Texas Gov. Rick Perry offered a bold vision for America with oratorical fireworks and a crowd of conservatives that grew more excited with his every sentence.
You’d never know he wasn’t running for president anymore.
Perry was something of a rock star at CPAC this afternoon, praising the “foot soldiers in the revolution” and reaping hearty ovations from the same. He quipped that he had been running for the White House, but “the people of New Hampshire had a different idea.”
Texas A&M Aggies, he said, referring to his alma mater, “never lose, we just run out of time. So you could say that my presidential campaign ran out of time but not run out of ideals.”
The states’-rights champion vowed to be a “10th Amendment conservative… until the last breath I draw.”
He never mentioned any of his once-fellow GOP hopefuls, but the Newt Gingrich supporter cautioned conservatives to choose wisely. “The question has never been should Obama go, but what kind of leadership is needed to get this country back on track?” he said.
“If we elect leaders from the Republican Party who preserve the current state of the bureaucracy” voters get what they ask for, Perry said.
He called on conservatives to be “true 10th Amendment patriots or strip it out of the Constitution.”
Perry also alluded to the Clint Eastwood ad during the Super Bowl that was pegged as aligning with Obama’s message.
“If it’s halftime in America, I’m fearful about what the final score is going to be” under this president, he said to wild cheers.
“You don’t have to settle this election,” Perry said. “You don’t have to resign yourself to the fate that this country is going to be less in the future than in the past.”
As much of the crowd poured out of the ballroom, one woman exclaimed in a breathless voice, “Everything he said I agree with!” It was his best campaign stump after the fact.
Fittingly, in the audience for Perry’s speech was a man wearing a Tim Tebow jersey.
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