POLITICS2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION Perry Wrapping Up Extraordinary Week by Jay Root 17 hours ago 3 Comments Print Republish Share Comment Email Tweet Recommend KEYWORDS: 2012 Presidential Race, Perry for President Enlargephoto by: Jay Root MANCHESTER, N.H. — Presidential candidates typically claw their way into the nation’s consciousness. Rick Perry took a bullet train. Following a few weeks' worth of build-up to create momentum, the Texas governor announced his candidacy in a packed and sweltering hotel ballroom in Charleston, S.C., last Saturday. He is expected back in Austin seven days later for what is sure to be an emotional homecoming after one of the most extraordinary weeks of his life — and in American politics. Perry not only sparked a debate about the limits of smash-mouth political rhetoric, he has emerged as a top contender for the White House. One poll even showed Perry leading the other GOP hopefuls, though an average of polls put him in second place. During the first week of his campaign, he backed away from one of the biggest controversies of his*political career, upstaged rival Michele Bachmann in her hometown, sparked a series of media frenzies over remarks made on the campaign trail and drew a rare rebuke from the Democratic incumbent he wants to replace. Speaking of Perry, Barack Obama said, “You’ve got to be a little more careful about what you say” on the campaign trail. It only gave fuel to the swagger-prone governor — as criticism from the left always has. Perry joked a day later that he had “gotten in trouble” from the White House but kept torquing up the rhetoric during a two-day swing through first-test New Hampshire. At one point he referred to Obama as the “excuse-maker in chief.” The Tribune thanks our Supporting Sponsors Perry clearly made some news that wasn’t released on his timetable, and the campaign will spend a lot of next week hashing out the things that worked and those that didn’t. But from the perspective of Perry’s top political strategist, New Hampshire-bred Dave Carney, it hardly could have gone better. Carney has a knack for channeling the populist outrage of the Republican rank-and-file, which is handy because his client does, too. Carney told The Texas Tribune this week that the “political elite” doesn’t understand “fly-over country,” the American heartland, like Perry does. "What is noteworthy is the amount of effort Obama has spent trying to undercut the powerful message on jobs and fiscal sanity that Gov. Perry brings to the contest,” Carney said. “Their hecklers, the surrogate talking points, the henchmen's efforts and the president himself. *I would wager that this has never happened in modern times — that an incumbent would weigh in so heavily against a candidate in a hotly contested primary in the other party. *They must have some really bad polling data [on] Obama vs. Perry to have dived in so heavily. *The only obvious*conclusion." Perry still has a long way to go before he can get a shot at Obama. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney still leads in an average of polls by Real Clear Politics. And a recent survey by the Orlando Sentinel showed Romney beating Perry by double digits in the crucial Sunshine State. While the campaign roll-out this week helped cement Perry’s position as Romney’s leading challenger, there were some rocky moments. Within hours of making it official in Charleston, Perry for the first time had to acknowledge he had erred by issuing an order in 2007 that would have required teenage girls to be vaccinated against HPV, the leading cause of cervical cancer. The 2007 executive order is anathema to the Christian conservatives Perry must court to win, and the governor knew he couldn’t have that hanging over him during his announcement tour. “I made a mistake,” he said on his first full day in Iowa, where GOP voters will first begin selecting a Republican candidate. Iowa propelled Perry into the stratosphere of media attention, and it helped him upstage native daughter Bachmann in her hometown of Waterloo. Bachmann seemed more than a little irritated that the Texan was on her home turf. Politico wrote a blistering account of her behavior, later described as rude and unwelcome by one of the event’s organizers. Team Perry, privately comparing Bachmann’s thin-skinned haughtiness to the personality they saw in Kay Bailey Hutchison, was ecstatic. Perry seemed to be on a roll, and it showed at the Iowa State Fair the next day. The crowd ate up his “Howdy, y’all” charm and unvarnished attacks on Obama. But a few hours later, he set off a firestorm when he warned that things could get “ugly” in Texas for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke if he took the “almost treasonous” step of printing more money to aid the faltering U.S. economy. It was just one in a series of colorful or controversial statements that turned the second half of Perry’s trip into a media circus. He stirred the pot by saying soldiers wanted a president they could “respect.” Issued a broadside against believers of global warming.* Defended the teaching of creationism. And he erroneously said Texas public schools teach that theory along with evolution. The media wondered — with delight: What was the brash Texan going to say next? Team Perry seems to have caught on. In the last couple of days the governor has been less available to (and talkative with) reporters, but he is sticking to the no-nuance, us-versus-them script in his speeches and prepared remarks. Larry Sabato, political scientist at the University of Virginia, said it’s working in the Republican-only contest for now. “This is the Pavlovian dinner bell for most Republicans — you know, global warming and creationism — and going after easy money,” Sabato said. “I don’t see where any of this hurts him in the Republican nominating process. I think it helps him, but I think he does paint himself into a corner that George Bush worked very hard to avoid in 2000.” In other words, a compassionate conservative Perry is not. That, and years’ worth of catering to the Republican base, could make it hard for him to avoid being tagged by Obama as an extremist. There's a long way to go in an economic environment that might leave an opening for any GOP candidate. And Perry's penchant for making off-the-cuff remarks has led some to speculate that one false move could send his candidacy up in smoke.* But*the trip showed Perry has formidable, perhaps even legendary, skill in the art of retail politics. He proved he can walk into a placard-waving protest in moderate New England with a smile on his face, eat pork chop on a stick and patiently shake the hand of almost any voter who will give him the time of day. “First impressions mean an awful lot,” said Dave Quinn, a Pembroke, N.H., modular home designer who met Perry at his company’s warehouse last week. “And my first impression was very, very good.” Print Republish Share Comment Email Tweet Recommend RELATED CONTENT Video: Perry Pitches Economic Plan in N.H. by Jay Root August 19, 2011 (13) RELATED TOPICS Rick Perry
