2024 Websites
2020 Websites
2016 Websites
2012 Websites
2008 Websites
2004 Websites
2000 Websites
1996 Websites
Rick Perry to make a Special Announcement in Addison, Texas on June 4, 2015
Governor & Mrs. Perry have been discussing the future of our great country and how their family can play a role.
Join them in Addison, TX on June 4th for a special announcement.
Parking is valet only and a ticket is required for entry. Food and refreshments will be served.
11:30 AM CDT
4350 Westgrove Dr
Addison, TX 75001
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry will make a special announcement regarding his future intentions on Thursday, June 4th. He will be joined by his family & a group of America's finest patriots:
•Retired U.S. Navy SEAL Paul Craig
•Retired U.S. Navy SEAL JJ Jones
•Taya Kyle, widow of Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. history and author of American Sniper
•Retired U.S. Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, author of Lone Survivor
•Melanie Luttrell, wife of Marcus Luttrell
•Navy SEAL Morgan Luttrell
•Retired U.S. Marine Corps Captain Dan Moran
•Retired U.S. Navy SEAL Pete Scobell
•Brad Thor, New York Times bestselling author
•Retired U.S. Navy SEAL and Medal of Honor Recipient Mike Thornton
Source: Rick Perry for President 2016 Website
Governor Rick Perry Announces For President
Austin – Today, Gov. Rick Perry announced his candidacy for President of the United States of America during a speech in Addison, Texas. Here are Gov. Perry’s remarks as prepared for delivery:
Thank you. I was born five years after the end of a global war that killed more than 60 million people.
I am the son of a veteran of that war, who flew 35 missions over war-torn Europe as a tail gunner on a B-17.
When dad returned home, he married mom, and they started a life together.
They were tenant farmers.
They were raised during a time of great hardship, and had little expectation beyond living in peace, putting a roof over our heads and putting food on our table.
Home was a place called Paint Creek. Too small to be called a town, but it was the center of my universe.
For years we had an outhouse, and mom bathed us in a number two washtub on the back porch. She also hand-sewed my clothes until I went off to college.
I attended Paint Creek Rural School, grades one through 12. I played 6-man football. I was a member of Boy Scout Troop 48, became an Eagle Scout, and went off to Texas A&M where I was a member of the Corps of Cadets and an animal science major.
I was proud to wear the uniform of our country as an Air Force officer and aircraft commander.
After serving, I returned home to the rolling plains and big skies of West Texas, and I returned to farming.
There is no person on earth more optimistic than a dryland cotton farmer. We always know a good rain is just around the corner, no matter how long we’d been waiting.
The values learned on my family’s cotton farm are timeless: the dignity of work, the integrity of your word, responsibility to community, the unbreakable bonds of family, and duty to country.
These are enduring values. Not the product of some idyllic past, but a touchstone of American life in our small towns, our largest cities, our booming suburbs.
I have seen American life from the red dirt of a West Texas cotton field, from a campus in College Station, from the elevated view of a C-130 cockpit, and from the Governor’s office of the Texas Capitol.
I served a small rural community in the Texas Legislature, and I led the world’s 12th largest economy.
I know that America has experienced great change, but what it means to be an American has never changed: we are the only nation in the world founded on the power of an idea that all “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Our rights come from God, not from government, and our people are not the subjects of government, but instead government is subject to the people.
It has always been the case that there has been a social compact between one generation of Americans and the next: to pass along an inheritance of a stronger country full of greater promise and possibility.
And that social compact has been protected at great sacrifice. This was never more clear to me than when I took my father to the American cemetery that overlooks the bluffs at Omaha beach.
On that peaceful, wind-swept setting, there lie 9,000 graves, including 45 pairs of brothers, 33 of whom are buried side by side, a father and a son, two sons of a president. They all traded their future for ours in a final act of loving sacrifice.
In that American Cemetery, it is no accident each headstone faces west: west over the Atlantic, towards the nation they defended, the nation they loved, the nation they would never come home to.
