The Bible may describe God's eternal redemption of mortal souls in a more soaring spiritual fashion, but Rick Perry has a more, well, personal way to describe it. 

"Every one of us has ‘oops moments’ every day,” the Texas governor and former presidential candidate told his audience at an Austin breakfast to celebrate the National Day of Prayer. “America may not forgive you for it, but God will.”

According to the Associated Press, Perry's self-effacing joke -- referencing the infamous Nov. 9 debate when he was unable to remember the third of three federal agencies he would pledge to eliminate -- won laughter and applause from the crowd. 

The November gaffe proved fatal to Perry's already-struggling presidential campaign, despite his team's attempts to diffuse the moment with light-hearted humor and a frenzy of interviews explaining why he "stepped in it." 

Perry also took the occasion of the faith event this morning to pray for the current president, as he did at several prayer rallies during the campaign. 

He says he hopes that President Barack Obama will "truly understand God's will to protect innocent life. I pray for his true understanding of God's will for this country," he said, per the AP. 

Rick Perry's back, and doing his best Clint Eastwood impression.

"If it's halftime in America," he said, invoking the "Dirty Harry" actor's recent appearance in a controversial Chrysler ad during last weekend's Super Bowl --  "I'm fearful of what the final score is going to be if we let this president start the second half as quarterback."

In his second public appearance since dropping out of the presidential race, Perry quipped at today's conservative CPAC gathering that the clock ran out on his own presidential campaign as well.

"Aggies never lose," he said, referencing the mascot of his alma mater Texas A&M. "We just run out of time. So you can say that my presidential campaign just ran out of time. But I haven't run out on the ideas."

While he warned against settling for a new president would would simply "tinker" with existing policies, Perry did not mention any remaining GOP candidates by name.

That omission included Newt Gingrich, whom he endorsed when he dropped out of the race in North Charleston on Jan. 19. Perry also didn't mention the former House Speaker during a speech in Austin last week.

In warmly received remarks to the conservative confab Thursday, Perry revisited many of his rhetorical highlights from his campaign, including populist anti-corruption tones and a harsh critique of President Barack Obama's "war on religion."

The Texas governor won limited traction last year when he slammed the Obama administration for its clashes with Catholic bishops over federal funding, but the issue is now the subject of searing debate after the White House's controversial mandate for most employers to provide copay-free health coverage for birth control prescriptions.

Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA

Rick Perry waits to greet Iowans at the Santa Maria Vineyard and Winery in Carroll, Iowa, Jan. 2, 2012.

CHARLESTON, SC -- It was in a cramped Myrtle Beach coffee shop, just hours before the debate that would prove to be his last, when Rick Perry swallowed hard, looked at his wife Anita, and peered into his political future. 

"If I just had to walk away from all this," the governor said, his voice catching on a lump of exhaustion that seemed to have been growing in his throat for days, "If she was walking with me, it'd all be okay." 

To the focus group of mothers gathered in the room, the moment was a touching expression of the couple's love in the face of adversity. But longtime followers of Perry saw something else too: the first real glimmer of the undefeated Texan's understanding that his once-mighty presidential campaign was finally in the last ungraceful throes of its death. 

Two days later, Perry would be peering at the menu board at a Charleston-area Wendy's restaurant and telling top communications aide Ray Sullivan that he'd be ending his five month campaign in the morning.  The press conference was held in a nondescript airport hotel meeting room ... just 14 miles from where he launched his campaign in the glitzy Francis Marion ballroom.

"Now the journey leads us back to Texas," he declared after he suspended his campaign. "Neither discouraged nor disenchanted, but instead rewarded for the experience and resolute to remain in the arena and in the service of a great nation." 

Slideshow: A look at Gov. Rick Perry's political career

Mark Lambie / El Paso Times via AP

A look at the Texas governor's bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

Launch slideshow

In his farewell remarks, Perry thanked advisors Nelson Warfield and Mari Will -- both relative newcomers to his team after an October shakeup that resulted in a deep divide between the governor's old guard and fresh blood. 

