Perry makes faith-based pitch to voters in South Carolina

Rick Perry returned to the presidential campaign trail on Sunday with a fire-and-brimstone rallying cry to evangelical Christians whose allegiance in the South Carolina primary will be a pivotal force in the Republican nomination race.

Opening a two-week tour across the state where he launched his campaign in August and now hopes to revive it, the Texas governor invoked his Christian faith throughout his remarks to supporters at a diner in Spartenburg, a bastion of religious conservatives in upstate South Carolina.

Faith in Jesus Christ, Perry told the Beacon diner crowd, was part of what led him to resume the campaign after he was trounced in the Iowa caucuses.

“When you find that peace from God, you stop worrying about what the critics say,” Perry said.

Perry, who has also stressed faith and values in his TV advertising in South Carolina, described the state as “under assault” by the Obama administration. He cited Justice Department moves against its immigration and voter identification laws, as well as the National Labor Relations Board’s recently dropped complaint against Boeing for allegedly retaliating against union workers in Seattle by putting a nonunion production line in South Carolina.

“South Carolina, they’re going to war with y’all,” Perry said.

Perry also adapted his Washington-outsider message to appeal to the religious conservatives who will dominate South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary, saying he would take a “sledgehammer” to the nation’s insular ways.

“I got all the people that love me that I need –- her, Jesus and my family,” Perry said, gesturing toward his wife, Anita.

Polls have found South Carolina’s conservative Christians split among multiple candidates in the Republican presidential field, a dynamic that is likely to favor front-runner Mitt Romney. In his opening bid to secure their support, Perry leaned heavily on religion as he described growing up as the son of dry-land cotton farmers in Paint Creek, Texas.

“My family didn’t look to the government to have all of the answers,” he said. “We prayed to our creator, and we looked to one another.”

“Faith,” he continued, “has been central to my life, whether it was walking down the aisle at 14 years of age to give my heart to Jesus Christ, or whether it was, as a young man, to surrender my will to him, dealing with the trials and tribulations that a young twenty-something-year-old was going through.”

Perry also struck defiant notes to swat back at those who suggest he has no chance to recover from early gaffes that caused his standing in public opinion polls to plummet.

“I have never quit in the face of adversity,” he told the crowd. “I am going to stay in this race and stay in this fight.”

From the Beacon, where Perry was served a large pile of onion rings and french fries that he declined to eat, Perry went to afternoon services at the Hampton Park Baptist Church in Greenville.

Perry avoided direct criticism of his opponents at the Beacon stop, apart from a remark about disapproving of Romney’s record as governor of Massachusetts. But his senior South Carolina advisor, Katon Dawson, signaled an aggressive approach ahead, saying, “We’re getting ready to rumble.”