Texas Governor Rick Perry has quickly become the front-runner in the Republican presidential field, so it’s time to catch up on his campaign in Iowa and around the country.

Samples from the governor’s rhetoric and policy statements are below, along with recent poll numbers and some Texas-sized chutzpah from Perry’s latest Iowa speech.

Perry started putting together an Iowa organization immediately after the Ames straw poll. Last week the campaign announced its top hires. Matt Gronewald is state director, having quit as the Republican Party of Iowa’s deputy executive director to take the job. Bob Haus, who produced the straw poll, is chairing the Perry campaign in Iowa, and his wife Ruth Haus is a senior campaign consultant.

Perry’s message to Iowa Republicans is straightforward. I picked up a small piece of his campaign literature, about the size of a door-hanger, at the Iowa GOP’s booth during the Iowa State Fair. Excerpt:

AMERICA’S JOBS GOVERNOR

Governor Perry’s Texas is America’s jobs creator. Since June 2009, Texas has added more than 40 percent of the net new jobs in America. It’s no accident. Rick Perry has controlled state spending, cut taxes and championed lawsuit reforms. Perry is not just a proven fiscal conservative, he’s a proud conservative to the core:

In Rick Perry’s tenure as governor, Texas has GAINED OVER 1 MILLION JOBS while the rest of the nation list 2.5 million jobs.

Passed “loser pays” and medical lawsuit reforms to STOP FRIVOLOUS LAWSUITS and bring thousands of doctors to the state.

Signed a law REQUIRING A PHOTO ID TO VOTE to protect the integrity of elections.

Successfully fought to put strong PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS PROTECTIONS on the ballot.

PROTECTED UNBORN CHILDREN through passage of parental consent and sonogram legislation and championed a state constitutional amendment DEFENDING TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE.

CONSERVATIVE ROOTS GROUNDED IN HEARTLAND SOIL

Rick Perry comes from humble beginnings, the son of tenatn farmers. In the early years his family had no indoor plumbing and his mother even hand-sewed his clothes. Growing dryland cotton and West Texas wheat taught him the meaning of hard work and sacrifice.

As a young man, Perry earned the rank of Eagle Scout and played 6-man football while attending the Paint Creek Rural School. After college, Perry volunteered for the U.S. Air Force, becoming a C-130 pilot flying missions around the world. He then returned home and married his high school sweetheart, Anita. The Perrys have two grown children, son, Griffin and daughter, Sydney.

Join Team Perry   RickPerry.org/Support

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty made a big deal out of being the presidential candidate who wasn’t afraid to tell audiences supposedly unpopular truths. He needn’t have bothered. Full-on pandering, evading questions where necessary, is working fine for Perry.

Audiences who came to see the Texas governor in Iowa this past weekend heard “hard truths” like Iowa’s farmers are doing wonderfully, and if you want the status quo, I’m not your guy. After attending a big Polk County GOP event on August 27, Former State Senator Jeff Angelo wrote about why Perry is a superior candidate to fellow Texan Ron Paul:

When Paul was introduced, people clapped politely and continue to chat through their dinner. When Perry was introduced, people gave him a standing ovation.

Paul’s speech was generic. Perry referenced a John Deere tractor parked nearby as similar to the tractor on which he was taught to drive. He referenced the Iowa State Fair and made specific references to the Iowa economy.

When Perry was done, people surrounded him trying to get a picture as the night’s emcee struggled to regain the attention of the audience.

Following the event, activists repeatedly spoke of Perry’s ability to connect with the audience.

Talking about a tractor and the Iowa State Fair sounds “generic” to me, but by all accounts the audience ate up what Perry was serving. And give credit to the Texan: as he did in Waterloo a couple of weeks ago, Perry worked the room hard, speaking and shaking hands with many activists. It was bad luck for Representative Thad McCotter, who had to follow Perry’s speech. He struggled to keep the crowd’s attention as people gravitated toward Perry.

Shane Vander Hart posted videos of the Paul, Perry and McCotter speeches from the Polk County GOP event. I was most interested in this part:

He said one in eight Iowans are on food stamps. He also said Iowa has lost 12,100 jobs since Obama’s stimulus package was approved in February 2009.

“That is a testament to the widespread misery created by this administration,” Perry told the crowd as they drank beer and ate cheeseburgers, hot dogs, baked beans, chips and cookies. “That the state known for feeding the world has so many residents dependent on government just to pay for their food.”