It struck me as I stood in the midst of those heroes that they look upon us in silent judgment. And that we must ask ourselves: are we worthy of their sacrifice?
The truth is we are at the end of an era of failed leadership.
We have been led by a divider who has sliced and diced the electorate, pitting American against American for political purposes.
Six years into the so-called recovery, and our economy is barely growing. This winter, it actually got smaller.
Our economic slowdown is not inevitable, it is the direct result of bad economic policy.
The president’s tax and regulatory policies have slammed shut the door of opportunity for the average American trying to climb the economic ladder, resigning the middle class to stagnant wages, personal debt, and deferred dreams.
Weakness at home has led to weakness abroad.
The world has descended into a chaos of this president’s own making, while his White House loyalists construct an alternative universe where ISIS is contained and Ramadi is merely a “setback” – where the nature of the enemy can’t be acknowledged for fear of causing offense, where the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, can be trusted to live up to a nuclear agreement.
No decision has done more harm than the president’s withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.
Let no one be mistaken, leaders of both parties have made grave mistakes in Iraq. But in January, 2009 – when Barack Obama became Commander-in-Chief – Iraq had been largely pacified.
America had won the war. But our president failed to secure the peace.
How callous it seems now as cities once secured with American blood are now being taken by America’s enemies, all because of a campaign slogan.
I saw during Vietnam a war where politicians didn’t keep faith with the sacrifices and courage of America’s fighting men and women, where men were ordered into combat without the full support of their civilian commanders.
To see it happen again, 40 years later, because of political gamesmanship and dishonesty, is a national disgrace.
But my friends, we are a resilient country. We have been through a Civil War, we’ve been through two world wars, we’ve made it through a Great Depression – we even made it through Jimmy Carter. We will make it through the Obama years.
The fundamental nature of this country is our people never stay knocked down. We get back up, we dust ourselves off, and we move forward. And we will again.
I want to share some important truths with my fellow Americans, starting with this truth: we don’t have to settle for a world in chaos or an America that shrinks from its responsibilities.
We don’t have to apologize for American exceptionalism, or western values.
We don’t have to accept slow growth that leaves behind the middle class, and leaves millions of Americans out of work.
We don’t have to settle for crumbling bureaucracies that target taxpayers and harm our veterans.
And we don’t have to resign ourselves to debt, decay and slow growth.
We have the power to make things new again. To project American strength again, to get our economy going again.
And that is why today I am running for the presidency of the United States of America.
It is time to create real jobs, to raise wages, to create opportunity for all. To give every citizen a stake in this country. To restore hope, real hope to forgotten Americans, millions of middle class families who have given up hope of getting ahead, millions of workers who have given up hope of finding a job.
Yes, it’s time for a reset, time to reset the relationship between government and citizen.
Think of the arrogance of Washington, DC, representing itself as some beacon of wisdom, with policies smothering this vast land with no regard for what makes each state and community unique. That's just wrong.
We need to return power to the states, and freedom to the individual.
Today our citizens and entrepreneurs are burdened by over-regulation and unspeakable debt.
Debt is not just a fiscal nightmare, it is a moral failure. Let me speak to the millennial generation: massive debt, passed on from our generation to yours, is a breaking of the social compact.
You deserve better. I am going to offer a responsible plan to fix the entitlement system, and to stop this theft from your generation.
To those forgotten Americans drowning in personal debt, working harder for wages that don’t keep up with the rising cost of living, I come here today to say your voice is heard.
I know you face rising health care costs, rising child care costs, skyrocketing tuition costs, and mounting student loan debt. I hear you, and I am going to do something about it.
To the one in five children in families on food stamps, to the one in seven Americans living in poverty, to the one in ten workers who are unemployed, under-employed or given up hope of finding a job: I hear you, you are not forgotten.
I am running to be your president.
For small businesses on Main Street struggling to just get by, smothered by regulations, targeted by Dodd-Frank: I hear you, you’re not forgotten. Your time is coming.
The American People see a rigged game, where insiders get rich, and the middle class pays the tab.