Unnamed by the governor in his thank-yous to staff and key endorsers were de-facto campaign chief Joe Allbaugh, onetime manager Rob Johnson, and Perry's original political maestro and friend of 13 years, Dave Carney. 

***** 

Everything was going pretty much as planned until Orlando. 

A month after Perry swaggered into the GOP race, a steady stream of fundraisers (which filled up the candidate's schedule at the expense of fulfilling even a fraction of the interview requests that flooded in to Austin) meant that the campaign's war chest was in the same league as Mitt Romney's, the frontrunner in the campaign until that point.

Perry seemed to be aptly navigating away from the Bible-thumping caricature from opponents who snarked about his "calling from God" to run for president and his "praying for rain" in the face of devastating drought. Michele Bachmann's damaging attack over Perry's support for an HPV vaccine for young girls had been substantially blunted by her self-inflicted wound the next day when she overstated the side effects of the medication. 

But after Perry's indignant comment at a Sept. 22 debate that those who opposed offering in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants "don't have a heart," the ascendant governor's momentum was abruptly knocked off course by a lower-than-expected finish in the Presidency 5 straw poll. 

After the loss, spokesman Mark Miner grimly marched into the press area and spun the results as a loss for Romney, surprising reporters used to a cagey press operation that frequently ignored email requests for responses or interviews. But little more was done to mitigate the damage. A full six days later, during an interview with conservative web site Newsmax, Perry finally apologized for the "heartless" comment. 

The night of the P5 loss, Alec Baldwin lampooned Perry as sleepy and disoriented during the season premier of NBC's Saturday Night Live.

The Perry parody, which would go through several iterations before settling on "just plain dumb," was born. 

*****

In Orlando, Carney and Johnson met with former Dole aide Nelson Warfield, the strategist who would later be the chief advocate of a controversial television ad taking aim at gay soldiers. Carney brought on Warfield and Washington-based pollster Tony Fabrizio to augment a team swiftly recognizing the consequences of Perry's late entry into the presidential contest. 

"At the end of the day, this thing needed to have started two months before it did," said Perry's South Carolina chair Katon Dawson, who along with Carney and Johnson had defected from Gingrich's flagging campaign in June. 

At the urging of first lady Anita Perry, Texan strategist Joe Allbaugh also began to help advise the campaign. Allbaugh, George W. Bush's former campaign manager, was preceded by a reputation for steadiness, experience and no-nonsense discipline. 

With the arrival of new talent, a reboot appeared possible. The new team --  including Fabrizio, Warfield and media strategist Curt Anderson  -- instituted a rigorous interview and TV ad schedule for the candidate.

When Perry's utterance of "oops" during CNBC's Michigan debate forever entered the political lexicon on Nov. 7, the campaign responded with an unprecedented swiftness -- ushering the self-deprecating candidate to confront reporters in the debate spin room and scheduling light-hearted media appearances to blunt the damage.

But as Carney and Allbaugh's conflicting visions clashed, communication between the two camps disintegrated. Longtime Texas aides began to be cut out of major discussions. On at least one occasion, Allbaugh chose to meet with consultants at the Steven F. Austin hotel -- across the street from the campaign headquarters on Congress Avenue. 

As Perry publicly insisted to reporters that rumors of campaign manager Rob Johnson's demotion were "just scuttlebutt," the Arkansas native was being dispatched far away from the Austin headquarters to work in early campaign states. Carney was sequestered in New Hampshire. 

The famed "vault" -- the thick-walled box in the center of Perry HQ that had served as Carney and Johnson's office -- stood empty. 

Perry's poll numbers continued their decline, and some of the new class of consultants began to grumble to reporters about the after-effects of early disorganization on the part of Carney and his original team. Longtime Perry loyalists fumed at damaging leaks that went undisciplined by Allbaugh or by the candidate himself. 

