Spokesman: TX Gov. Rick Perry running for President

[Mike Renzulli]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iXCFMu_c0e-nuEhp5wy3Jm1TIUIw?docId=1c1e9fe30bc345f0a264eee62b0f7aa7

"Texas Gov. Rick Perry is running for president, a spokesman confirmed Thursday, a move certain to shake up the race for the GOP nomination much to the delight of conservatives looking for a candidate to embrace."

[Selene]

And he started out from rural Texas. Humble origins. A Bible salesman. He may have a money raising problem at first. He also had a radical treatment for his spine wherein he had his own stem cells injected. He had to have it done in two (2) different countries, I believe. Japan being one of them.

[Selene]

Ron Paul runs anti-Perry ad

Paul's folks are capitalizing on Perry's endorsement and backing for the psycho Al Gore back in the day.

In

1984

, Perry was elected to the

Texas House of Representatives

as a

Democrat

from district 64, which included his home county of

Haskell

. He served on the House Appropriations and Calendars committees during his three two-year terms in office. He befriended fellow freshman state representative

Lena Guerrero

of

Austin

, a staunch

liberal

Democrat who endorsed Perry's reelection bid in 2006 on personal, rather than philosophical, grounds.

Perry was part of the "Pit Bulls", a group of Appropriations members who sat on the lower dais in the committee room (or "pit") who pushed for austere state budgets during the 1980s.

[16]

At one point,

The Dallas Morning News

named him one of the ten most effective members of the legislature.

[17]

In 1987, Perry voted for a $5.7 billion tax increase proposed by Republican governor

Bill Clements

.

[18]

Perry supported

Al Gore

in the

1988 Democratic presidential primaries

and chaired the Gore campaign in Texas.

[19]

[20]

In 1989, Perry announced that he was

switching parties

,

becoming a Republican.

[21]

The ad stresses Paul's support of Reagan. Not sure that will sit well with a lot of his supporters today though.

[Reidy]

I wonder if Paul realizes that Reagan started out as a Democrat, too. This is a point in common between Reagan and Perry, not a contrast.

[Selene]

I wonder if Paul realizes that Reagan started out as a Democrat, too. This is a point in common between Reagan and Perry, not a contrast.

Agreed.

Dr. Paul seems to have no ability to pick competent campaign people. Despite his eager followers, they consistently fail on election day operations. This campaign ad, apparently involved a significant media buy. To use it to attack Perry makes no sense. He needs to present himself as the back to the future change candidate who will be effective.

"My first executive order after being sworn in will be:

__________________ - relating to the fed

My second executive order will be

__________________ - relating to eliminating the IRS

Closing with an "even then he knew" throwback quote on the Constitution and the debt.

Adam

[Peter]

Peter Reidy wrote:

I wonder if Paul realizes that Reagan started out as a Democrat, too. This is a point in common between Reagan and Perry, not a contrast.

End quote

Rick Perry looks pretty good. I like the joke mentioned in the article below about Perry carrying a concealed weapon. “When Perry is president he will protect the Secret Service.”

Wow. Rick is someone I could root for. Rubio is a good VP choice as you may have once mentioned. Rush endorsed Rubio yesterday for VP or a future president. Or Romney or even Sarah Palin. Usually the Veep is chosen for the regional votes he can bring in so Romney may be a good strategic choice. But, Romney won’t pass muster with the Tea Party.

I agree with Robert Trancinski that social issues should be put on the back burner. We need a landslide and a mandate.

After the debate last night, I watched a bit of the MSNBC crew discussing each candidate’s chances and those commentator dogs including Ed Shultz and Chris Matthews, will focus on the separation of church and state, creationism, lack of scientific background, etc.

Peter? What are you doing in Jersey besides getting soaked?

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter

TIA Daily • September 5, 2011

FEATURE ARTICLE

Facts About Rick Perry

Part 1: The Front-Runner

by Robert Tracinski

Editor's Note: The earthquake/hurricane cleanup around here has taken a little bit longer than I expected, so here's another edition getting caught up on the big news of the past two weeks.—RWT

The Republican primary is rapidly becoming the only real contest of the 2012 election. In recent weeks, the bottom has finally fallen out for President Obama, with his approval ratings starting to break below their long-time range in the low 40s, while his disapproval ratings jump above 50 percent. The key trigger seems to have been the announcement of the second-quarter employment statistics, which showed that virtually no new employees were hired in April, May, and June. Imagine what will happen now that the August employment numbers are out, showing that literally no new employees were hired last month.

