Rick Perry's most rapt audience: Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney
SMU Political Science Professor Cal Jillson predicts Rep. Michele Bachmann "will fade quickly" if Texas Gov. Rick Perry enters the GOP steeplechase for the presidential nomination.
By Linda Feldmann
Staff writer
Washington - In the Dance of the Seven Veils that has become Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s possible presidential campaign, the two most interested audience members may well be the top rivals for the GOP nomination: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.
Six veils are gone. The seventh will go in the next two or three weeks. That’s the time frame Governor Perry has laid out on a decision over whether to enter the 2012 race. In his latest public utterance on the matter, Perry told The Des Moines Register last week that he’s “getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do.” And Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) told the Register he thinks it’s very likely that Perry will run, based on a conversation the two had last Friday.
For Congresswoman Bachmann, a Perry candidacy could be devastating. . .
“Perry is a more serious figure than Bachmann, by a very great deal,” says Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “I think Bachmann will fade quickly.”
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