Rick Perry’s indictment problem and response

Robert Pratt

In my interview with GOP presidential nomination candidate Rick Perry Tuesday, I asked him: “The spurious nature aside of the political indictment of you for exercising your veto power as governor, the fact remains, however unfair, that you are under indictment. How badly do you think this affects your campaign in other parts of the country where the full political nature of it is less well known?”

“Well I think most people understand the full political nature of it. Most people look at this and they go this is absolutely a travesty, a miscarriage of justice and this thing is going to be thrown out,” Perry said. He then went on to say that his campaign hasn’t seen the indictment hurting him by citing the size of the crowds at recent rallies in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Perry said that people in these states “realize that politics isn’t bean-bag in Texas, they play hardball” adding that he expects the Texas Third Court of Appeal to throw the case out.

“Even the Texas Legislature, they looked this and they took all of that authority away from the Travis County District Attorney during the legislative session… and rightfully so. They got it out of the politically motivated hands of that Travis County District Attorney,” Perry said.

So clearly the message from the Perry camp is now that not only is the indictment purely political in nature and expected to be thrown out, the behavior of the Travis County DA was so egregious that the Legislature acted to remove such authority from that office.

The problem for Rick Perry is that the field is so rich that voters have several strong, palatable choices and no matter how ill-motivated this indictment is, if not thrown out this summer, it very likely will be used by many voters as a reason to support someone else even though they might have been Perry-backers without the indictment resting on their scale of decision.

Listen to the full interview here.