Rick Perry loses Barry Wynn, top GOP aide, to Mitt Romney
Maybe Rick Perry’s idea wasn’t entirely off-base.
Rick Perry’s attack on Mitt Romney as a “vulture capitalist” has cost the Texas governor the support of a prominent South Carolina Republican.
Top GOP donor and investment fund executive Barry Wynn said on Thursday that he decided to endorse Romney after Perry attacked the former Massachusetts governor during his time at the private equity firm Bain Capital.
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Perry’s attacks crossed the Republican political line that values free-market capitalism, Wynn said.
"I've been fighting for this cause most of my life," Wynn was quoted by the AP saying. "It's like fingernails on the chalkboard. It just kind of irritated you to hear those kind of attacks."
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In a phone interview Thursday morning, Wynn said that he doesn’t have “anything but good things to say” about Perry, but that the Texas governor’s sharp criticism of Romney’s tenure at Bain “certainly was something that kind of moved me over the top, if you will.”
“I really don’t think you can be on both sides of free-market capitalism,” he said. “If you attack Bain, it’s just too broad a brush to paint with. … There’s another party that’s going to be attacking free-market capitalism this year, and we don’t need to be having challenges to that from within the party.”
At the time of the interview, Wynn said he had not spoken to Perry about his decision to leave him.