speaking of nasty political attacks on personal faith, here's what he had to say about Robert Jeffress, the pastor who attacked Mitt Romney's faith:
I have a lot of people that endorse me but I don’t endorse what they say or what they believe for that matter and that’s the case on this one. I can’t control those individuals who go out and say something who may be for me in a race.
Actually, however, Perry's campaign approved the selection of Jeffress to introduce him at the Values Voters Summit and Perry himself thanked Jeffress effusively for his introduction and endorsement, so not only is Perry's attempt to dismiss Jeffress total bull, so too is his woe-is-me complaint about getting attacked by his party's establishment because he happens to be a Christian.
Maybe it's just because I'm not a fundamentalist Republican, but I really don't understand why Rick Perry is tearing pages out of Sarah Palin's failed playbook, especially today. Later today, he's going to release some sort of jobs and energy plan, but all this nonsense about being persecuted for his faith is a complete distraction from that.
And instead of continuing to make (or at least be complicit in) hamfisted attacks on Romney's faith, I don't understand why Perry isn't going after Romney's two biggest weaknesses: his flip-flops and Romneycare. Perry hasn't said word one about the report from earlier this week that Mitt Romney's advisers helped the Obama administration draft its health care reform law. Maybe there's some sort of brilliant eleven dimensional chess going on here, but to me, it just seems dumb.