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Rick Perry, YouTube star for the month of December

Josh Peterson Tech Editor
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Republican presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry achieved YouTube fame in December, all thanks to his controversial campaign ad, “Strong,” which sparked an online outcry.

The 30-second video spot featured Perry professing his faith, and vowing to “end Obama’s war on religion.”

According to recent data available through YouTube’s “Politics” channel, Perry’s ad was the top political video for the month of December.

“I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school,” said Perry in the ad.

The Daily Caller reported in December that Perry received more dislikes on YouTube for the video than Rebecca Black’s infamous music video “Friday.”

As of Tuesday evening, Perry’s video had 732,627 dislikes, while Black’s video — reposted on YouTube in September after it was originally removed from YouTube — had 372,110 dislikes.

YouTube, on its “YouTube Trends” blog, listed Perry’s video as the third-ranked political video of 2011.

“The videos on this list account for over 50 million views, demonstrating that there is significant interest in political video on YouTube before the primaries have even begun,” wrote YouTube.

Perry’s YouTube channel has received over 13 million total video views and his videos have been shared over a total of 435,000 times.

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