Rick Perry begins with a bang

Texas Gov. Rick Perry became a GOP presidential candidate today. And he did it with a bang. His stem-winder speech to a group of conservatives in South Carolina took the air out of the Iowa straw poll and, it seems to me, swept away the lesser known candidates in the GOP primary.

He's got some kind of mojo from the stump that allows him to "splain" things in a way that I suspect will resonate with the common folk. If he can now withstand questioning from the likes of Katie Couric, he might be the GOP's guy.