Rick Perry sought to give his presidential bid a fresh start on Thursday, saying "we have hit the restart button" on the campaign.
"You’re going to see ... a very clear and concise set of policies that are coming out that we have laid out over the last five weeks," said Perry on Fox News's "America's Newsroom," part of a series of interviews this week where he has sought to reposition himself for a comeback in the polls.
Critics blamed a lack of clarity and focus for Perry's rapid descent from front-runner to his current position near the bottom of national and state polls.
"The last 20-plus days in Iowa are going to be very hard-hitting; we are going to spend a lot of time in retail campaigning," Perry continued. The candidate has said meet-and-greets with Iowa voters will take precedence over upcoming debates, such as the Donald Trump-moderated debate set for Dec. 27. He still has not made a public decision about whether to participate in that debate.
Perry is intent on beating expectations in Iowa, where he most recently polled at 11 percent, according to a New York Times-CBS News poll released on Tuesday. Perry has spent big on TV ads in the state over the past month. His ads there seem targeted toward the large and influential evangelical voting population, focusing on Perry's faith and family values.
"If the evangelicals in Iowa are looking for someone who they know that, every day, that the president's faith is going to guide them ... that's how I try to live my life, and that's how I governed as the governor of Texas," Perry told Fox News's Carl Cameron at the Republican Jewish Coalition forum Wednesday.
He declined to criticize other candidates on their faith or the way they've lived their lives and promised to support whoever is chosen as the Republican presidential nominee.
However, Perry has not been shy in criticizing Obama's so-called "war on religion," hitting the president for prioritizing gay rights instead — a target that has internally divided his campaign, according to the The Huffington Post.
"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school," Perry said in an ad released Wednesday that is airing statewide in Iowa and nationally on Fox News.
