TEXAS GOVERNOR and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry tried to revive his fading campaign yesterday by announcing his “Energising American Jobs and Security” plan.
But he was upstaged by his own wife, Anita, who the previous evening spoke of her husband’s divine calling and complained bitterly of the couple’s treatment at the hands of fellow Republicans.
After Mr Perry’s poor performance in Tuesday night’s debate, Republican pundits questioned whether he really wanted to go to Washington at all.
Her husband did not want to stand for president, Ms Perry confirmed at a university in South Carolina on Thursday night, but “there was a nagging, a pulling at my heart for him to run for president . . . He was happy being the governor of Texas. He was good being the governor of Texas.”
The Perrys are evangelical Christians, and Ms Perry used an Old Testament story to explain what had happened. “God was already speaking to me, but [Mr Perry] felt like he needed to see the burning bush. I said, ‘Let me tell you something: you might not see the burning bush, but other people are seeing it for you.’”
Ms Perry implied that her husband was ill-treated because of his faith. “It’s been a rough month,” she said. “I don’t have to tell you. We’ve been brutalised by our opponents in our own party and chewed up in the press.”
Mr Perry's ratings in opinion polls have plummeted from 38 per cent to 16 per cent in the latest NBC/ Wall Street Journalpoll.
Most polls show him running a distant third behind Mitt Romney and Herman Cain, but a Rasmussen Reports poll puts him in fourth place, with 9 per cent.
On morning television yesterday, Mr Perry found himself explaining his wife’s comments instead of the energy-based jobs plan he was about to present.
“Family members always take these campaigns a little more personally than the candidates do,” he told NBC. “I’ve been shot at and missed and shot at and hit for 20 years, running for public office.”
Mr Perry’s campaign billed yesterday’s speech at a US steel plant in a suburb of Pittsburgh as his first major policy address. “We are standing atop the next American economic boom – energy,” Mr Perry said. “The quickest way to give our economy a shot in the arm is to deploy American ingenuity to tap American energy.”
In a throwback to the slogan which then vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin made famous three years ago, Mr Perry’s policy amounts to “drill, baby, drill”.
He said his energy-based plan would create 1.2 million jobs, but could work only “if environmental bureaucrats are told to stand down”.
If elected, Mr Perry would “work with Congress to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency in its current state”, reversing regulations on air pollution and abolishing the agency’s role in limiting greenhouse emissions. He would also prevent what he calls “the radical environmental movement” from impeding the energy industry with lawsuits.
The Texas governor would like to end the ban on drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and expand exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and off the southern Atlantic coast.