"There was a misguided sense from the Washington consultants that the simple-minded Texans messed everything up and they were going to rise to the rescue," said Sullivan. "And it didn't work out that way."

The governor's performances continued to be uneven, with Perry alternating between energetically sharp and distractedly rambling even at consecutive campaign appearances. The staff was sometimes left wondering which version of their candidate would show up on a given day. 

And "oops" haunted him. While advisers later determined that the famed "brain freeze" might have been surmountable were it not for Perry's "heartless" debacle, the narrative cake -- unhelped by Perry's Bush-like drawl and his infirm grasp on issues outside his economic expertise as governor -- was already baked.  Errors big and small were amplified into "yet another oops." 

In New Hampshire, when Perry inaccurately pegged the voting age at 21, the moment launched hundreds of headlines. In Iowa, when Perry misspoke in naming "the country Solyndra" (which he'd correctly identified as a solar energy *company* at scores of campaign events before), observers questioned whether he was aware it was not in fact a sovereign nation.  In South Carolina, Sullivan and traveling spokesman Mark Miner bewilderedly fielded calls from reporters who read in an Los Angeles Times dispatch that Perry had mistaken a mannequin for a human person at a town hall. (He was joking.) 

Every bumble -- real or imagined -- had its cost. 

*****

If Perry's endorsement of Newt Gingrich last Thursday served as the funeral ceremony for his campaign, the wake came 16 days earlier when his fifth place finish in the Iowa caucuses appeared to snuff out the last flicker of his staff's hopes for salvaging their dreams of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. 

Early December polling indicated a fluid race in Iowa, where Perry had assembled a formidable team and "strike force" operation made up largely of Texas allies. Albeit often in small venues, the campaign still packed in Iowans willing to give Perry a "second look." His debate performances improved, and an unforced error from Romney offering Perry a bet of $10,000 during a Des Moines debate underscored Perry's populist message. 

In the days before launching his 44-stop bus tour in the state, the Texas governor painted the picture of a new man, blaming his early stumbles on pain resulting from his June back surgery, toppling months of denials from Perry's press staff that the operation had any impact on his performances. 

"Frankly I didn't know the impact it was having on me from the standpoint of just being fatigued and it showed up in the first few debates," he said on Sean Hannity's radio program on Jan. 13. "I have never felt better and I think you saw a glimpse of what you can expect out of me as we go forward in that last debate we had in Iowa." 

Again, hope glimmered, but not for long. 

Two weeks before the caucuses, influential conservatives at the Family Leader seemed on the verge of throwing their support behind Perry.

Senior staff in Iowa heard rumblings of the potentially game-changing endorsement from the group on the evening before the Dec. 20 press conference. But the group ultimately declined formal support of any candidate, and its chief members independently boosted Rick Santorum instead. 

Crowds shrunk. After the Christmas holiday, Perry took on Santorum's previous support for earmarks in his most direct negative ad yet, but the slam didn't seem to stick. 

On the morning of Dec. 31, an anonymously sourced story in POLITICO finally aired in spectacular fashion the grievances of the new class of Perry advisers, who eviscerated Carney and Johnson as inept in handling the media and unprepared for the immigration onslaught. 

The sting of the story -- particularly burning because of its publication days before the caucuses -- went uncontested by Austin, with the only voice in response being some tempered on-the-record pushback from Sullivan. (Carney, who was only briefly quoted, had long been detached from the campaign.) 

The Texans, concerned about derailing their famously micromanagement-averse boss with internal distractions, never confronted Perry about the story. Defeat was already all but written, in any case. 
They slogged on. 

After Perry announced that he would "reassess" his campaign after the disappointing caucus night finish three days later, Perry's top Texas aides walked out of the ballroom and into the bar at the West Des Moines Sheraton expecting a dropout press conference in Austin within 48 hours. 

