The Take: Is Perry built for a general election?

By Dan Balz,
WashPost
Published: August 16

DUBUQUE, IOWA — It has become clear, only a few days into Rick Perry’s presidential campaign, that the Texas governor’s biggest challenge could come in trying to win the Republican nomination without defining himself out of the general election.

Perry was dealing with a controversy of his own making on Tuesday after saying the previous night that he would regard another round of “quantitative easing” of the money supply as a politically motivated, “treasonous” act by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

Back on the trail in Iowa on Tuesday, Perry appeared less eager to answer questions from reporters, but he refused to back down from the controversy that had erupted. “I’m just passionate about the issue, and we stand by what we said,” he told two reporters as he left a luncheon in Dubuque.

Asked about the Fed in Cedar Rapids on Monday night, Perry said of Bernanke: “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.”

(More here.)