Faced with this crisis, President Obama has decided to do what he always does: give a speech. This is what he thinks his job is, to give speeches, but he can't even do that right. He declared that he would give a speech to a joint session of Congress at 8:00 PM on September 7, without bothering to check with the leaders of Congress, as is traditional. It turns out that the time Obama wanted was the exact same date and time as a long-advertised, high-profile Republican presidential debate. This reflects either incompetence or deliberate malice on the part of the White House. So Speaker of the House John Boehner politely declined, and Obama meekly rescheduled for the following evening, moving his speech earlier to avoid interfering with the opening game of the football season. Michael Barone calls the whole fiasco "the audacity of weakness."

Meanwhile, in this environment, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter foolishly challenged other pundits to demonstrate "objectively" that Obama is a failure. Which elicited responses like this one. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

But the most ominous sign for Democrats is the implosion of the Democratic candidate in the special election to replace disgraced New York Congressman Anthony Weiner. It is a district considered to lean strongly to the left and to be a guaranteed retention for the Democrats, but now the Democratic candidate is in trouble after an interview in which he was asked the size of the federal debt and replied, "about $4 trillion." Which is off by only $10 trillion.

Even more interesting is a New York Times report on the campaign which describes how an appearance for the Republican candidate begins with an elderly constituent denouncing President Obama for his failure to rein in federal spending and declaring that "we need to cut Medicaid."

After nodding approvingly for a time, the Republican candidate, Bob Turner, signaled for an assistant to cut off Ms. Weiss. Frustration with Mr. Obama is so widespread, he explained later, that he tries to limit such rants to about 30 seconds, or else they will consume most of his day. "It's endemic in the district," Mr. Turner said. "You can't stop them once they get started."

So you see what I mean. The economy is flat, and even if it doesn't technically go into a double dip, it will stay suppressed through the election, with permanent high unemployment as the "new normal." Under those circumstances, Obama is almost certainly doomed.

So the front-runner for the Republican nomination is also the front-runner for the presidency. And Texas Governor Rick Perry is now the clear front-runner.

His entry into the race has flattened everyone else. If you look at the RealClearPolitics poll averages, you see that the first big jump for Perry flattens the numbers for Rick Santorum and Herman Cain, sending them back down to the low single digits. The second big jump, coinciding with his actual entry into the race, suppresses the numbers for Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, sending them down to about 10% each.

Palin's numbers, by the way, I regard as pretty solid, since she is such a known quantity. If she were to enter the race, I expect she would pick up votes from Bachmann and a few of the other smaller candidates—anyone whose vote has not already been picked up by Perry. But I don't think she will enter. She had a perfect opportunity this past weekend, when she was speaking in Iowa followed by an appearance in New Hampshire. But she says she's still thinking about it. In my view, if she's still thinking about it at this late date, she's not going to get into the race.

So that leaves us with the big news of Perry's entrance: he sent Mitt Romney firmly back into second place. Currently Perry is at about 26%, with Romney down at about 16%. I have described before all of the reasons why Romney is not acceptable as the Republican nominee, and up to now, the primary has been a contest over who will be the "anti-Romney," the candidate everyone will rally around as the alternative to Romney. Perry seems to be winning that contest.

Recent polls showed Perry in the lead in Iowa, in second place behind Romney in New Hampshire (where Romney, as a former governor of Massachusetts, has a base of support), and leading in South Carolina. That is a clear path to the nomination.

So the urgent need of the moment is to find out facts about Rick Perry.

Perry has benefited so far from a tough-guy image rooted in his hard-scrabble Texas farm background. George W. Bush was an odd combination of rural Texas and Ivy League. Rick Perry is pure, unadulterated Texas. Be sure to check out a Texas Monthly profile from last year in which Perry describes growing up dirt poor—emphasis on the dirt—in the sparsely populated area of Paint Creek, where his father was a "dry land farmer." Where I come from, "dry land farming" is a contradiction in terms, so that gives you some idea how tough this kind of life must be.

Perry's reputation has led to the creation of a Twitter feed called Rick Perry Facts. It's a takeoff on an old web page called Chuck Norris Facts, a series of impossibly exaggerated tough-guy claims about the life and legend of action star Chuck Norris, known most recently for his television role as "Walker, Texas Ranger." The "facts" are things like, "When the boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris," or, "When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn't lifting himself up. He's pushing the earth down."

