Rove: I Like Perry, but He Should Cool Rhetoric

Republican super-strategist Karl Rove, like many other establishment Republicans, criticized presidential candidate Rick Perry for his incendiary attack on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke last week. But Rove insists that he has nothing against the Texas governor, The Hill reports.

“I do like him,” former President George W. Bush’s right-hand man told Fox News Tuesday. “Hey, I'm the guy — I was one of two people who went to him in 1989 and convinced him to switch parties and become Republican.”

But Rove defended his criticism of Perry, saying, “I thought, frankly, it did not help Gov. Perry's cause to come on and accuse the Federal Reserve Board chairman of being guilty of a crime, punishable by death, and then to add to it by saying ‘we would treat him ugly in Texas.’”