Rick Perry

In one of the wildest days of a tumultuous presidential campaign, one candidate quit, another was stripped of his victory in Iowa and a third was scalded by an ex-wife in a brutal national television interview. By the close of Thursday, however, the contours of the Republican race remained about where they were 24 hours earlier: with a jostling field of contenders vying to emerge as the alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney by scoring a breakthrough in South Carolina. In that way, the upheaval served only to underscore the dynamic of a contest that has been unsettled for months, save for one constant: Romney's good fortune as a series of twists has kept any single opponent from gaining desperately needed traction.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who parachuted into the 2012 Republican presidential contest on a surge of upbeat expectations, is expected to exit the contest Thursday, two days before a South Carolina primary in which he was trailing far behind the leaders. Perry will hold a press conference in North Charleston at 11 a.m. ET, when he'll suspend his candidacy. Perry almost quit the race after a weak fifth-place finish in Iowa's leadoff caucuses.  But urged on by his wife and supporters, he decided to press ahead, skipping the New Hampshire primary and putting all of his emphasis on South Carolina.

Aides to Rick Perry declined to pinpoint any one trigger for the Texas governor's decision to bow out of the race, but Perry suggested in his remarks that he thought it was important for conservatives to coalesce behind one candidate at this critical juncture just before the South Carolina primary. Many operatives had expected Perry to leave the Republican race after the Iowa caucuses, but despite his embarrassing fifth-place finish “he decided he had the organizational resources, the financial resources and the fire in the belly to move forward into South Carolina - recognizing that it was an uphill battle,” Perry advisor Ray Sullivan said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry continued his push to woo South Carolina veterans, proposing a five-year income tax exemption for wounded service members and assembling a team of well-known veterans to campaign on his behalf. Perry raised the tax holiday idea during a Tuesday morning appearance at a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, just moments after he blasted President Obama for failing to hold a parade to commemorate the end of the Iraq war.  “I want to offer up for this country to consider a wounded-warrior tax exemption,” Perry said.

Reporting from Myrtle Beach, S.C. -- If Mitt Romney is a moderate, he's learned to hide it well, as evidenced in the Republican presidential debate Monday night. While his prime opponents, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, have traveled the state trying to convince GOP primary voters that the former governor from Taxachusetts is a weak-kneed moderate, they have been undercut by Romney's consistent hard right rhetoric. He's got the most aggressive position on illegal immigrants -- "send 'em all back!"

Both the U.S. State Department and the government of Turkey have registered their dismay with Rick Perry, who claimed at Monday night's GOP presidential debate in South Carolina that the Middle Eastern nation and longtime NATO ally was run by "Islamic terrorists. " In responding to a question from Fox News' Bret Baier, the Texas governor, who has struggled with foreign policy while on the campaign trail, suggested that all U.S. foreign aid to Turkey should be cut off, that the nation should be kicked out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and, for good measure, seemed to lump it with Iran and Syria as an existential threat to the United States.

In the Republican presidential debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry used a question on foreign policy to assail the Obama administration's attitude toward the nation's military, criticizing the administration's response to a video showing Marines urinating on Taliban bodies. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta labeled the video, which surfaced last week, "utterly despicable. " Perry, mentioning that comment, said: “Let me tell you what's utterly despicable: Cutting Danny Pearl's head off and showing the video of it. Hanging our contractors from bridges, that's utterly despicable.” Daniel Pearl was the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in Pakistan in 2002.

Reporting from Florence, S.C. -- In the race to be the most sincere Christian candidate for president, Rick Santorum looks like the front-runner. Out on the edge of town here Sunday afternoon, out among the big box stores and strip malls, at a family restaurant called Percy and Willie's, Santorum came by to shake hands and speak to a crowd of diners who had likely spent the morning praising the Lord at one of the area's many evangelical churches. "America is a moral enterprise, not an economic enterprise," Santorum declared.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has been campaigning furiously in South Carolina in an effort to revive his sputtering presidential campaign, said Sunday morning that the Obama administration has gone “over the top” in criticizing Marines who were videotaped urinating on Afghan corpses. “Obviously, 18, 19-year-olds make stupid mistakes all too often,” Perry said in an appearance on CNN's “State of the Union.” “... What's really disturbing to me is just, kind of, the over-the-top-rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military.” The Marines have not been charged with any crimes, but the Geneva Conventions forbid desecration of the dead.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has been campaigning furiously in South Carolina in an effort to revive his sputtering presidential campaign, said Sunday that the Obama administration had gone "over the top" in criticizing Marines videotaped urinating on Afghan corpses. "Obviously, 18-, 19-year-olds make stupid mistakes all too often, and that's what's occurred here," Perry said in an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union. " He likened the incident to Gen. George S. Patton urinating in the Rhine River and Winston Churchill supposedly doing the same on the Siegfried Line.