As staffers and surrogates mingled until last call in the hotel's Waterfall Grille Restaurant & Lounge - and bartenders scurried into the bar's reserves for extra tequila for the Texans -- they spoke about the campaign in the past tense, and disdain for the Washington consultants flowed as readily as the drinks. (Allbaugh and others had long since retreated to their rooms.)

At one point, journalists still filing their stories in the lobby heard a cheer so deafening that a few sprinted to see what they assumed must be a guest appearance by the governor himself.

It wasn't Perry, but Johnson. Still beloved by the Austin footsoldiers, he offered a rousing speech to his exhausted and relieved team, sporting a navy blue Perry for President fleece -- a gift from the staff -- personalized with just one word: "Hefe." 

The next morning, he -- along with Miner and the rest of the press staff as well as the lead advance men who would be charged with orchestrating the South Carolina Alamo -- found out from the governor's Twitter account that the campaign wasn't over yet. 

****** 

The night of the Iowa loss, Perry gathered with family and his close advisers in a hotel suite to discuss his path forward.  
Backer and close family friend Capt. Dan Moran, a former Marine who suffered severe burns to over half his body after an IED attack in 2006, was in the room.

Evan Vucci / AP

Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry gets ready for an interview during a caucus night watch party Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2012, in West Des Moines, Iowa.

With Perry's wife and son Griffin on board to continue the campaign, Moran -- whose fierce admiration for the governor had been on display during a series of fiery speeches to Iowa voters that week -- alluded to his own physical struggle in voicing his support for a last-ditch effort to rescue the campaign. 

"Sir, I didn't get these scars on my face to quit," he told the governor. 

By announcing the next morning that he would continue his presidential run into South Carolina, Perry earned a collective "wait, what?" from the political world and from most of his own campaign team. Moran was one of the few who wasn't surprised by the decision. 

With a roiling field and resistance to an "inevitable" Romney nomination, Perry could have been in a position to catch a late wave in the Palmetto State. But even his allies in the state conceded that Perry needed a "lucky break" to begin courting back the social conservatives and veterans most ideologically aligned with his platform. And he'd have to do it with fewer resources, less vocal endorsers, and a badly damaged political brand. 

Gone was the shiny "Faith, Jobs, and Freedom" bus that had schlepped Perry to over 40 cities in Iowa. Gone were the national political backers who loyally stood by his side before the caucuses, as press staff gradually stopped pretending that former advocates Govs. Bobby Jindal or Sam Brownback would be in the state on Perry's behalf. 

And his final gamble backfired. According to aides, it was Perry himself who coined the phrase "vulture capitalism" to describe Romney's practices at investment firm Bain capital.  

But the phrase disappeared from the candidate's vernacular within two days after some Perry backers publicly rebuked him. Previously supportive conservative commentators on FOX News accused him of leaning towards socialism, reducing the creator of over one million jobs in Texas to claiming he is the "probably the most pro-capitalist individual... in America."

"I think that FOX News jumped on us put us back on the mat again," said Dawson. "When they hit us and they stayed on us for a day we fell back again from the little bit of momentum we created by skipping New Hampshire."

Gingrich, who had employed the same line of attack against Romney's Bain days, was ascendant. Perry's poll numbers in the state that was once his conservative firewall dipped below five percent.  

Late in the afternoon on Jan. 18, Perry began informing advisors that he would drop out the following day.

***** 

Twenty-four hours before telling Sullivan about his decision under the fluorescent lights of a fast-food joint, the governor was praying. 

On stage at a prayer rally in Greenville, S.C., inspired by "The Response" event he masterminded in Texas last summer, Perry delivered remarks almost word-for-word to those he had given before that audience of 30,000 in a football stadium in August, at a time when history-making drought conditions had prompted the governor to urge citizens to pray for rain.

"His agenda’s not a political agenda," Perry said of God to several hundred worshippers -- a crowd tiny in comparison to the August audience packed into the home of the Houston Texans.  "He’s smarter than that. He’s smart enough, wise enough not to get involved with any political affiliation or any institution that man has made. He understands the imperfections of those." 

