Texas Governor Rick Perry , the latest entrant in the GOP presidential race, is campaigning at the Iowa State Fair today.  

Perry kicked off his first Iowa campaign swing on Sunday night, in Waterloo.

“Sometimes it kind of takes me a while to get into something, like this presidential race, but let me tell you, when I’m in, I’m in all the way,” Perry said, to applause from the crowd of about 300 Black Hawk County Republicans.

Perry reached far more Iowans as he walked through the fairgrounds, winding up at The Des Moines Register’s “Soapbox” to give a speech.

“I think you want a president that is passionate about America, that’s in love with America,” Perry said, as the crowd clapped. “I know what this country needs and we need to get Americans back working.”

Perry blasted “faceless bureaucrats” for coming up with “idiotic” regulations that hamper businesses and he criticized President Obama for helping other countries like Brazil expand their own oil exploration.

“We need to have an American First first theory in our government,” he said. “We need to be helping the United States. We need to be free in this country from overregulation. We need to be free in this country from over-taxation, from over-litigation.”

Perry directly asked the president to “do something.”

“He says he’s on a ‘listening tour’ so I’m going to talk to him and here’s what I’m going to say to him: ‘Mr. President, you need to free up the employers of this country to create jobs,'” Perry said. “‘Get rid of the  regulations that are stifling jobs in America.'”

Obama is due in northeast Iowa later today, for an event in Decorah.

Perry may have gotten the loudest response from the State Fair crowd with this promise. “One of the first things I’ll do as the president of the United States is sign an executive order to wipe out as much of ObamaCare as I can,” Perry said.

A few of the other GOP presidential candidates who’ve spoken at this year’s Fair have been confronted by protestors, and Perry was no different. As the Texas governor was sharing his biography with the crowd at the fair, mentioning his college years at Texas A&M, a protestor started shouting.

“Got any Aggies in the crowd? We gotta have some Aggies in the crowd. That may not be an Aggie over there, I’m pretty sure,” Perry said, as the rest of the crowd laughed, cheered and clapped. “He may not be an Aggie fan.”

Perry also joked that he’d like to take the hay bales that decorated The Des Moines Register’s Soapbox on the fairgrounds back to Texas, where farmers are suffering through a “monstrous” drought.

AUDIO: Rick Perry’s Iowa State Fair “Soapbox” Speech