Perry on 2016: America Believes in Second Chances

As he has been doing for about a year now, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is once again flirting with a second possible presidential campaign in 2016.

Appearing on “Meet the Press” on May 4, Perry said he was looking forward to the future after he finishes his remaining months in office.

Host David Gregory stated that a lot of people were wondering how Perry could seriously consider running again after his “botched” 2012 effort, where he placed fifth in the Iowa Caucus and sixth in the New Hampshire Primary before suspending and later ending his campaign.

“I would tend to agree with them on the botched efforts,” Perry said, adding that he believed that America “is a place that believes in second chances.”

Perry said that voters “see more character out of an individual” after they fail and move forward. He added that he would be continuing to woo employers to the state of Texas and would be traveling around the country to talk about the difference between “red state versus blue state” policies.

“It’s important for us to really listen to the American people,” he said. “And I think Americans are really concerned about, ‘How am I going to be able to take care of my family’ … I’m really worried about those 90 million people who are out of work. The idea that there are more women out of the workforce now than at any time in our history … that’s just not right.”

Perry noted that a number of Republican governors, including Nikki Haley in South Carolina, and John Kasick in Ohio, had “blueprints” that were putting their state’s residents back to work.

Follow along with more First-in-the-Nation primary posts in the Patch Elections section.