Manchester, N.H. — Rick Perry got a second shot at answering the question that derailed his 2012 presidential campaign Monday night.
Speaking at a candidate forum here at St. Anselm’s College, Perry was asked: “Specifically, what agencies would you either eliminate or cut?”
“I’ve heard this question before,” Perry cracked, to laughter.
He has indeed. The question infamously stumped him in a debate in 2011, when he listed two agencies and then appeared to forget the third. The “oops” that followed did as much as anything else to sink his White House bid that cycle.
This time, Perry did not lose track of his thoughts halfway through his answer.
. . . We have to cut spending. And I know a little bit about cutting spending. We had a $10 million budget shortfall in my state in 2003, and we went in there and we made those cuts . . . We cut that $10 million out of our budget, we cut our regulatory climate down, we made it fair, we made it predictable, and the result of that was health care that exploded across the state of Texas. And we had the access to health care. And two years later [when] we went into session . . . we had [an] $8 million budget surplus. That’s what you can do in this country. I believe in this country.
But he did not mention a single government agency, either.
— Alexis Levinson is a senior political reporter for National Review.