There is something wrong when the Dow is near record highs, and businesses on Main Street can’t even get a loan.
Since when did capitalism involve the elimination of risk for the biggest banks while regulations strangle our community banks?
Capitalism is not corporatism. It is not a guarantee of reward without risk. It is not about Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.
The reason I am running for president is I know for certain our country’s best days lie ahead. There is nothing wrong in America today that cannot be fixed with new leadership.
We are just a few good decisions away from unleashing economic growth, and reviving the American Dream.
We need to fix a tax code riddled with loopholes that sends jobs overseas and punishes success.
We have the highest corporate tax rate in the western world. It is time to reduce the rate, bring jobs home and lift wages for working families.
By the time this Administration has finished with its experiment in big government, they will have added more than 600,000 pages of new regulations to the Federal Register.
On my first day in office, I will issue an immediate freeze on all pending regulations from the Obama administration. That same day, I will send to Congress a comprehensive reform and rollback of job-killing mandates created by Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and other Obama-era policies.
Agencies will have to live under strict regulatory budgets. And health insurers will have to earn the right to your money, instead of lobbying Washington to force you to hand it over.
On day one, I will also sign an executive order approving the construction of the Keystone Pipeline.
Energy is vital to our economy, and to our national security. On day one, I will sign an executive order authorizing the export of American natural gas and oil, freeing our European allies from dependence on Russia’s energy supplies.
Vladimir Putin uses energy to hold our allies hostage. If energy is going to be used as a weapon, I say America must have the largest arsenal.
We will unleash an era of economic growth, and limitless opportunity. We will rebuild American industry. And we will lift wages for American workers.
It can be done because it has been done in Texas.
During my 14 years as governor, Texas companies created almost one-third of all new American jobs.
In the last seven years of my tenure, Texas created 1.5 million new jobs. Without Texas, America would have lost 400,000 jobs.
We were the engine of growth because we had a simple formula: control taxes and spending, implement smart regulations, invest in an educated workforce, and stop frivolous lawsuits.
Texas now has the second highest high school graduation rate in the country and the highest graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students.
We led the nation in exports, including high-tech exports. We passed historic tax relief, and I was proud to sign balanced budgets for 14 years.
We not only created opportunity, we stood for law and order.
When there was a crisis at our border last year and the president refused my invitation to see the challenge that we faced, I told him, “Mr. President, if you won’t secure the border, Texas will.”
Because of the threat posed by drug cartels and trans-national gangs, I deployed the Texas National Guard.
The policy worked. Apprehensions declined by 74 percent. If you elect me your president,
I will secure this border.
Homeland security begins with border security. The most basic compact between a president and the people is to keep the country safe.
The great lesson of history is strength and resolve bring peace and order, and weakness and vacillation invite chaos and conflict.
My very first act as president will be to rescind any agreement with Iran that legitimizes their quest to get a nuclear weapon.
Now is the time for clear-sighted, proven leadership. We have seen what happens when we elect a president based on media acclaim rather than a record of accomplishment.
This will be a “show-me, don’t tell me” election, where voters look past the rhetoric to the real record.
The question of every candidate will be this one: when have you led? Leadership is not a speech on the senate floor, it’s not what you say, it’s what you do.
And we will not find the kind of leadership needed to revitalize the country by looking to the political class in Washington.
I have been tested. I have led the most successful state in America. I have dealt with crisis after crisis – from the disintegration of a space shuttle, to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike, to the crisis at the border, and the first diagnosis of Ebola in America.
I have brought together first responders, charities and people of faith to house and heal vulnerable citizens dealing with tragedy.
The spirit of compassion demonstrated by Texans is alive all across America today. While we have experienced a deficit in leadership, among the American People there is a surplus of spirit.
And among our great people, there is a spirit of selflessness – that we live to make the world better for our children, and not just ourselves.
It was said that when King George the Third asked what General Washington would do upon winning the war, he was told he would return to his farm and relinquish power. To that, the monarch replied, if he did that, he would be the greatest man of his age.
