http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/189792-perry-obama-perpetrated-a-fraud-on-countryPerry questions Christie's appeal as national candidate
By Kyle Balluck
Breaking News
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s blowout reelection victory last week was “impressive,” but added he is not sure whether Christie will be able to translate success in his home state to a national stage.
“Is a conservative in New Jersey a conservative in the rest of the country?” he asked in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
“We’ll see in later years and months to come,” the Texas governor, who is considering another run for president, said.
Perry last week returned to Iowa for the first time since a distant, fifth-place finish in the 2012 Iowa caucuses.
“Our leaders have forgotten how to governor. And believe me, I know a few things about forgetting,” he said at a Des Moines fundraiser, referring to a GOP debate during which he struggled to remember which federal agencies he would cut.
“I think second chances are what America has always been about,” he told ABC.
“I think history tells you that -- for the Republican side anyway -- nominees have all had to run more than once,” he said
Perry also said he wants President Obama to admit he “perpetrated a fraud” on the American people with ObamaCare.
Perry said there would have been better ways to oppose the president’s signature healthcare reform law than Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) filibuster, part of efforts to tie defunding ObamaCare to the government shutdown and debt limit.
“It would have been wiser for us to have laid the wood to the president, so to speak, .… to call him out on this and let it become an issue of ‘Mr. president, you own this.’ ”
Obama needs to “stand up in front of the American people and say ‘I perpetrated a fraud on you,’ ” Perry added.
--This post was updated at 12:25 p.m.
