Emily Ramshaw, Texas Tribune

When Gov. Rick Perry suspended his presidential bid, he said it was because there was no “viable path forward.” But is there a viable path back?

Only Gov. Rick Perry knows for sure what changed in the 12-hour period between his late-night decision to come back to Texas to reassess his presidential bid and his morning Tweet that he was forging ahead to South Carolina.

While the Tuesday night announcement surprised Perry's staffers and supporters — even following a disappointing fifth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses — his abrupt and public change of heart Wednesday morning caught them completely off guard.  

So what could he be thinking? We asked seasoned strategists, politicos and Republican experts on the ground in early primary states for their top five theories.

Despite a disappointing fifth place finish in Tuesday night's Iowa caucuses that led Rick Perry to say he was returning home to Texas to reassess his candidacy, the Texas governor surprised everyone — including some of his own staff — by tweeting that he was headed to the Palmetto State. 

"Next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto State," Perry tweeted, posting a picture of himself in jogging gear giving two thumbs up. "Here we come South Carolina!!!" 

Perry's son Griffin Perry followed up with his own tweet confirming his father's intentions. "See y'all next week in Carolina! I expect all my SEC brethren to come out in force," the younger Perry tweeted.

The news sent political pundits, who had all but assumed Perry was dropping out of the race, spinning. It also clearly confused some of Perry's campaign staff, many of whom were en route from Iowa to Austin. 

"We are all scrambling," one staffer wrote in a text message. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has turned down Texas’ request to run a family planning program that excludes certain providers — namely Planned Parenthood — saying it’s a violation of the federal Social Security Act.

Newly — and fiercely — critical of using public office for personal financial gain, Gov. Rick Perry this week unveiled a campaign ad demanding that lawmakers who use “insider knowledge to profit in the stock market” be jailed, and he rolled out an overhaul plan of the federal government that would make that possible by criminalizing insider trading by members of Congress.

Texans have elected Rick Perry governor three times — with almost 55 percent of the vote in 2010 — but that does not mean Texas’ Republican establishment is falling in line to help elect him president.

Some prominent Texas business executives, Republican members of the state’s Congressional delegation and even university regents whom Perry appointed have lent their money — if not their endorsements — to other Republican contenders, most notably former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Gov. Rick Perry, struggling in the polls as he pursues the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, released atax and spending reform plan today aimed at luring away business-minded voters from Mitt Romney and Tea Party fiscal conservatives from Herman Cain — and convincing a skeptical public that he’s got the policy chops to be a serious contender against President Barack Obama.

On the presidential campaign trail, Gov. Rick Perry has explained his much-maligned effort to make the human papillomavirus vaccine mandatory for school-aged girls by saying he hates the cervical cancer it causes and will “always err on the side of savings lives.”

Yet he gets some of his biggest applause in early primary states when he brags of signing a state budget that largely defunds Planned Parenthood — which provides four times more cervical cancer screenings every year in Texas than abortions.

The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to let Texas enforce its new abortion sonogram law while the measure is under appeal, following a similar ruling from a federal appeals court on Wednesday.  

The abortion sonogram law, which forces women to have a sonogram and hear a description of the fetus before terminating a pregnancy, was deemed unconstitutional by an Austin district judge in August, who blocked several of its key provisions. 

Texas Gov. Rick Perry spent Wednesday morning preaching to the choir.

To uproarious cheers in a packed basketball arena at the world’s largest Evangelical university, Perry spoke more like a minister than a politician, motivating students to use their Christian values to wrest control of their futures from Washington.

 On the heels of a GOP debate where he reasserted his controversial belief that Social Security is a “monstrous lie” and a “Ponzi scheme,” Gov. Rick Perry heads today to Florida, a big state, rich in delegates, with a key early primary — and home to many older voters.

With wildfires raging outside of Austin, Gov. Rick Perry is leaving the campaign trail to return to his home state, the governor's office confirmed this morning. 

“The wildfire situation in Texas is severe and all necessary state resources are being made available to protect lives and property,” Perry said in a statement. “I urge Texans to take extreme caution as we continue to see the devastating effects of sweeping wildfires impacting both rural and urban areas of the state."

In the spring of 1999, state Sen. Judith Zaffirini approached then-Lt. Gov. Rick Perry on the chamber floor, wielding a green vote tally card. Zaffirini, a Catholic, anti-abortion Democrat from Laredo, had taken a count, she told Perry, and the Senate was just a couple of votes away from passing a bill requiring parental consent for a minor to have an abortion. 

Anne Heiligenstein, the commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services, is retiring from the agency after three years.

In a statement, Heiligenstein said she met with Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs this morning, and told him she intended to retire by the end of the year.

"After 30 years working for the people of Texas, I’m looking forward to the next chapter of my life," she said. "I have three children and a grandbaby on the way, and I’m excited about getting to see a lot more of them."

Gov. Rick Perry routinely attacks federal health care reform, calling it a massive overreach that intrudes into the lives of every American. But in the presidential contender’s early days on the campaign trail, he has revealed little about what his own “Perrycare” could look like — or how much changing American health care will figure into his candidacy.