GRAND RAPIDS — U.S. Senate candidate Clark Durant told a group of students at Calvin College on Thursday that he had "three comments" he wanted to make about Rick Perry's foot-in-mouth performance in last night's GOP debate at Oakland University.

“And I can’t remember any one of them,” Durant quipped in front of about a dozen College Conservatives in the college’s Fine Arts Center east lobby.

Durant, a Grosse Pointe charter school executive who helped found Cornerstone Schools, is vying for the Republican nomination against former Congressman Pete Hoekstra and a field of candidates in the race to unseat Sen. Debbie Stabenow in next year’s election. He said he was fundraising while in Grand Rapids.

All joking aside, Durant, 62, explained over pizza and cookies the silver linings that came out of his own collegiate failures and suggested several times that rejection was a good way to refine and rethink one’s own path through life.

Invoking the name of God several times, Durant described himself as a “nerdy” kid whose life was profoundly changed by the C.S. Lewis allegory “The Great Divorce.”

He told the students he is running for office because he feels the “essence of the country” is at risk due to unsustainable federal debt levels run up by “my generation” and the waning “integrity of our money” without something like the gold standard backing it.

“It’s been both Republicans and Democrats in the last 30, 40 years that have put us in this position,” he said. The great decision facing the country is choosing between an “entitlement-entanglement state or freedom.”

He likened the fissures in the Republican Party of today as analogous to the implosion of the Whig Party in the 1850s over the question of slavery. He said the 2012 election is a “defining moment” for the party, which must decide whether or not to “enslave” a generation with debt and spending.

Durant, who last ran for U.S. Senate in 1990, narrowly losing the GOP primary, cast himself as an outsider who resisted the call to enter the race as long as he could.

He is endorsed by former state GOP chairwoman Betsy DeVos of Ada, former U.S. Sen. Spence Abraham and GOP National Committeeman Saul Anuzis. General Motors adviser Bob Lutz is Durant's general finance chairman.

“I think people want somebody from outside of politics,” he said. “And I am Debbie Stabenow’s worst nightmare.”

He called his primary opponent, Hoekstra, a “wonderful guy” who nevertheless “spent 18 years, along with my ultimate Democratic opponent, voting for higher spending and more debt.”

“And quite frankly, he made a devil’s bargain with the Teamsters. He committed to voting against opportunities that open up markets around the world, in China, South Korea, Columbia, Panama,” he said. “We need open markets and open opportunities.”

In regard to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Durant said the protesters should “go find a job.” In regards to the wealth gap the movement decries, Durant said, “I think it should be wider.”

“Does anybody think Steve Jobs should not be (sic) in the 1 percent? He made life better for the 99 percent of the rest of us. You want to create opportunities for people with their unique gifts,” he said. “They have created value and wealth.”

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