Juan Cole, who is a very knowlegeable Middle Eastern scholar nails Perry to a T. I will say I am not that convinced that Perry is so purely religious and suspect that like Dubya before hime there is a fair amount of "hucksterism" in his playing to the themes of nut-job Christians, who admittedly are being led around by the nose by political preachers funded by the very wealthy. I especially like the quote: The religion Perry promotes is not the social gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, but rather an absolute worship of property rights dressed up as spirituality. *****http://www.juancole.com/page/2 Rick Perry and the Hucksterism of the RichPosted on 08/14/2011 by Juan Rick Perry’s announcement of his presidential ambitions marks the triumph of fantasy over reality in American politics. Among our more pressing problems are global climate change caused by human production of greenhouse gases; religious fanaticism and interference in governance; and the structural deficit faced by the US government It used to be that political divisions were about the different methods proposed to deal with social problems by persons with different political philosophies. Nowadays, politics is about which fantasy-land the politicians and their admirers reside in. In the mid-to-late twentieth century, liberals wanted to address lack of proper housing for the poor by building tenements for them. Conservatives like Jack Kemp (Housing secretary under Bush Senior) argued that market mechanisms could be enlisted to get them housed. It is not clear that the conservatives were right, but the liberals definitely turned out to be wrong. The public housing had no stakeholders and it quickly deteriorated into a kind of hell. But all parties to the argument, including Republican Kemp, took the problem of housing for the poor seriously, and everyone learned from the success and failures. Nowadays, Kemp’s analogues would likely just blithely deny that there are any poor people lacking adequate housing. Thus, Rick Perry not only denies global climate change but has sued to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from trying to curb emissions in Texas. Ironically, if anybody will suffer from global warming, it is Texans, and the warmer temperatures of recent years are hitting them especially hard. Perry’s response to Texas’s drought? To pray for rain. (If anything, the evidence from teams of scientists at MIT and elsewhere is that the pace of climate change has been underestimated by international bodies like the IPCC). Perry has links to a theocratic evangelical movement that, like the Khomeinists in Iran, believes that religion should take control of the 7 power centers in society, including the arts, media, the family, and the government. He led a national day of Christian prayer to which he invited other governors, raising questions about his commitment to the separation of religion and state. The religion Perry promotes is not the social gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, but rather an absolute worship of property rights dressed up as spirituality. His religious commitments are to be imposed on the rest of us (as in Iran). Thus, he will work against women’s choice and against the rights of gay partners to be married, because of his own personal theology. He is another one of those dreary Red State governors who denounces Federal taxes but is first in line for Federal help. In fact, he covered a $6 bn. shortfall in the Texas budget with $6 bn in stimulus money from Barack Obama, & now boasts of his governing skills with regard to the economy. The only way to eliminate the long-term structural deficit in the Federal budget without harming Federal programs like social security and medicare is to raise taxes on the wealthy (including closing their tax loopholes). Perry denies this simple fact. Indeed, Perry has said he believes Texas has the right to secede from the union at will, making some wags ask the question of what country he wants to be president of. (Given his dedication to public imposition of religion, maybe he should try Iran). Perry is in the American tradition of the huckster and the booster, the snake oil salesman who promises you a cure for what ails you that turns out to be one part pretty words and another part dream castle. He is no Jack Kemp, who saw social problems and sought fixes for them in the private sector or in public-private partnerships. Perry sees no problems that can’t be fixed by slashing taxes further on our 400 billionaires and then holding prayer meetings for the unemployed. This blindness is not an accident. The Republican Supreme Court’s interference in election campaign reform has ensured that the super-wealthy in this country can get the best politicians money can buy into office. The preference of the campaign funders for colorful and slightly unbalanced fanatics sure to do their bidding is probably unwise, since in its pure form Ayn Rand selfishness among the rich is unlovely in the eyes of the public, especially when espoused by attractive neurotics. Perry has an advantage denied to the Bachmanns and the Palins, of being well-spoken and seeming like a normal person; but his positions do not materially differ from most of theirs. And so our national debate is stunted and distorted. Instead of arguing over the best ways of dealing with our most pressing problems, we are reduced to disputing about whether a problem even exists. The latter is a rhetorical device of wealthy special interests designed to derail the ordinary workings of democracy. Perry is among their would-be standard-bearers.
According to our fair governor (and future president), the current economic crisis is happening in order to bring us back to "biblical principles" and free us from the slavery of government. <iframe width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jNVwGNrvKnU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