In contrast, Perry touted that Texas, where he serves as governor, is responsible for 40 percent of all jobs created in America since June 2009. He said Texas created 1 million jobs since he became governor in December 2000, while the rest of the country lost 2.5 million jobs.

Perry’s right, approximately 12.5 percent of Iowa residents receive food stamp assistance. He didn’t mention that nearly 16 percent of the Texas population is on food stamps, or that his state enrolls a far lower percentage of its eligible residents than Iowa does. In fact, Texas has “the worst performing food stamp program in the nation”:

Texas does not have enough workers to process food stamp applications and is one of only three states that fingerprints applicants for food assistance. The state also imposes a time-consuming and complicated assets test that impedes the effort to help desperate and hungry people, [U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary Kevin] Concannon said. […]

The government provided Texans with about $4 billon in food assistance last year, but the state only enrolls 55 percent of those eligible to receive it, based on census income data. The average among the 50 states is 66 percent.

About 3.1 million Texans qualified for food stamps last month, including 387,764 in Harris County. It would take another 600,000 people to meet the national average enrollment rate, Concannon said.

“This is a proven way to get food into the hands of hungry people. It also would have an impact on the state economy,” he said.

Perry talks a lot about his so-called jobs miracle, but the state’s high poverty rate and pathetic delivery of services to the needy tell a different story. It takes chutzpah to bring up food stamps for an applause line when his state administers the program so poorly.

Thing is, Republican caucus-goers and primary voters would probably admire Perry more if they knew that his state leaves so many eligible residents out of the food stamp program. During his speech to Polk County GOP activists, Perry suggested that the whole food stamp program is wrong-headed:

He focused mostly on economic issues, ripping President Obama’s policies while boasting of the successes in Texas.  Perry also landed a well-placed jab at former Iowa governor and current Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.  “He recently referred to food stamps as an economic stimulus,” Perry said as the crowd booed.  “Food stamps are not the solution.  They are a symptom of the problem that too many people are without work.  Food stamps don’t stimulate the economy.  They stimulate government dependence.”

Guess again, governor. Food stamps are the most stimulative form of government spending, because recipients spend that extra disposable income almost immediately. The USDA estimated that Texas grocery stores lose nearly $1 billion a year in sales because of the state’s low food stamp enrollment rate.

Perry didn’t talk much about foreign policy in Iowa, but he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars annual convention in San Antonio on August 29. His speech contained some lines that I think will play well with Republican audiences:

“It’s not our interest to go it alone. We respect our allies and we must always seek to engage them in military missions. But at the same time, we must be willing to act when it is time to act. We cannot concede the moral authority of our nation to multilateral debating societies, and when our interests are threatened American soldiers should be led by American commanders.”

Perry did not elaborate on what kinds of world bodies he was referring to, but the Obama administration has backed NATO-led airstrikes in Libya.

The Libya operation is being run by a Canadian general from a NATO headquarters in Italy, but an American officer is the top NATO commander – and always has been.

The war in Afghanistan is also led by NATO, though overseeing it on a day-to-day basis is a U.S. Marine general who answers to the NATO commander and to a separate U.S. chain of command.

Some advisers to George W. Bush, like Karl Rove, have made a public show of criticizing Perry. However, behind the scenes Perry has been seeking advice from Bush administration officials on military and foreign policy. Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped organize at least one of these briefings. Expect Perry to keep his Bush contacts behind the curtain as much as possible.

Perry has to be thrilled with the latest poll numbers. A few days after Public Policy Polling found Perry leading among Iowa Republicans, a different Iowa poll commissioned by a pro-Perry PAC also found Perry slightly ahead of Representative Michele Bachmann and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Several nationwide polls taken this month have found Perry leading among Republicans, and he’s ahead in the latest South Carolina survey.

Maybe Perry’s just in a “honeymoon” phase, but he is well-positioned to defend his lead, because his campaign and its super-PAC allies will have more money than God to spend during the primaries. Romney still leads among New Hampshire Republicans, but he needs to cut into Perry’s support elsewhere. I suspect Romney will hit the panic button sooner rather than later. Marc Thiessen reported on the likely avenues of attack:

Romney strategists are quick to note that in his book, “Fed Up!,” Perry writes that “By any measure, Social Security is a failure” and calls the program “something we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now” that was created “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

Look at what happened to Paul Ryan when he proposed a plan to save Medicare, they say. Romney’s campaign will argue that Perry is against the very idea of Social Security and Medicare, and that he will use Perry’s book to scare seniors in early-primary states with large retiree populations, such as Florida and South Carolina.

