Rick Perry Endorses Ted Cruz

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is endorsing Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Perry, who was also a candidate in the presidential race, tells Politico he thinks that the race for the Republican nomination has now come down to real estate mogul Donald Trump and Cruz.

“Of those individuals who have a chance to win the Republican primary, at this juncture, from my perspective, Ted Cruz is by far the most consistent conservative in that crowd,” Perry said in an interview with Politico. “And that appears to be down to two people.”

From Perry’s interview with Politico:

“You’ll have with Ted Cruz that same result of, senators and others in the Washington establishment that are mad at him, find him to be hard to work with, they will find a way to work with him because they know he means what he says he means,” he said.

“Gov. Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Jeb’s barely making an impact out there — those are very skilled, very successful, very experienced governors,” Perry said. “But the electorate doesn’t want that. That’s why we have elections, why we democratically select leaders.”

“He knows he’s going to surround himself with people who do have that experience, and I’m very satisfied that on Day 1, he will be ready to be commander-in-chief,” Perry said, “Partly because of the time he’s going to spend in learning what he doesn’t know, but he’s also surrounding himself with people who are extraordinarily capable and wise.”“I really didn’t want to talk about policy, I didn’t want to talk politics, I didn’t want to talk philosophy,” he said of their meeting last month. “I wanted to talk about him, who he was, see if I could get a handle on Ted Cruz the man, not Cruz the caricature I’d seen through the political lens. What I found was a very different person than what I had been led to believe.”