<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Rick Perry's biggest backer in South Carolina was probably Mick Mulvaney, a freshman conservative on the House budget committee the Texas Governor tapped to write his economic policy with Steve Forbes. It still early in Perry's campaign, when he was atop the polls, and Mulvaney\u2014the only lawmaker in South Carolina's Congressional delegation to endorse so far this year\u2014says he had Senator Jim DeMint's blessing to go forward with what was then a great opportunity for a freshman lawmaker to craft national policy.\n\nOn Tuesday night, two days before Perry dropped out but long after he seemed to have any hope of winning the nomination, I asked if Mulvaney if had any regrets about sticking his neck out so early for a guy who sank so dramatically in the polls. \"Absolutely not,\" he said.\n\n\"After the debate debacles people asked me, 'Well, are you going to bail on this guy? Do you think it's going to hurt you?' I did it because I liked the guy. There's no harm at all for me endorsing this guy. Everybody knows he's a good conservative. You can get in trouble for endorsing Ron Paul ... but you can't get hurt because your good conservative candidate is a bad debater. And that's where I ended up,\" he said.\n\nMulvaney said Perry was upfront about not being the smartest guy in the field. He saw that humility as a strength. \"He said 'Listen, I'm never going to be the smartest guy in the room, but I know how to build a team and that's how we've been successful in Texas. I don't have all the answers; nobody's got all the answers. But I know how to surround myself with really good people,'\" Mulvaney said. \"And I know he's kissing up to me a little bit because we're an early state and all that. But when's the last time you heard a politician say that? That's a management skill set, that's not a politician's skill set. That was very powerful stuff to me as an individual.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/perrys-biggest-south-carolina-backer-has-no-regrets>