The Romney campaign also plans to use immigration to drive a wedge between Perry and his conservative base, by highlighting Perry’s opposition to a border fence and legislation he signed in 2001 allowing the children of illegal immigrants to attend Texas colleges and universities at in-state tuition. Without mentioning Perry by name, Romney pointed out at a town hall here in Dover that he vetoed similar legislation as governor of Massachusetts, declaring, “If you say, guess what, if you come here illegally, your kids will get [in-state tuition], that draws more people here illegally.” Romney strategists believe the immigration issue will be devastating for Perry with Tea Party Republicans across the country – and especially in important primary states like Arizona.

While in Iowa over the weekend, Perry said he stood behind his book and described Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.” I doubt that will hurt him with Republican voters. Ron Paul has said Perry doesn’t deserve credit for jobs created in Texas, which is true, but that line will probably fall flat.

Rivals looking for ammunition against Perry face a few obstacles. It’s hard to piece together how he spends his time, because he lists few events on his schedule and has official e-mails deleted quickly.

The governor who considers himself one of the state’s hardest workers has few official records to back up that claim – especially compared to the detailed schedules kept by his fellow big-state governors, which were obtained by The Texas Tribune through open records requests. […]

Perry’s office maintains a policy of deleting its e-mails every seven days, a shorter retention period than almost all other state agencies and major cities. It also allows staffers to decide which e-mails involve state business and thus must be retained, leaving open the possibility that individual employees who aren’t well-versed in the law are innocently but irrevocably destroying public records. Perry’s aides have defended the retention policy by saying it simply follows that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. But the destruction of documents can make it difficult, if not impossible, to piece together what happens inside the governor’s office. In 2007, for example, reporters were unable to determine what Perry knew about systematic abuse inside juvenile jails, and when he might have known it, because his office deleted e-mails long before the scandal broke.

“The fact that there are so few records regarding his schedule is related to the deletion of emails,” says Houston attorney and longtime open-government champion Joe Larsen, who has formally complained about the e-mail policy to the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, which has jurisdiction over ethics matters involving state officials. “It reduces the amount of information that’s available to the people of Texas. If it’s a decision to minimize records of his activiity, what that means in the end is that people just don’t know what he’s doing – and people need to know what the governor’s doing.” […]

Earlier this year, Perry’s office was found to be ignoring state law that requires all state agencies to be “accountable and transparent” by posting their stimulus spending reports on their websites.

Good luck digging up dirt on how much Texas taxpayer money Perry is using for his presidential campaign:

Since Rick Perry joined the presidential race this month, his campaign entourage has included not just the standard array of political advisers and aides, but a squad of Texas law enforcement agents.

The security forces scout and secure locations days in advance. Well before the governor’s visit to Tommy’s Country Ham House in Greenville, S.C., the weekend of Aug. 20, more than a half-dozen suited and armed agents were giving orders to the crowd of more than 400.

How much is this ever-present phalanx of state policemen costing the taxpayers of Texas? They won’t know at least until after next year’s presidential election, thanks to a provision, tucked into a school finance bill in July, that will keep the governor’s travel records sealed for 18 months.

Although security around public officials has been tightened considerably since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the secrecy that surrounds Perry’s travels is unique, according to Ken Bunting, executive director of the Missouri-based National Freedom of Information Coalition.

And the governor’s critics contend that it has as much to do with politics as safety – especially after the embarrassment for Perry when taxpayers learned that they had been paying for scuba gear and golf cart rentals for officers who accompanied Perry and his wife to the Bahamas in 2004.

The other Republican presidential candidates won’t have as much money to spend or GOP establishment support as Perry. The only thing they have going for them is a head start on campaigning. But oddly, several Republican candidates appear to have lost their hustle since the Ames straw poll. Vander Hart reported that the Bachmann and Herman Cain campaigns didn’t even send staff to the Polk County GOP’s big fundraiser over the weekend. Kevin Hall and Craig Robinson from The Iowa Republican blog found little to no activity last week at the Bachmann, Cain and Paul headquarters in the Des Moines suburbs. The leading Democratic campaign offices in Iowa were buzzing during the late summer of 2007. There’s no excuse for Republican staffers not to be working hard every day.

Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread.