of south carolina. plus south carolina's powerful evangelical voting bloc. who will win the lion's share with reverend brad adkins and bob jones iii. >> everything is up for grabs in my estimation. >> i'm candy crowley. and this is "state of the union." over 100 leaders in the social conservative community met in texas for two days and emerged with a single name, rick santorum for president. it is a blow to texas governor rick perry, a born again christian whose political grounding is fiscal and social conservatism. tony perkins, head of the family research council and a major player at the meeting, says perry checks all the boxes except one. the group doesn't think he can win. >> what they wanted to do is to make sure that the candidate that had the best chance of going forward, securing the nomination, and winning the general election was the candidate they put their support behind. >> governor rick perry joins me now from myrtle beach, south carolina, where you're telling me the weather is great. one thing that's going well for you. i want to talk to you, though, about these social conservatives, evangelicals, christian conservatives meeting in texas and deciding their consensus candidate is rick santorum. what's your reaction to that, governor? >> well, obviously, you'd like to get every endorsement of the groups that are in line with your beliefs, but you're not going to do that. so our focus is on the people of south carolina. this morning we're going to be talking to a host of social conservatives. so we'll be reaching out directly to the south carolina voters and sharing with them our story of being -- when you look at the record, i'm the most consistent of social and fiscal conservative in this race. if you're looking at just one part of that scenario, then you may go with somebody else. but if you're looking for the full package of job creating social conservative who's had 11 years of executive experience running the 13th largest economy in the world, then south carolinians are going to be pretty happy with us. >> governor, they didn't actually disagree with you at that meeting in texas. in fact, tony perkins, as you know, the family research council came out and told reporters on the phone and later, listen, he marks all the boxes in terms of social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, but they just don't think you can win. that seems to me to be quite a blow. >> that's the same thing they said about ronald reagan in 1980 f you'll recall. they said he couldn't win, and then he came down to south carolina and won that state because his values were more in line with the south carolina voters. so saturday, the 21st, we'll know. and at that particular point in time, we'll find out who was right. >> what do you think the impact will be? do you expect it to be a big boost for rick santorum's campaign or a big negative for mitt romney? how do you think this will affect south carolina? >> again, we'll just have to see how this plays out. south carolina has pretty independent voters, and there's a lot going back and forth. you can't hardly turn on a tv here without seeing an ad that is attacking rick santorum for his fiscal policy. it's going to be interesting with the economy like it is, and there are a lot of people who are social conservatives who realize they've got some choices in this race. but the economy of south carolina is suffering. they're almost at 10% unemployment. we were in georgetown yesterday where people are still very sensitive to the issue of jobs lost and what's gone on in that town through the years. so i think there is a very deep focus on who is it that can get this country back on track from the standpoint of economics. my record's pretty hard to argue with on that. >> you know, at some level, governor, this must have hurt, or did you just take it as, oh, it's only business? >> i've been in this business long enough to understand that you're not going to get everybody to love you, and you're not going to get everybody to support you. >> these are your folks. i guess that's what i'm saying. these are your people. >> the issue is i understand how this process works. it's not organizations that elect, it's the people. we're going directly to the people and sharing with them our story. so, again, if you're worried about getting your feelings hurt, you might not want to get in the business of politics to start with. >> that's for sure. let me move you on to some of the campaigning you've been doing down there. in particular, talking about mitt romney and his association with bain capital and what bain capital does. here's a little bit of what you campaigned on. >> i will suggest they're just vultures. they're vultures that are sitting out there on the tree limb waiting for the company to get sick, and then they swoop n in. they eat the carcass. they leave with that, and they leave the skeleton. >> governor, lots of things are said during primaries, as you know, that crop up, again, in the fall. schmitt romney become the republican nominee, are you comfortable with the fact that that quote is going to end up in an obama commercial? >> the issue is that which one is best prepared to lead the country for job creation? in my time as governor of texas, we created a climate where 1 million jobs have been created. we haven't been destructing businesses or destructing jobs. what we do is build jobs. >> i'm talking about the rhetoric here. this is -- you called him a vulture capitalist. it's the kind of thing that you know president obama, who i know you want defeated, is going to use should romney become the nominee. >> that issue's been out there for some time. as a matter of fact, stewart stevens, mitt's consultant, used those exact words against meg whitman in california. so this is not new terminology. the fact is, if this is a fatal flaw, we need to be talking about it now, not talking about it in september and october. >> so you don't think that this would hurt mitt romney in the fall? >> well, we'll see here in south carolina. the test is going to be in south carolina. georgetown, where we were yesterday, it is still a very sensitive issue that bain capital came in and they basically shut down that steel mill and left with a substantial amount of money, making management fees, and there were a lot of people out of work. the issue is not going to go away. it's not like we cracked an egg open here for the first time. this was something that the obama team certainly knew about. now's the time to talk about it, not september and october. >> governor perry, i'm going to ask you to stick with me. when we come back, we'll ask governor perry about his campaign plans after south carolina. is this recently released web ad a clue? 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[ female announcer ] discover what's next in your life. get this free travel bag when you join at aarp.org/jointoday. we're back with texas governor and republican presidential candidate rick perry. i want to pick up on that web ad. first of all, was that a concession that your decision after what was a less than perfect showing in iowa, to go back to texas and kind of think about whether you should stay in the race, is that web ad saying, i'm not going to quit, i'm not a quitter, is that a recognition that that was probably a mistake on your part to kind of signal that you were thinking about maybe thinking you would get out of the race? >> there are a lot of folks in south carolina that certainly took the message that night that we were going to go back to texas and reassess, and the phones lit up -- it was an easy call for me. i went out the next morning, had a run, and cleared my head. it's kind of like, you know what, there are way too many people in south carolina, medal of honor recipient general jim livingston and former navy s.e.a.l. mike thornton, also a medal of honor recipient, said, hey, listen, the folks of south carolina, they want to you come. they want to have that former air force pilot and veteran and chief of air forces and armies in texas to be in south carolina so we have a real option. so it made it pretty easy for me to say we're back in. >> does that mean that no matter what, rain or shine in south carolina, no matter how you do, you are in it for florida as well? >> that's our intention. >> so you're definitely -- you would definitely go to florida even if you placed last? >> that's our intention. >> you brought up your military background, which makes me want to just veer a little bit from politics and ask you a question about something that's in the news. the picture of these four marines urinating on the bodies of dead taliban members. if you were president perry, what would you do about that? >> well, obviously, 18, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often, and that's what's occurred here. when you're in war -- and history kind of backs up. there's a picture of general patton doing basically the same thing in the rhein river. although there's not a picture, churchill did the same thing on the sigfrid line. i'll tell you what's been really disturbing to me -- >> go ahead. finish that thought. >> what's really disturbing to me is the over the top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military, it appears. whether it's the secretary of state or whether it's the secretary of defense. i mean, these kids made a mistake. there's not any doubt about it. shouldn't have done it it. it's bad. but to call it a criminal act, i think, is over the top. >> here's the problem, i think. all the things that you mentioned as part of history was before youtube, it was before the taliban, it was before this feeling that the u.s. somehow does not respect religions. this is something that's not just a picture. it's not just a message to americans. it's a message that could hurt us in the larger world. so i'm not sure the exact age of them, but no matter what age they are, is this the kind of behavior that you think you can tolerate in the day and age when that picture is everywhere? >> well, here's the issue. i will suggest to you that these are 18, 19, 20-year-old kids. they make mistakes. there is video out there of all types of things, i will suggest to you. but the idea that this administration would go after these young people for a criminal act is, again, over the top. did they make a mistake? absolutely. should they be reprimanded and appropriately punished? yes. but going after them as a criminal act, i think really bad message. >> okay. thank you so much. governor rick perry. thank you for joining us this morning. we'll see new person in south carolina later this week. >> indeed. so long. after the break, the white house says they're not in campaign mode, but they've already honed in on one republican target. we'll tell you more after the break. they're all like, "hey, brother, doesn't it bother you that no one notices you?" and i'm like, "doesn't it bother you you're not reliable?" and they say, "shut up!" and i'm like, "you shut up." in business, it's all about reliability. 