After taking less than 24 hours to “assess” his presidential campaign from Texas in the wake of his fifth-place Iowa finish, Rick Perry is ready to run in South Carolina (and he even has the neon laces to prove it).
“And the next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto State…Here we come South Carolina!!” Perry tweeted, along with a photo of him clad in winter running gear, illustrating his point that campaigning for president is a marathon, not a sprint. Thirty minutes later, Perry’s 28-year-old son Griffin chimed in: “‘See y’all next week in Carolina! I expect all my SEC brethren to come out in force.”
CNN’s Peter Hamby confirmed Perry’s continuation of his campaign on Twitter. “Perry campaign source tells me: ‘We’re back on.’ Will hit the trail in South Carolina likely after the NH debate on Sunday.”
“Well, at least this was done in the most confusing way possible…” quipped the Texas Tribune‘s Reeve Hamilton on Twitter. That sentiment echoed around Twitter, leading the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Josh Trevino to declare “safe to say the Austin media’s word for the day is ‘stupefaction.”
But the press was not alone in being surprised by the news. “We are all scrambling,” one staffer wrote in a text message to the Texas Tribune‘s Emily Ramshaw.
