All Eyes on New 2012 Player Rick Perry

This is a rush transcript from "The FIve," August 15, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, CO-HOST: I know everyone around home and you guys have been watching the results all weekend -- right, keeping it on Fox -- the happenings in Iowa, as closely as I was.

So, we're going to get right into it. Michele Bachmann, the big winner. Perry is in, and T-Paw is out.

Dana, what's the significance of Iowa? You know, Pawlenty got out. The rest of them stayed in. Why is that?

DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: Well, an interesting three days and how different our conversation was last Wednesday or even Thursday compared to today.

So, Michele Bachmann deserves a lot of congratulations. She came -- she only started campaigning and really in earnest sort in May. So, she made a very big impact early on. She knocked out Tim Pawlenty -- Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota, which I know that Bob has some thoughts on that.

But I do just want to pour a little cold water on this, OK? It is very unusual for the person who wins the Iowa straw poll to then become the nominee. Only one candidate, George W. Bush, who I worked for, won the straw poll, Iowa caucuses, and went on to get the nomination and, of course, the presidency. That's not the usual path. So, everything is still pretty much up in the air.

GUILFOYLE: So, she shouldn't be too optimistic.

PERINO: She got to keep working really hard.

GUILFOYLE: Yes, she's got a lot work still to do.

ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: You know, it was a great weekend. It was a fantastic weekend. Fox did a great job from top to bottom. You heard the candidates. You heard the people here.

But, really, I'm going to hold it up again. We held it up on Friday. Here is the real winner of the weekend, you guys. And, Bob, look at that.

GUILFOYLE: Does he ever take a bad picture?

BOLLING: Have you noticed the sheer hatred of this guy from the left? I mean, David Axelrod out there, Krugman, it goes on and on. They're just taking shots at Rick Perry.

BOB BECKEL, CO-HOST: Looks like the guy from "Star Trek."

BOLLING: Good looking guy. Rick Perry, I mean, he was the real winner of the weekend.

GUILFOYLE: Yes, he definitely was. Look, he didn't even participate in the poll, right? He made his announcement.

BOLLING: Seven hundred votes.

GUILFOYLE: Seven hundred and eighteen votes. So, this is a guy who actually came ahead, placed ahead of Mitt Romney who was in sixth place in terms of the votes.

I mean, do you think, Bob, that's significant? Is he that guy that can beat Obama?

BECKEL: Who?

GUILFOYLE: Rick Perry.

BECKEL: No.

GUILFOYLE: Feast your eyes on that hair club for men spot.

BECKEL: Let me get back to something Dana said here. Let -- there's a couple things to think about Iowa. It is true that the Iowa straw poll winner doesn't often win the Iowa caucuses. But it's also true that the Iowa caucuses as a victory doesn't at all guarantee what happens in New Hampshire. In fact, New Hampshire electorate is negative on the Iowa caucus winners.

If you go back -- look at Barack Obama and go on back to the list with Bush. It is a place where it is a much different electorate.

And I think Michele Obama made -- excuse me, Bachmann may do very well in the Iowa caucuses. When she gets to New Hampshire, it's a whole different electorate. And think she's going to find the same thing that happened to others who came out of Iowa that New Hampshirans will pick you apart.

GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: Yes, I don't -- I still don't get the importance of the straw poll. To me, it's like a ritual you perform even though it's utterly useless. It's like when you leave work every morning and you go, do I have my keys, my wallet and phone? You have it, but you still do it every day.

GUILFOYLE: Sometimes you don't.

GUTFELD: The straw poll is a political exercise. It's like movie previews. It doesn't matter if you miss it. Just show up for the movie.

PERINO: But it mattered in this case, Governor Pawlenty who is then considered a possible actual nominee for about four years, after the straw poll, he announces on the Sunday shows he's leaving.

GUTFELD: Yes, it's like that game show "Wipeout." It's good for getting rid of people. But it's not propelling for people to win.

BOLLING: It's a good thing, too, focuses the race. It narrows down the race.

GUILFOYLE: And now, Bob, we have to give Bob some credit because, Bob, you made a prediction. And Dana did as well in terms of T-Paw was going to bow out. He got a death sentence in Iowa basically from Bachmann.

BECKEL: Well, I said that I thought for a guy that put all of his chips in one thing, which is to try to get that Ames poll, that if he didn't come in first or very strong second, he'd be out of the race. And I really think that that's -- the Iowa straw poll does serve that purpose, whittling down the field.

And I'll tell you, I got a few other things I want to say here but I think the result of all this is going to -- pardon me? I'm sorry.

GUILFOYLE: Voices talking in his head again.