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[ male announcer ] stop the uh-oh fast with kaopectate. joining me here in washington, david axelrod, senior strategist for the obama re-election campaign. tempted to ask you if they dragged you back to washington from chicago. >> washington is a great place to visit. chicago is a wonderful place to live. >> let me bring you a very washington thing, and that is poll numbers. the latest cnn/orc poll, the question was who can best get the economy moving? who can get the economy moving? under obama, 40%. romney, 53%. you obviously think there's a disconnect here. where is it? >> i think that's what campaigns are for. we're going to have a big debate about our visions for the future. governor romney told some voter was sharing her economic concerns with him about her own life the other day. he said, you gave her a whole treatise on the economy and said, finish by saying, producti productivitity equals income. he misses the central issue of our time. it's not that americans aren't working hard enough. they're working harder than they've ever looked, and for the last decade, their income has been flat, really for several decades, and it's dropped in the last decade. that's the central issue of our time. how do we create an economy in which the middle class is growing, wages are growing, standards of living are not declining, but growing. that's what a successful economy looks like. he misses that point. we're going to have a big debate about how we achieve that kind of economy. it's not just about folks at the top doing well. it's about everybody having the opportunity to get ahead. >> couldn't that huge gap, which is a pretty big gap between those who think you can handle the economy as opposed to mitt romney, couldn't it also be that from the day -- from the month the president took office, we still have 1.7 million fewer jobs in the marketplace? >> candy, i'm happy to have that discussion. do you know that, when he was campaigning for president in 2007 and 2008, governor romney had nothing but praise for the economic policies that were in place at that time as america was sliding into the worst recession since the great depression after eight years in which we -- >> this is a fact -- >> after which we squandered $2 trillion surplus. the worst month that we've had of job loss was the month that this president took office from the last administration, and since that time, we've created 3 million private sector jobs. if you look at the chart, the chart's going like this. we've had 22 straight months of private sector job growth. we need to accelerate that. but the fact is governor romney praised the policies that got us into this mess. he wants to go back to those policies, and he assigns everything that's gone wrong in our economy to the president president, and he says everything that's gone right has nothing to do with him. >> let me talk a bit about bain capital, where mitt romney ran the company. >> i've heard that. >> it has been quite the rage subject on the campaign trail. one of the things that you all have said and tried to reiterate with some of his republican rivals are saying is, listen, this guy is a big corporate raider. he went in. he closed up companies, lost all these jobs. he was asked about this recently on cbs, and i want to tell you -- i want to play for our audience something he said. >> in the general election, i'll be pointing out that the president took the reins of general motors and chrysler, closed factories, closed dealerships, laid off thousands and thousands of workers. he did it to try to save the business. we also have had on occasion to do things that are tough to try and save a business. >> you've got to do things that are tough to try and save a business. does he have a point? >> let me point out there are 150,000 more people working in the auto industry because of what the president did. >> there are, but he did lay off people. >> if we had followed romney's prescription to let detroit go, he famously wrote an op ed, let detroit go bankrupt. if that had happened, we'd have lost 1.4 million jobs. the reason his work at bain is an issue is because governor romney has offered his business experience as his sole credential really for being president of the united states. so it behooves everybody to look at what that experience is. the truth is he closed 1,000 or more factories, stores, and offices. he outsourced tens of thousands of jobs. he took 12 -- just a second. he took 12 companies to bankruptcy on which he and his partners made hundreds of millions of dollars. >> but the point here is, i think, that doesn't he have a point by showing, look, the president had to say to gm, for instance, you've got to lose some of these jobs. they closed up dealerships. in order to make the company healthy and able to move on to then create more jobs, he had to cut jobs. >> first of all, the bankruptcies that i cited, the 12 bankruptcies were ones in which he participated, in which he and his partners made hundreds of millions of dollars. he is the one who is claiming job gains from companies after he and bain got out of them, years after he and bain got after them. i'm just assigning to him the things that he personally -- >> we're talking about a record that isn't there at the moment. >> that he is responsible for at the moment. in terms of closing -- saving an industry, as the president did, is different than strip mining companies in order to profit off of them, which is, in many cases, what mr. romney did. again, he's entitled to do that. that is -- that was his business practice. he's entitled to do that. nobody is begrudging him that. the question is is that the philosophy that you want in the white house? is that the economic vision for this country? outsourcing, offshoring, stripping down companies, lowering wages, lowering benefits. i don't think that's the future for this count