Liberals from David Axelrod to Alan Dershowitz have decried [1] the grand jury indictment of Rick Perry as a hatchet job, but to NBC senior political news editor Mark Murray it’s still a political “error” for the Republican Governor of Texas.
Appearing on Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, Murray admitted that the indictment had “rallied a lot of conservatives” but in the end he determined it was a political loser for Perry. Murray charged: “The problem it creates is, that it just creates an error for a guy who had no margin for error.”
The following exchange was aired on the August 22 edition of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown:
CRAIG MELVIN: Mark Murray, 2012 to now, Rick Perry’s stature nationally, his national political reputation, better, worse, about the same?
MARK MURRAY, NBC NEWS, SENIOR POLITICAL EDITOR: It was getting a little bit better, as Kasie was pointing out. But, Craig, after his very disappointing, humiliating, whatever adjective you want to take about his 2012 run, he was facing a situation where there was almost no margin for error if he was going to make a very big bid in 2016. And this, this is where this indictment comes into play. And I know it’s rallied a lot of conservatives. It’s fired some of them up. It seemed to give Rick Perry a little juice in his own step. But the problem it creates is, that it just creates an error for a guy who had no margin for error.
MELVIN: You know what, that’s a great spot to leave it.
— Geoffrey Dickens is Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter. [2]