Sudden rumbling thunder shook the building as he spoke from Psalms 145 of a God who is slow to anger, and Perry raised his right arm to declare "Amen" in answer. 

As the governor left the stage, he was crying. And smiling. 

It was pouring in Greenville.

Carrie Dann (or as the candidate nicknamed her, "Lieutenant Dann") covered the Perry campaign as an embedded reporter for NBC News. Explore more of her Decision 2012 work here.

NORTH CHARLESTON, SC -- Just over five months after his campaign began, Texas Gov. Rick Perry today exited the presidential race and endorsed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

"I know when it's time to make a strategic retreat, so I will leave the trail and return home to Texas and wind down my 2012 campaign organization," the governor said in a cramped hotel ballroom here at a hastily-called press conference.

"As I have contemplated the future of this campaign, I have come to the conclusion that there is no viable path to victory for my candidacy in 2012," he said.

Spokesman Ray Sullivan told reporters that Perry made the decision to drop out late yesterday and alerted some senior staff last night. (Sullivan found out while eating at a Charleston area Wendy's.) His determination came as multiple conservative commentators were calling for his exit, and as several key endorsers in the state defected from his campaign.

Announcing his endorsement of Gingrich -- whom he had criticized during the campaign as a "Washington insider" and supporter of the individual mandate -- Perry alluded to the former speaker's checkered personal past.

"Newt is not perfect, but who among us is?" Perry said. "The fact is there is forgiveness for those who seek God, and I believe in the power of redemption, for it is a central tenet of my own Christian faith."

Perry -- himself an evangelical Christian who proudly cites that he married the first woman he dated as a young man -- was joined at the press conference by his wife Anita, his son Griffin, and "Lone Survivor" author and decorated veteran Marcus Luttrell and his wife.

"Now the journey leads us back to Texas, neither discouraged nor disenchanted, but instead rewarded for the experience and resolute to remain in the arena and in the service of a great nation," Perry said.

As did his decision to remain in the race after the Iowa caucuses, today's decision came as a surprise to many members of his staff on the ground, who believed that Perry might want to appear at one last redeeming debate after becoming famous for his shaky performances early in his run.

Sullivan said on Wednesday that Perry has not ruled out a run for re-election in Texas nor another run for president in 2016.

A prominent conservative blogger joined the ranks of Republicans urging Rick Perry to end his campaign for president on Wednesday, prompting the Texas governor's campaign to reiterate that it has "no intention of leaving the race."

Perry spokesman Mark Miner rejected a new call by Erick Erickson, the editor of the conservative blog RedState, for Perry to drop out of the race and endorse former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

"Pundits are not going to decide this race, the people of SC are going to decide this race," Miner told NBC News. "We have no intention of leaving the race ... We are staying in the race until the primary."

Erickson called for Perry to drop out in a post on his blog this afternoon. The pundit argued that if Perry were to drop out before tomorrow night's CNN debate, it would have time to impact that gathering and Saturday's South Carolina primary in a way that would help give rise to Gingrich as the alternative to Mitt Romney, while restoring some of the political clout Perry had bled over the course of his campaign.

"Either Rick Perry will leave the race Sunday with no political capital and no deposit of goodwill an endorsement would bring, or he will choose to strike one final blow for limited government conservatism," he wrote.

Erickson wouldn't be the first conservative to urge Perry to leave the campaign. But his words carry some more significance considering it was at a gathering of RedState bloggers this summer where Perry launched his candidacy.

Miner dismissed Erickson's criticism, though, saying, "The governor is focused on the people of South Carolina, not a pundit sitting behind a computer."

But Erickson wasn't the only significant voice to call for Perry's ouster, reflecting the pressure under which the Texas governor is falling in the closing days of the South Carolina primary.

Major General James E. Livingston, a medal of honor recipient who was the state chair of Rick Perry's Veterans coalition, is dropping his support and going to the Gingrich campaign. Veterans are a major voting bloc in South Carolina's GOP primary, and Perry had courted that community assiduously.