BOLLING: OK. But, you know, predictions in politics are always dangerous things because you can make a lot of mistakes. But that one was pretty clear to me. Pawlenty had rolled everything in Iowa and here's what drove him out of the race. It wasn't because he didn't think he could win. He didn't he'd win the caucus. He ran out of money.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLLING: That, Bob, or his, you know, really vicious attacks at Michele Bachmann just, you know, in the debates a couple of nights before. That really took the legs out of his campaign.

GUILFOYLE: Well, you have had a couple of good calls here. You have called on Tim Pawlenty and you also called Wisconsin that they were going to two Senate seats.

And I want to press you here, Bob. Do you have another prediction for us?

(LAUGHTER)

BECKEL: That's very nice. Yeah. Matter of fact, I do have a few.

GUILFOYLE: Do you like that?

BECKEL: I do like that. That's very nice.

I think that for the same reason Pawlenty got out you will see even before New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum will be out of this race.

Perry will move the race very far to the right. It will pose a real problem for Bachmann because he does inherit the religious right vote. He started doing that and that was the key to his campaign kickoff. Perry will cause problems for Mitt Romney.

From my own standpoint, I think Perry is somebody who will move this party so far right, it will -- you know, what Romney is up, here's -- we'll talk about this a little bit later. But there is a division in Republican Party. Perry comes in as a major player who will put a capital division on to that. But Perry will have money. Look, he's already -- he's following in Bush's footstep. He's naming the very people who will bundle up his money. But yes, you can say that Perry won.

But can I say one thing about the debate?

GUILFOYLE: Sure.

BECKEL: I think -- by the way, I want to give some kudos to our person there, Bret Baier, who said, had some very good question.

But the thing that amazed me, here you have a president in trouble, an incumbent president running for election and the Republicans spent very little time attacking him and much more time attacking each other. And it seems to me there was an opening there. Mitt Romney played it much too safe. He should have gone after Obama. He didn't do that.

BOLLING: He did.

BECKEL: Well, but he was not in the debate.

BOLLING: But he came after the debate. He came after the straw poll. He showed up on Sunday. And that's what he did. He spent the whole time bashing Obama's policies.

BECKEL: But so do you in your entire life in your bathroom in the morning.

BOLLING: You said the others should have done it.

BECKEL: But all I'm saying is it's not hard to bash Obama. Why didn't they do it in a televised debate?

PERINO: Part of it could have been that they think that President Obama, give him enough rope. I mean, they don't really have to attack Obama.

BECKEL: There are two winners in that Iowa debate -- one was this guy, Perry and the other was Barack Obama.

GUTFELD: But Barack Obama won because there was so much bad news about him, it was just too much. They didn't know where to start.

BECKEL: They didn't say anything about him. Why didn't they say anything?

GUTFELD: I think it was -- everybody knew. It was like --

BECKEL: Everybody knew?

PERINO: But they had to draw a contrast amongst each other.

GUILFOYLE: Absolutely.

BOLLING: Can we just point out something out very quickly.

Very, very quickly. Ron Paul came in a very, very close second place and no one, point, no one is talking about Ron Paul in any of these discussions. We talked about it last week. Nice guy, smart old guy.

But guys, listen, I know your fans are strong. He ain't going to be president.

He ain't going to be GOP contender for president. So, maybe it's not for him --

(CROSSTALK)

BECKEL: He's a libertarian like you and Greg. I mean, that's -- they are dedicated hardcore people. They're very small percentage of the American electorate.

GUILFOYLE: Let's take a listen to Chris Matthews and what he had to say about Rick Perry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: He looks like a clown when you watch him in these pictures. I assume they can be -- you know, not very representative. But he dresses very fancy. There's something about the way he puts himself together that doesn't look authentic. He looks like, I don't know, a wax figure presenting to be a governor or something. I don't quite get it. Something doesn't add up to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO: There is something sad about a man who is jealous of another person's hair and jaw line.

(LAUGHTER)

GUILFOYLE: It's true, right?

(CROSSTALK)

BECKEL: You know, I'm a friend of Chris Matthews, but about the last thing I would criticize, is how another guy looks.

GUTFELD: I think he's man-ophobic. He has a sincere fear of real man.

BOLLING: They are afraid of who Rick Perry is. He poses a biggest threat to Barack Obama. It's very clear that they're going to do everything in their power to take the legs out --

BECKEL: He's another serious candidate in the race. That's true.

GUILFOYLE: They don't attack Ron Paul like that because they believe that this guy could actually go against him. Same with Romney, too.

BECKEL: It's going to be the real cream boys against eachother. I guarantee it's going to be Romney versus this guy. And this guys I hope he gets the nomination because he's going to be so far right he'll never get back --

(CROSSTALK)

GUILFOYLE: We'll see. All right. He doesn't take a bad picture. We can all agree on that.

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