Rick Perry, still languishing in South Carolina polling is now running behind Mitt Romney in his home state of Texas after months on the campaign trail as a GOP presidential candidate.
The latest Public Policy poll as reported in TheHill.com is bad news for Texas Governor Rick Perry. After he entered the GOP race for the nomination he was polling at 43% in Texas against only 10% for Mitt Romney.
At the present time, Rick Perry is running third behind not only Mitt Romney but also Newt Gingrich.
What is at the heart of this precipitous drop in popularity? From Public Policy's report: "It's not just that Texas Republicans are no longer planning to vote for Perry- a lot of them even feel that Perry's candidacy has hurt Texas' image. 39% of GOP voters think his candidacy has been a negative for perceptions of the state, while only 13% believe it's been a positive."
In South Carolina, where voters will go to the polls in six days, Romney's lead is still a double-digit number and Rick Perry can't even crack the top three. A Monmouth University poll found that Rick Perry was still looking up at the leaders from 6% support.
Mitt Romney is polling at 33% in S. Carolina, some 11 points ahead of Newt Gingrich at 22%, followed by Rick Santorum with 14% of voters' support at the present, holding off Ron Paul who ranked a close fourth with 12% in the poll results.
It was pointed out by the Monmouth U. poll that Rick Perry's poll numbers are only 2 points above the recently departed Jon Huntsman. With the top four candidates all in double figures, failure of Perry to catch up after the votes are tallied may mean another candidate dropping out of the race.
During the GOP/Fox News debate on Monday night, Rick Perry was treated as a fifth wheel, in addition to the fifth place candidate according to a Texas news site. PegasusNews.com, which covers local stories in the Dallas-Fort Worth area noted as much.
"...he (Perry) had to wait for the next question directed to him. It was a long wait. In fact, Perry would sometimes go 20 minutes without any attention from the moderators — or his opponents." When he did field a direct question, the site characterized his answers as regurgitating old stump speech themes, including immigration and Mexico border issues as well as critiques of what he calls a "part-time Congress."
Rick Perry did get the attention of the audience as well as applause for his criticism of President Obama's reaction to the video of U.S. Marines urinating on corpses. The Texas governor invoked the name of journalist Daniel Pearl and his beheading by terrorists some 10 years ago
Image source: Wikimedia Commons/Jonathan Blundell
"
Comment and add to the story without registration, but keep the comments meaningful please. Links are not accepted.