Regarding his shift, Livingston said he wanted a candidate who can "be the one that can help take this crowd down in D.C." He said Perry "just was not able to reach that point in his political activities here in South Carolina," and called Gingrich "a known product."

"He's been there and done that," Livingston said of the former speaker, whom he'll endorse in a Friday night event aboard the USS Yorktown.

Asked for comment, Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan told NBC News that the governor "has the utmost respect for Gen. Livingston, his service and leadership, and he always will." 

FLORENCE, SC — Speaking to media during an impromptu press conference Tuesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry twice mentioned rival Rick Santorum's Catholic faith in criticizing his record on fiscal issues.

"Rick Santorum is a good man, he is a good father, he’s a good Catholic," Perry, an evangelical Christian, said. "But he hasn’t always been a good conservative."

The casual but twice-repeated remark — the first time that Perry has publicly pointed to his rival's faith — attracted the attention of journalists because both men are competing to win evangelical voters in the final days before the South Carolina primary.

Perry attends a nondenominational evangelical church and speaks frequently of redemption and his refocus on faith after feeling "lost" in his late 20s.  After the exit of Rep. Michele Bachmann from the GOP presidential campaign, Perry was left remaining as the most vocal evangelical in the GOP field. (Both Santorum and Newt Gingrich are Catholic; Mitt Romney is Mormon. Ron Paul is Baptist but speaks far less frequently about his faith than the Texas governor.)

National reporters who had attended a Gingrich campaign event blocks away from The Drive In restaurant mobbed the governor as he made his way around its tables. Television reporters clambered onto tables and low walls to catch a glimpse of Perry as he chowed down on a gyro burger and onion rings with a state party official.

Despite his religious kinship with a substantial block of Republican primary voters, and his overt courting of socially conservative voters, Perry's campaign has failed to retain his early traction in South Carolina due to the gaffes and misstatements that deflated his frontrunner status.

Asked Tuesday whether he intends to travel on to another primary state after Saturday's vote — a possibility that seems dimmer by the day — Perry joked that he's concentrating on the Palmetto State but could take a victory lap akin to the vacation famously cited by Super Bowl winners.

"We’re headed to South Carolina, South Carolina, and South Carolina," he said. "Then we’ll go to Disney World.”

MURRELLS INLET, SC -- Hoping that his military credentials will offer him a boost in South Carolina's sizable veterans community, Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday proposed a tax break for returning wounded soldiers "to help to get their lives back."

At a VFW hall outside of Myrtle Beach, the Texas governor suggested that "post 9/11" veterans certified as wounded by the Department of Defense should receive a five year exemption from paying a personal income tax. 

"If you sacrificed that much for your country, the least this country can do is give you that type of support when you come back," he told about 50 audience members in the hall. 

Perry, the son of World War II tailgunner and himself an Air Force veteran, is the only candidate in the field other than former flight surgeon Ron Paul to have served in the military. He was accompanied Tuesday by South Carolina native and Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Mike Thornton.

As the governor of Texas in 2009, Perry signed into law a full property tax exemption for veterans who are classified as 100 percent disabled. 

In remarks that contained no specific critiques of his opponents, Perry said that the tax break would be an enduring message about the value of military sacrifice. 

"That’s sending the message. That’s sending the message that will last longer than a parade, that will last longer than a proclamation on the war, than a pat on the back," he said. 

After his remarks, Perry spoke at length with attendees, telling one questioner that he would seek to eliminate the Small Business Administration. 

"I''d just do away with them," he told a man who complained that the SBA was "all talk." 

President Barack Obama proposed last week to consolidate the SBA, the Commerce Department, and numerous other trade and business agencies. He also elevated the head of the SBA to a cabinet-level position. 

