Crow eating time: Perry first to drop out of the race

I was wrong. Politico's insiders were right. Perry has dropped out of the 2016 campaign.

OK, crow eating out of the way. My initial reaction:

If you go back to the original post, I concluded:

So is Perry going to be the first to drop out? Dropping out comes down to the candidate's psyche -- but rationally, if you're Rick Perry then you stay the course through Iowa. Nothing has changed: may as well give Iowa a shot.

I added the bold and italics now.

As my tweet and prior post indicate, I argue that it is irrational to drop out now. There was never any chance that he was going to do well in the polls at this point. [In fact, I argued in May 2013 that it was "wishful thinking" for Perry to hope of success in 2016 without running for re-election in 2014.] I know it's easy to criticize from the sidelines, but everything up to now should have been expected as part of the campaign plan.

From the very start, his only shot at the nomination in 2016 was to come out of nowhere to win Iowa. Given recent Iowa caucus history, that's not as unreasonable as it sounds. Perry is very good at retail politics and his super PAC has $17 million in the bank -- Santorum won Iowa in 2012 with 24.5% and it might take even less this time.

Why run at all if you're going to quit the game before you even play the only card you've got?

Posted by Evan @ 09/12/15 12:19 AM

 
 

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