“I’m not ready to tell you that I’m ready to announce that I’m in,” Gov. Rick Perry told The Des Moines Register. “But I’m getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do. This is what America needs.”…

“I’ll be real honest with you, I don’t wake up in the morning – never did and still don’t today – and say, ‘Gee, I want to be president of the United States,’ ” Perry, 51, said by phone last week…

“I think he will push Sarah Palin and (Michele) Bachmann down the stairs so hard and so fast that he will emerge in the next three to four months as the darling of the fundamentalist religious right,” said Texas Rep. Lon Burnam, a Democrat and Perry critic…

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad says he think it’s very likely that Texas Gov. Rick Perry will jump into the Republican presidential race.
Branstad is basing that opinion on a conversation the two governors had Friday.