George Washington lived in the service of a cause greater than self.
If anyone is wondering if America still possesses the character of selfless heroes, I am here to say, “Yes, I am surrounded by such heroes.”
They are of different generations, but they are woven together by the same thread of selfless sacrifice.
They are heroes like Medal of Honor Recipient Mike Thornton, who survived an ambush by enemy forces in Vietnam, and made it back to the safety of a water rescue, only to find out a fellow team member had been left behind, presumed dead.
He didn’t leave though, he returned through enemy fire and retrieved Lieutenant Norris who was still alive – and then swam for two hours keeping his wounded teammate afloat until they were rescued.
Heroes like Marcus Luttrell, who survived a savage attack on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan, losing his three teammates and 16 fellow warriors shot down trying to rescue him.
He is not just the lone survivor, to Anita and me he is a second son.
And Taya Kyle, who suffered the deep loss of her husband Chris, an American hero. When I think of Taya Kyle, I think of a brave woman who carries not just the lofty burden of Chris’ legacy, but the grief of every family who has lost a loved one to the great tragedy of war, or its difficult aftermath. Anita and I want to thank her for her tremendous courage.
America is an extraordinary country. Our greatness lies not in our government, but in our people.
Each day Americans demonstrate tremendous courage. But many of those Americans have been knocked down and are looking for a second chance.
Let's give them that chance. Let’s give them real leadership. Let’s give them a future greater than the greatest days of our past.
Let’s give them a president who leads us in the direction of our highest hopes, our best dreams and our greatest promise.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Source: Rick Perry for President 2016 Website
Governor Perry’s Remarks to the Eagle Forum
September 11th, 2015
Thank you. It is such an honor to speak to the patriots of Eagle Forum. In case you didn’t know, we have a pretty vibrant chapter in Texas. They have long lived up to the standard set by your outstanding founder, whom I am proud to recognize today, Phyllis Schlafly.
I also want to say a word about the gentleman who is taking over for Phyllis. Ed Martin is a good man – a great leader – a movement conservative who leads by conviction. I am glad to be in his home state of Missouri.
46 years ago I spent a summer in Festus, Missouri. I went door to door, selling Bibles. It was then that I learned what it was like to remain optimistic in the face of rejection, especially when I knew the power of the message I was selling.
It was good preparation for life in politics.
For me, this life has been a dream.
I came from a place called Paint Creek. Too small to be called a town, too remote to be found on a map, it was the center of my universe.
We had an outhouse, and mom bathed us in a number two washtub on the porch. We farmed vast fields of cotton, and attended the Paint Creek Rural School. I was a six-man football player, a proud member of Boy Scout Troop 48, and an Eagle Scout.
I experienced the bonds of family, the power of community, the meaning of faith. And I learned the high calling we have as Americans to protect freedom.
It was for freedom that I wore the uniform of the United States Air Force. I flew C-130 aircraft all across the globe. I lived in places like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. I learned how special it is to be an American.
Later I would become a state representative, ag commissioner, lieutenant governor, and eventually governor of the world’s 12th largest economy.
I would truly live the motto of the Paint Creek Rural School: “no dream to tall for a school so small.”
I continue to draw inspiration from a trip I took with my father fifteen years ago.
Dad and I went back to his old air base in England for his first visit in 55 years. Then we crossed the channel and visited the American cemetery that overlooks the bluffs at Omaha beach. That flight across the channel he had taken 35 times previously, as a tailgunner on a B-17.
On that peaceful, wind-swept setting, there lie 9,000 graves, including 45 pairs of brothers, 33 of whom are buried side by side, a father and a son, two sons of a president. They all traded their future for ours in a final act of loving sacrifice.
In that American Cemetery, it is no accident each headstone faces west: west over the Atlantic, towards the nation they defended, the nation they loved, the nation they would never come home to.
It struck me as I stood in the midst of those heroes that they look upon us in silent judgment. And that we must ask ourselves: are we worthy of their sacrifice?
The truth is we are at the end of an era of failed leadership.