This has been adapted pretty straightforwardly to Perry, but with some interesting variations. When the earthquake hit two weeks ago, Rick Perry Facts posted the comment, "OK, East Coast, just so we're clear: this is what happens when you mock Rick Perry." Some of the Rick Perry Facts are actually true. When reporters learned that Perry frequently carries a concealed handgun, The Politico's Ben Smith reported this exchange with the governor: "I asked Perry whether he's armed today. He declined to say. 'That's why it's called concealed'." Rick Perry Facts quickly followed up with, "As president, Rick Perry will protect the Secret Service."

(Some of these Rick Perry Facts get pretty intellectual: "Rick Perry knows both the position and the momentum of any given electron." "Rick Perry doesn't wait for thesis or antithesis. He goes straight to synthesis." Here's one that will be interesting to this audience: "John Galt is often overheard asking, 'Who is Rick Perry?'" And just to take the thing full circle, Rick Perry Facts notes that "It took Rick Perry to make Chuck Norris a real Texas Ranger." Yes, really.)

But of course, what we need are some real and more substantial facts about Perry. What is well-known already is that he has presided over the so-called Texas Miracle, the relatively strong performance of the Texas economy during the recession, including the fact that about half of the new jobs during the recession have been generated in Texas. Some of that is due to smaller-government policies, though some is due to the effect of inflation in pushing up oil prices. Historically, Texas booms when oil prices go up and busts when oil prices go back down. Megan McArdle takes a balanced look at the record and concludes, contrary to Perry's critics, "The jobs aren't particularly low-wage, and they aren't all in the energy sector." Moreover, she notes the paradox that the state's "unemployment rate has risen largely because those jobs are attracting lots of people to move into the state."

We are also finding out that Perry isn't an entirely doctrinaire conservative. He has been fairly liberal on immigration. (It's a stance I approve of; the solution to the problem of illegal immigration is to make legal immigration easier.) Then there is the Gardasil controversy. Gardasil is a vaccine developed for a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer, and Perry issued an executive order making the vaccine mandatory (with some opt-out provisions) for teenage girls in Texas schools. The religious right went crazy about Gardasil because they regard the vaccinations as somehow being an endorsement of sexual activity among teens. You can read Michelle Malkin going around the bend on this issue, or check out Tom Bevan's more balanced overview of some of the procedural objections that Texas legislators had to Perry's decision, which they subsequently overturned.

Here's one other interesting detail about Rick Perry's record: his role as a higher-education reformer, one of the few governors to take the inflation of higher-education costs seriously and propose extensive measures to improve teaching and keep tuition costs down in the state university system.

But these are not the core national challenges of the day and are not the fundamental issue on which we want to know where Rick Perry stands. The core national challenge is the uncontrolled growth of the middle-class welfare state, and the key issue is entitlement reform. On these issues, the facts about Rick Perry are encouraging.

This article will be continued in the next edition of TIA Daily.

TIA Daily • September 6, 2011

FEATURE ARTICLE

Facts About Rick Perry

Part 2: Non-Compassionate Conservatism by Robert Tracinski

This article is continued from the previous edition of TIA Daily.

The core national challenge of the day is the uncontrolled growth of the middle-class welfare state, and the key issue is entitlement reform. The news about Rick Perry on these issues is encouraging.

Much has been written about the rivalry between Perry and the man who preceded him as governor and sponsored his political rise in Texas, George W. Bush, but the biggest difference between the two is ideological. Rick Perry has rejected Bush's domestic policy of "compassionate conservatism." According to a Washington Post

analysis:

Bush rankled conservatives with remarks such as this 2003 comment: "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move."

Perry has dismissed that idea.

"The branding of compassionate conservatism meant that the GOP was sending the wrong signal, that conservatism alone wasn't sufficient or worse yet, was somehow flawed and had to be re-branded," Perry wrote in his 2010 book "Fed Up."

A Perry victory would cement the Republican Party's shift away from Bush's approach to a more libertarian, anti-government GOP.

But wait, it gets better. Perry has strongly repeated the idea that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, summoning up the appropriate amount of moral outrage over this multi-generational fraud. At a recent campaign appearance in Iowa, he told voters, "It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people. The idea that they're working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie." In a book he wrote last year, Perry "suggested the New Deal-era entitlement program was unconstitutional when he said it was created 'at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.'"

