Perry interesting

I horrified my coastal friends a few days ago with suggestions that when Texas Gov. Rick Perry “invited the country’s other 49 governors and evangelical leaders for a ‘non-political’ event to pray for the nation,” he was really, by the analysis of the Houston Chronicle‘s Austin bureau, taking a step toward a Perry campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Now let me horrify again, first with an example of lame journalism, courtesy of some guy named Alex Alvarez over at Mediaite.com, who basically just copied my Perry prayer event post and misidentified me as the editor of Miller-McCune, a job I left more than a month ago, to national publicity. Then I will horrify with the real stuff: a Wall Street Journal piece by Neil King Jr. that confirms Perry is at least considering a presidential run, which marks a 180 degree flip from his position just a few months ago. Here’s the takeaway from King’s piece:

For months, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has told potential donors and Republican higher-ups he has no interest in running for the White House in 2012. But over the past two weeks, political advisers and friends say, Mr. Perry has changed his tune on a possible presidential campaign. In privateconversations, they say, the three-term governor said he worries that the current GOP contenders have yet to stir real excitement within the party and may struggle when facing President Barack Obama.”He thinks there is a void [in the current field of candidates], and that he might be uniquely positioned to fill that void,” said one Perry confidant who talked to the governor last week.

Yes, the WSJ piece uses some unidentified sources, but it’s pretty clear they’re people who actually are familiar with Perry’s thinking. And at least they’re not misidentified sources.