Former Texas Governor Rick Perry is joining Sen. Ted Cruz as he travels around Iowa ahead of Thursday’s Republican presidential debate.
Perry is expected to make 10 campaign stop for Cruz before the Fox News debate. He ended his presidential campaign last fall, then threw his support behind Cruz on Monday.
In an interview with Politico, Perry explained why he’s supporting Cruz:
“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.”