Are you excited yet? Michael Gerson, one of the speechwriters who championed Bush's "compassionate conservatism," concludes that Perry is "as skeptical of the New Deal as anyone in his position since the New Deal" and speculates that the current economic crisis, particularly a double dip recession, "might call seven decades of accumulating entitlement commitments into question. Can a modern economy remain energetic and competitive when it transfers increasing amounts from the private to the public sector, from young to old, from the productive to the retired? Will America need to break decisively from the European social model to avoid Europe's economic fate?"

I don't get quite this excited. Part of Perry's argument is not that the middle-class welfare state is inherently wrong, but that it should be left to the states rather than the federal government. (The only real merit of this view is that programs like Social Security would be next to impossible for the states to implement, so it amounts in practice to eliminating them altogether.) And remember that politicians always disappoint, becoming more moderate as they enter office and face the actual barriers to bold political action. Just ask Obama's once-fanatical supporters on the far left.

I can't complain about this because our system is designed to force big political changes to move slowly. That is an advantage: if our system didn't work that way, we never would have survived the 20th century. So I don't expect a "decisive break" with the middle-class welfare state. But I do hope to see significant entitlement reform that will put us on a long-term path toward a broad reduction in the size of government as a proportion of the economy. Rick Perry is the only candidate who has shown the boldness, sense of moral outrage, and fire in the belly to make me think he might campaign on this issue and fight for it.

Moreover, the overthrow of the New Deal is not so far-fetched a notion, for different reasons. Walter Russell Meade draws our attention to a very important article on the growing influence of Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. I link to this through Meade first, partly because he provides a good summary of the longer original article. Let me provide an even shorter summary. Thomas has been condescendingly derided, by the masters of the "liberal plantation," as an inconsequential lightweight. In fact, he has become the driving intellectual force among the conservatives on the Supreme Court. The thrust of his work has been to revive the 10th Amendment and the doctrine of enumerated powers. This is the idea that the powers of the federal government are limited, encompassing only the functions named in Article I, a view that would reverse the past century's distortion of the Commerce Clause into a grant of unlimited government power. If Thomas's crusade is successful, it would spell the end of the entire legal rationale behind the New Deal and the Great Society.

Where does Rick Perry come in? Perry has been a strong advocate of the 10th Amendment. (Rick Perry Facts declares that "Rick Perry wrote the 10th Amendment.") As Meade notes, "Let unemployment stay above 8 percent through November of 2012 and President Perry could be sending the names of judicial nominees to a Republican Senate," giving Justice Thomas enough ideological allies to form a majority on the Supreme Court.

In short, Perry is the sum of all fears for the left.

Now here's where it gets really interesting. Aides to the Romney campaign recently floated the idea that Romney would attempt to regain his status as front-runner by defending the middle-class entitlements. Romney would try to knock Perry down in the polls using the same "Mediscare" tactic we are expecting from the Democrats. If he tries this, it would make his campaign truly evil and destructive. But I also think it will sink him definitively, confirming Republican voters' suspicion that Romney is just another guardian of the big-government establishment. He doesn't realize that on the right, Social Security and Medicare have already been transformed from "third rail" to "litmus test."

Longtime readers know that I'm not happy unless an election is about something, unless it is a referendum on some particular political issue rather than just a contest of personalities. That is the kind of election that makes substantive political change possible. I would be very happy if the Republican primary were to become a national referendum on the reform of the middle-class entitlements.

If Perry wins, what is true of the primaries will be true of the general election as well. President Obama would certainly attack Governor Perry on the basis of his statements on Social Security, and if Perry holds his ground, that would become a central issue in the election.

But that is not the only line of attack in the general election. As James Pethokoukis notes, the moribund economy presents Obama with a "worst-case scenario" for re-election. Ben Smith adds that Obama's only option will be to "go scorched earth" and run the most viciously negative campaign in history—which seems pretty much in keeping with what we know about Obama's political instincts.

One of the main lines of attack will be religion. The Democrats will accuse Perry, with some basis in fact, of being connected to a radical evangelical fringe and of being hostile to the separation of church and state.

As I've already said, my general view of the role of religion in the 2012 election is: God help us if Barack Obama is re-elected. But I also think we need to learn from Obama's ascension to the presidency and vet our candidates early and vet them often.

Among Republican voters, Perry's religious views are not yet front-and-center. David Weigel, a leftist appointed by the mainstream media to cover the strange and exotic realm of conservatism, describes what things look like on the campaign trail.