We have been led by a divider who has sliced and diced the electorate, pitting American against American for political purposes. We are a country more divided by race, income, religion and party than when he entered office.
His lofty words were no match for the reality of the world.
How long ago it seems now the speeches before fawning millions in Europe, in front of Roman columns in Denver. We were told America needed to improve its reputation abroad. Now we are neither liked nor respected.
That’s what happens when a president governs based on popular acclamation, instead of based on enduring American values.
We have isolated our allies, and emboldened our adversaries.
ISIS has ripped a swath through the Middle East as large as Great Britain. It could have been prevented. But a naïve campaign promise took priority over stability, and even the blood shed by American heroes. Today, the president remains in denial about the weakness that led to their emergence, and even the nature of the threat. With political correctness expected of a Harvard professor, he refuses to admit we are at war with radical Islam. Mr. President, we are at war with radical Islam.
Naïve policies gave us the Iranian nuclear deal – an agreement that fuels Iran’s nuclear ambitions rather than prohibiting them. A president who boldly claimed it was his goal to rid the world of nuclear weapons will have a legacy of nuclear proliferation. All because he places his trust in a regime that is the leading sponsor of state terrorism, in the word of radicals, in inspections that can be easily manipulated.
My friends, this is not the America I know.
Neither is a domestic economy that settles for two percent growth, and neither is a president who ignores the Constitution and issues executive orders to make law.
Washington needs to return to doing its constitutional duty: standing up a strong military, implementing foreign policy from a policy of strength, not weakness, and securing the border with Mexico. And they need to get out of the education business, get out of the healthcare business, and stop utilizing EPA zealots to shut down small business.
Washington is not the fount of all wisdom. The best ideas come from the states.
Liberal Justice Lewis Brandeis once said, “that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”
Each state should chart its own course, whether it is Governor Haley fighting the unions to bring Boeing and Michelin to South Carolina, or Bobby Jindal standing up for school choice. I support the right of states to be wrong, like Colorado legalizing pot. I would rather one state get it wrong than the whole country.
Today Washington has discarded the Tenth Amendment, centralizing power while failing to meet the test of leadership.
Our present-day leaders would have us settle for low expectations, low growth, record numbers out of the workforce. To them, two percent growth is the new norm. They want us to embrace their vision of mediocrity. I, for one, will not.
As Americans we have the power to make the world new again.
But let me issue a couple warnings. First, the answer to a president nominated for soaring rhetoric and no record is not to nominate a candidate whose rhetoric speaks louder than his record. It is not to replicate the Democrat model of selecting a president, falling for the cult of personality over durable life qualities.
Only in Washington do they define fighting as filibustering, leading as debating.
Where I come from, talk is cheap. And leadership is not what you say, but what you do.
Missouri is the “show me state”, and this must be a “show me, don’t tell me” election, where we get beyond the rhetoric to the record to see who has been tested, who has led and who can be expected to stand in the face of fire.
And for the record, if a candidate can’t take tough questions from a reporter, how will they deal with the president of Russia, the leaders of China or the fanatics in Iran?
My second warning is this: we cannot indulge nativist appeals that divide the nation further. The answer to our current divider-in-chief is not to elect a Republican divider-in-chief.
Conservatism is inherently optimistic. It celebrates the power of the individual, it believes in free markets over state-controlled solutions. It knows free individuals can govern their own lives better than centralized government.
Progressives think we need to protect the people from themselves. Conservatives think we need to protect the people from government.
We have had too much government – too many government answers, too much government meddling – all at the expense of individual freedom.
We need to get back to the central constitutional principle that, in America it is the content of your character that matters, not the color of your skin – that it doesn’t matter where you come from, but where you are going. In an America blind to color, that champions the individual, that recognizes merit, there is no room for debate that denigrates certain people based on their heritage or origin.
We can secure the border and reform our immigration system without inflammatory rhetoric, without base appeals that divide us based on race, culture and creed.