MYRTLE BEACH, SC -- In a wide-ranging forum that was a cross between a town hall, a focus group, and an appearance on Oprah, Texas Gov. Rick Perry reflected on how his rocky presidential run has affected his relationship with his God, his country, and his marriage.

With his wife of 29 years seated beside him, Perry's voice was thick with emotion as he told host Frank Luntz of his "best friend": wife Anita. "If I just had to walk away from all this, if she was walking with me, it'd all be OK."

Perry, whose once-swaggering campaign appears to be limping toward an end after the South Carolina primary, also seemed on the verge of choking up as he spoke with pride about America's role in the world.

"When I'm standing on that stage getting ready to debate, I'm standing at attention. And I'm standing with my hand over my heart to reflect my belief what a great and incredible country we live in," he said. "And those symbols of this country should never ever be used in any other way than to hold up America for the great freedoms and the hope for this world that it reflects."

Speaking before an audience of mothers at the event sponsored by website CafeMom, Perry fielded questions on education and immigration policy. But one of his most candid answers came in reply to a question from Luntz about his faith.

"You know God didn't say 'I want you running.' But ... there were certainly things that I tested God on before I made the decision about this," he said of his late entry into the presidential contest.

"He sure didn't tell me I was gonna win," he added to laughter. "But I know I'm doing God's will for my life. And I agree with Anita that my life -- and particularly my spiritual life -- has been substantially strengthened. I've matured as a Christian in the last six months as I've gone through this process."

Anita Perry also discussed the increasing role that faith has played in her life since Perry joined the race. "The longer we are in it the more dependent upon that faith and prayer that I become," she said.

The Perrys lost their closest personal friends in the race this morning, when Jon Huntsman formally bowed out of the race five days before the South Carolina primary. On Monday, Perry called the former Utah governor "a dear friend" with "a beautiful, wonderful, fun family." Perry also said he hoped to get an endorsement from Huntsman's high-profile daughters.

While the mom-focused event focused heavily on the softer side of the Perrys and their personal relationships, Perry did offer a warning early in his remarks that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's failure to publicly release his tax returns could result in an "October surprise" in the general election.

"And every candidate up there, they should put their taxes out, including Mitt," he said. "You know, November, or excuse me, September and October, is not the time for us to be finding out that, whoops, there’s something out there that is a problem. We need to know it now.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. – After Rick Perry's attacks on Mitt Romney's private-sector resume cost him one high-profile South Carolina supporter Thursday, another influential Perry backer said he won’t change his endorsement but also asked for the Bain Capital jabs to stop.

David Wilkins, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada who endorsed Perry in August, told NBC News that he had voiced his dislike of Perry’s anti-Bain attacks with the campaign here.

"I think it's sort of ironic for Republicans to be attacking each other on capitalism and the free-enterprise system, which is something our whole party is based on," Wilkins said.

Earlier Thursday, Barry Wynn, a financial adviser and former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, told the Washington Postthat Perry's criticism of Romney's Bain record "kind of moved me over the top," compelling him to switch to the Romney camp.

Wilkins, a former South Carolina speaker of the House, said Perry and his Republican rivals "ought to accentuate the positive in everybody's campaign and leave the negatives to the other side and not be cutting each other up so much."

Wilkins was more supportive of Perry's TV ads, which tout his military record and Christian conservatism, calling them "extremely positive" and "professionally good."

Related story: Perry backs off 'vulture' attack on Romney and Bain

BLYTHEWOOD, SC -- The vulture flies no more.

Gov. Rick Perry's address to about 40 diners at famed Southern cookin' joint Lizards Thicket Thursday offered a healthy helping of anti-Obama rhetoric with a side of swipes at the "insiders" who are running for the presidency.

But his least appetizing metaphor for Mitt Romney -- one in which he graphically compared Romney's former company Bain Capital to a vulture picking at the carcasses of damaged companies -- had vanished from his speech.

The Texas governor first unveiled the "vulture capitalism" term on Tuesday, echoing a similar line of attack to Newt Gingrich has used against the former Massachusetts governor.