When you follow around Republican candidates for president and listen to the questions they get, something's missing. The voters at the South Carolina meet-and-greets are asking about Boeing and unions. The voters at the Dunkin' Donuts in New Hampshire are asking about the EPA. The voters in line for fried butter in Iowa are asking about jobs. Even the red-faced people in videos of congressional town halls are asking about the debt.

It's an awkward question, but we've got to ask: What about social issues? One measly three-year economic depression, and voters don't care about social issues anymore?

For those of us on the "secular right," this is a big positive. As a rule, politicians can't go very far beyond the issues they campaign on, and right now they are all campaigning on the secular issues of free markets and limited government. But Weigel notes a potential irony: "because these [social] issues are so ignored, Republicans are having an easier time winning power, then acting on them when they win power."

But Weigel is wrong about one thing: these issues are not being ignored. The left is already in full alarm mode over Perry's religious associations, and he will face a barrage of questions in the coming months. This is good. The great advantage the right has over the left is that we are not lulled into complacency by the "echo chamber" of an uncritical press, and we should use this advantage to learn more facts about Rick Perry's views on religion and politics.

This article will be concluded in the next edition of TIA Daily.

Edited September 8, 2011 by Peter Taylor

[Selene]

Peter Reidy wrote:

I wonder if Paul realizes that Reagan started out as a Democrat, too. This is a point in common between Reagan and Perry, not a contrast.

End quote

Rubio is a good VP choice as you may have once mentioned. Rush endorsed Rubio yesterday for VP or a future president.

Peter:

Rubio is someone who I have picked out also. Did some long range helping in his election with folks I am close with in Florida. However, I might as well prepare you for the attack that is already being prepared.

Rubio, will be attacked as "not a natural born" person and, therefore, Constitutionally prohibited from the V.P., or Presidential position.

It is also interesting that O'biwan, the boy fascist prince's people had a camera trained on Perry for the entire debate. They intend to use "bad" shots for upcoming ads. They are definitely scared of him.

Adam

[Peter]

Adam. I thought Rubio was born in the US of Cuban-American parents. Did I miss something?

Peter

[Peter]

From Wikipedia:

Status as a natural-born citizen of the United States is one of the eligibility requirements established in the United States Constitution for election to the office of President or Vice President. This requirement was an attempt to allay concerns that foreign aristocrats might immigrate to the new nation and use their wealth and influence to impose a monarchy.

The Constitution does not define the phrase natural-born citizen, and various opinions have been offered over time regarding its precise meaning. There is general agreement that the term encompasses, as a minimum, anyone born on U.S. soil to U.S. citizen parents. Most scholars and politicians currently agree that the term includes those born on U.S. soil, as well as those born to U.S. citizens parents regardless of place of birth.

The natural-born-citizen clause has been mentioned in passing in several decisions of the United States Supreme Court and lower courts, but the Supreme Court has never directly addressed the question of a specific presidential or vice-presidential candidate's eligibility as a natural-born citizen. Although numerous claims have been put forth that the current president, Barack Obama, is not a natural-born citizen, the relevant courts have so far dismissed all lawsuits brought over this question.

End quote

So, Rubio’s parents were “Legal Immigrants” from Cuba but not yet US citizens when he was born? Is this an issue for the Supreme Court?

Peter

[Selene]

oops sorry about that...

http://www.scribd.co...ference-to-Same

Above is a chart with citations for the five (5) sections of the Constitution where the term is used..

The genesis for the term natural born citizen was crafted to insure that a person who could potentially ascend to the Presidency and be commander in chief of the armed forces of the US would not have "divided loyalties."

An interesting American Civil War political factoid is that Lincoln appointed Meade to head the army just prior to Gettysburg and one of his considerations was that Meade would, if successful as a military leader, could not use that military success to run against him in 1864. "Meade was born in Cádiz, Spain, eighth of eleven children of Richard Worsam Meade and Margaret Coats Butler Meade. His family were Pennsylvanians of Catholic Irish descent." http://en.wikipedia....eade#Early_life

I think that the issue needs resolution, but it should not bar Rubio, any more than O'biwan, in today's world. However, SCOTUS should rule on it to put this garbage to rest.

By the way, Bobby Jindal, the superior governor of Louisiana, also has this alleged infirmity being that he was born in the USA of parents that were not yet American citizens.

This is the one advantage, in the argument, that O'biwan, the boy fascist prince, has in his favor, being that his mom was an American citizen.

Adam

big time Rubio fan boy!

Edited September 8, 2011 by Selene