Let me be crystal clear: for those of us in Christ, our citizenship is first and foremost in God’s kingdom, our brothers and sisters are those made in the image of God, and our obligation – after loving God with all our heart, mind and soul – is to love our neighbors as ourselves, regardless of where they come from.
Demeaning people of Hispanic heritage is not just ignorant, it betrays the example of Christ. We can enforce our laws and our borders, and we can love all who live within our borders, without betraying our values.
It is time to elevate our debate from divisive name-calling, from soundbites without solutions, and start discussing how we will make the country better for all if a conservative is elected president.
And let me say, I know something about enacting conservative principles. We have done it in Texas.
During my 14 years as governor, Texas created nearly one-third of all new American jobs. We passed balanced budgets, cut taxes, set aside billions of dollars for a rainy day, and elevated our graduation rates to second highest in the nation.
We did this based on conservative principles: Don’t tax too much, don’t spend all the money, invest in an educated workforce, and stop frivolous lawsuits at the courthouse.
It can be done, all across America, with the right leadership.
2016 is the most important election of our lifetime. I know we say this every election, but this time it is actually true. It is true because we have had six and a half years of an expanding welfare state, and a contracting freedom state.
There are two visions for America: the government-run welfare state of Washington, New York and California, and the limited government freedom state pioneered in places like Texas.
The centralized state offers more regulations, and less freedom. A world where everything costs more, from college tuition, to the cost of housing, to the price of government.
Their answer to our current economic mess is more government solutions, more tax dollars placed in the hands of bureaucrats, more redistribution schemes, and a shrinking pie for the middle class.
As Margaret Thatcher once said, “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right nominee, we can cut taxes on corporations and individuals, unleash growth, create jobs, and lift wages. We can create opportunity by drilling for American energy and selling it around the world.
We can restore our reputation abroad by reasserting our moral authority, by standing with allies like Israel, and standing up to adversaries like Iran.
We can be the America we know in our hearts we are meant to be – a nation of ideas and innovations, a place where freedom flourishes, that special land that the heroes of Normandy died to defend.
Conservative principles applied consistently will make life better for all, but especially minority Americans. More African-Americans are living in poverty since President Obama took office. That’s because he offers them government programs, instead of creating new incentives for people to work.
We can improve life for minority Americans. The formula is simple: stop politically correct regulation policies that make housing so expensive for single moms, let low and middle-income Americans keep more of what they make, challenge all kids to exceed in school.
We did that in Texas, and now we have the highest graduation rate for minority students.
For me, the message has always been greater than the man. The conservative movement has always been about principles, not personalities. Our nominee should embody those principles. He – or she – must make the case for the cause of conservatism more than the cause of their own celebrity.
I still believe in the power of that message – a message that offers hope, redemption and solace in the midst of storms.
When I gave my life to Christ, I said, “your ways are greater than my ways. Your will superior to mine.”
Today I submit that His will remains a mystery, but some things have become clear.
That is why today I am suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States.
We have a tremendous field – the best in a generation – so I step aside knowing our party is in good hands, and as long as we listen to the grassroots, the cause of conservatism will be too.
I share this news with no regrets. It has been a privilege and an honor to travel this country, to speak with the American people about their hopes and dreams, to see a sense of optimism prevalent despite a season of cynical politics.
And as I approach the next chapter in life, I do so with the love of my life by my side, Anita Perry. We have our house in the country, we have two beautiful children and two adorable grandchildren, four dogs, and the best sunset from our front porch that you could ever imagine.
Life is good. And I am a blessed man.
I remain as convinced as ever: there is nothing wrong with America today that cannot be fixed with new leadership. Leadership that champions conservative ideas.
As great as our greatest Republican presidents were – from Lincoln to Reagan – it is their ideas that remain greatest.
Those ideas live on through the spirit, idealism and optimism of this generation of Americans.
We must return to great ideas, to our belief in the power of free individuals, free markets, and free Americans standing watch for liberty wherever it is threated.
This is up to us. It is up to you. And to me. Let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s get to work. Let’s make America, America again.
Thank you. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.
Source: Rick Perry for President 2016 Website