Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who flirted with secession at a Tea Party rally a few years ago, told a crowd of New York Republicans Tuesday night that the Obama administration had failed miserably in handling the economy.
“They promised jobs, and they delivered economic misery,” said Perry, adding that the United States “cannot continue on this course of economic ruin.”
Perry’s speech, delivered like an angry populist, touted the Texas economy, asserting that nearly half of the jobs created in the U.S. during the past twenty-four months were created in the Lone Star State.
He received a standing ovation at the conclusion of his speech.
Perry’s address to the New York County Republican Committee last night is one of several high-profile national appearances the Texan is making this week.
On Sunday, the Texas governor sharply criticized President Obama in Los Angeles. He’s also scheduled to address the Republican Governors Association in North Carolina later this week before heading to New Orleans for a GOP Leadership Conference that will feature several other presidential candidates, including Newt Gingrich and former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer.
Perry didn’t specifically mention the possibility that he might be a candidate in his speech to the overflow crowd at New York’s Grand Hyatt on Tuesday evening.
Perry acknowledged to reporters, however, that he’s considering running for the Republican presidential nomination, but indicated that he’s in no hurry to make an announcement.
“People would like to have some other options in the race, obviously,” he told the Texas Tribune on Tuesday.
Perry, who succeeded George W. Bush as governor of Texas in December 2000 and is now the longest serving governor in the country, made headlines in the spring of 2009 when he told a flag-waving, secession-chanting Tea Party gathering in Austin that Washington had abandoned the country’s founding principles of limited government.
“There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry told reporters at the time. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”
If at first you don’t secede…
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