Perry used the term three times in one speech yesterday but then appeared to abruptly drop it during later campaign stops.

The wave of Bain attacks has subsided as conservative commentators ripped Perry for being "anti-free-market" and providing fodder for Democratic critics of Romney, should the presumed frontrunner become the GOP's nominee.

In Blythewood, he began a sentence that sounded like a possible wind-up to a defense against those pundits.

"I'm a capitalist and I believe in the profit motive, but there is a point in time where we have to say 'Wait a minute, what is going on here?'" he began.

But instead of launching into the story of workers in Gaffney, SC laid off at the hands of Bain -- a staple for the last few days in South Carolina -- he dinged the US Treasury for its cozy relationships with Wall Street banks, a months-old critique.

Perry's tempered criticism comes against the backdrop of a defection by a top Perry backer, Barry Wynn, to Romney's campaign. Wynn told the Associated Press that the Texas governor's recent attacks on Romney's record at Bain had spurred his decision to switch sides in the primary.

Asked about the "vulture" capitalism swipe on a Fox News interview Thursday, Perry did not disavow the attack outright but implied that his examination of Bain's record could help voters determine if Romney is a "flawed candidate" before the general election.

"The fact is, this process is about winnowing out individuals and testing whether or not they're a flawed candidate or not," he said. "And I will tell you when people can point to where you made a quick profit and kicked people out of their jobs, that is an issue that has got to be addressed."

LEXINGTON, SC -- Despite an onslaught of criticism from conservative commentators who have rushed to Mitt Romney's defense, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is not backing down on his attacks on Bain Capital's "get-rich-quick" schemes.

"The idea that you come in and destroy people's lives, the idea that you come in just to make a quick profit tear these companies apart," Perry told an audience of about 50 at Lizard's Thicket restaurant outside Columbia. "I understand restructuring, I understand these kind of things. But the idea that we can't criticize someone with these get-rich-quick schemes is not appropriate in my perspective."

Commentators from Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity have ripped into Perry and Newt Gingrich for their slams of Bain Capital's restructuring plans, calling the attacks "anti-capitalist" and comparing them to the language of Occupy Wall Street.

But Perry repeated his newly-minted phrase "vulture capitalism" three times at his first event of five campaign events today -- the day after Romney thundered to victory in the New Hampshire primary.

The Texas governor, who did not even muster 1% of the vote in last night's Granite State contest, tweaked the early nominating races in his appeal to South Carolinians.

"Who's South Carolina going to put forward? Iowa is a fine state. New Hampshire is an, uh, interesting place," he said to giggles from the crowd.

"But the fact of the matter is they winnow the field down. South Carolina is who picks presidents."

LEESVILLE, S.C. -- The rest of the political world's eyes are trained tonight on New Hampshire's exit polls, but Rick Perry has one other pressing matter on his mind.

"I'm fixing to get some gizzards!" he declared to a group of giggling elderly women chowing down at Shealy's Bar-B-Que on Tuesday night.

The Texas governor spent the Granite State primary night just shy of 1,000 miles away from the journalistic bonanza in Manchester, instead weaving his way between the long tables of a  the cafeteria-style diner here, insisting on shaking the hands of every patron.

"You study!" he instructed a young girl.

"How's the catfish?" he inquired of another diner.

Perry, who dropped his efforts in New Hampshire after plummeting to the bottom of the polls in the state, hopes to revive his campaign in South Carolina with a swing heavy on his famed retail-politicking skills and a populist pitch aimed squarely at frontrunner Mitt Romney.

"Venture capitalism's a good thing. Comes in, gives that gap funding to help these companies get up and get started creating jobs and work," he told South Carolinians at a town hall here. "But Mitt Romney and Bain Capital were involved in what I call vulture capitalism."

The governor will conduct several media interviews tonight, but it's fair to say that following the New Hampshire results won't be the highlight of his evening.

It will be those gizzards. He got them to go.