Perry: "Here we come South Carolina!!!"

Perry Tweet

After a poor fifth place showing in Tuesday's GOP Iowa caucuses and saying he'd reassess his campaign, Texas Governor Rick Perry is now saying he'll forge on to the South Carolina primary. After discussing his prospects with wife, Anita, and going for a run to "clear his head," he Tweeted: "And the next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto State...Here we come South Carolina!!!"
Surely there will be much gnashing of teeth over Perry's seeming reversal. By the time the sun came up this morning, the MSM had almost universally declared his campaign over.
Could Perry's decision to soldier on have anything to do with a private"emergency" meeting being called for next weekend in Texas? According to Politico, e-mail invitations are going out now and will be hosted by movement conservative leaders including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Don Wildmon, former chairman of the American Family Association and Gary Bauer, a former failed presidential candidate. Their focus will be which conservative candidate to get behind in order to stop Mitt Romney's candidacy.

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Bachmann's Waterloo: candidate leaves race after last place finish



Image Source Page: http://jeffersonsrebels.blogspot.com/2011/03/michele-bachmann-current-united-states.html

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has formally dropped out of the race for the 2012 GOP nomination after finishing last in the Iowa Caucuses. The Iowa native and self-styled leader of the Tea Party claimed a meager 5 percent of the vote. She held a press conference in Des Moines today and said, "Last night, the people in Iowa spoke with a very clear voice, and so I have decided to step aside." She did not endorse any other candidate in her remarks.

The race for 2012 begins tonight

After months and months and months of GOP campaigning and debates, and a constantly changing slate of front-runners, the moment has arrived. Tonight is the Iowa Caucus, the official kick-off for the race to determine who the 2012 Republican nominee will be. I'm already worn out.
The race boils down to three factions fighting for the top spot in Iowa and the big 'mo that follows: the establishment pick (Mitt Romney), the outsider (Ron Paul) and the evangelical standard-bearer (?). As of today, it's being reported that some 40 percent of (mostly evangelical) voters are still undecided. With that big a number of undecideds, it's just about impossible to say who the top tier going into New Hampshire will be.
Conventional wisdom and polls now say former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (Flavor #5) has a strong shot at landing in the top 3 tonight. It's possible. He's put more time and effort into winning over Iowa's electorate, especially its social conservatives than any other candidate, save Ron Paul. And Iowa is known for picking religious fundamentalists with no real shot. If Santorum doesn't come in third place, at least, he's done.
It looks like it will be a showdown between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, with the former holding a very slight lead in the polls. However, Paul's support could be underrated because many of his supporters use cell phones and aren't polled as much as older voters with landlines.
The big question is who will evangelicals support? Will they go for Santorum, who has no money and no game beyond Iowa? Will God bestow a real live miracle on Michele Bachmann's crashing campaign and keep her in the game to New Hampshire? Or will these voters coalesce around Rick Perry (who does have the machine and money to get through to Super Tuesday)?
And then there's Newt Gingrich (Flavor #4)... no matter where he winds up in tonight's total, he won't drop out. He's got books to sell and big-money speeches to make; and being a candidate gives him a spotlight PR money can't buy. He's also still, for whatever reason, polling high in states like South Carolina and Florida. Tonight could change that, though, if he fails to crack the top 4.
I predict Paul will win the Iowa Caucus with Romney coming in second. I also predict Perry will beat expectations and come in third or fourth. With an unfriendly SC primary looming, that would be Romney's biggest nightmare.