(UPDATED) Rick Perry: Ultra-Extremism In A Ten-Gallon Hat
When Barry Goldwater, in accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” the conservatism he represented bore scant resemblance to the extremism of 2012 GOP wannabes Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, whose singular talent appears to be really pissing off people about other people.
Bachmann, of course, is a known quantity whose record of nuttiness pretty much rules out her being the nominee, let alone a vice presidential running mate. Perry, however, is something of an unknown quantity so it will take a while for his extremism to percolate through the body politic.
An aspect of that extremism is the way Perry flaunts his personal faith and intermingles it with his duties of Texas governor, and he recently called on the power of prayer to end the drought that has seared much of the state. Perry is a Methodist, a faith that preaches inclusiveness, but he believes that Jesus Christ is the one true savior and has excluded Jews, Muslims and other faiths from prayer-based events.
None of this may prevent Perry from getting the nomination considering the power of the party’s fundamentalist base and that Mitt Romney, the one-time frontrunner, has been refusing to take presidential-like stands on the issues, most recently his cowardly inability to say anything of substance about the federal budget deficit debacle. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin probably has underplayed her hand — witness her absence from tonight’s Iowa debate — and may find herself out of the race before she is even in.
Perry’s trump card, to the extent that he has one, is the economy. He can point to his record of creating jobs in Texas through promoting a business-friendly environment, but most of those jobs are for cheap labor.
Nevertheless, it’s hard to see the national economy improving sufficiently when the presidential campaigns kick off in earnest 13 months from now to become a non-issue. But President Obama has a trump card, as well, and that is Perry’s extremism, of which religious fundamentalism is the keystone and a huge turn-off for the majority of voters from whom religion is an important part of their lives but don’t persistently flaunt their godliness in public.
Regardless of the state of the economy, it is hard to see Perry drawing sufficient Independent support. Besides which, we all know what happened the last time a Texas governor was elected president.
23 Responses to “(UPDATED) Rick Perry: Ultra-Extremism In A Ten-Gallon Hat”
The idea that the presidential eleciton will be heating up Next September is laughable. The election will be over by the end of next April after the Republicans have a clear winner and the media has enough time to destroy the candidate.
The idea that President Obama could lose is laughable.
The real question for the Obama Administration is what will be the lowest unemployment rate be before President Obama leaves office in 2017 and how big will the national debt be in 2017. I am guess that unemployment will never get below 8% (using honest accounting) and that the national debt will be above $22 trillion dollars.
Of course when President Obama leaves offce in January 2017, Shaun will still be writing about how bad the Bush Economy is and that the Cuomo Administration will be hamstrung by the Bush economy.
What is it with republicans? It seems they are getting more and more wacko extreme by the day. I expect a beer hall putsch at any time.
Source please, because otherwise I call bullshit
@EEllis
That’s the foundation for the entire piece, since I count name-calling as meaningless.
The Houston Clergy Council wrote:
Quit Christian prayer rally, religious leaders urge Texas governor
PS – Here’s a partial list of the signators of the “Huston Clergy Counsel”
The only thing worse than an extreme conservative (meaning present day “conservative” – not the endangered traditional species) in the White House would be an extreme conservative fundamentalist. What’s the matter, isn’t the country moving backwards fast enough??
There’s a big difference between not including, and excluding. There are several types of single-group events, but they don’t exclude people from attending.
Of course if I dont invite you to my birthday party I can just note I didnt include you but that does not mean that you will not feel excluded.
Yes, because the worst part about a PRAYER EVENT to BRING RAIN is that ONLY SOME MANIACS are invited.
Whhhyyyyy won’t they secede already?!
You’re comparing a public event to a private event. Private events require individual invitations. Public events allow anyone who feels like showing up.
Prof-True but those “invited” or that have similar members or members of their community “invited” feel welcome and those that do not feel excluded and do not go since they feel that way. Again we are really parsing words here to get to the same point. If he would have invited or asked members of other communities they would have come and their communities would have felt welcome. By not doing so they felt excluded.
Feeling excluded does not have to involve being barred at the door. The list of invited, the tone and the language chosen usually does the trick.
If he wanted it to look more inclusive all he had to do was to send some invites. If they were ignored the fact that he tried would have been enough of a firewall between him and these claims. Of course he chose not to do that.
It sounds like they wanted a more faiths represented in the speakers, not the audience.
Perry will make Bush look like a Democrat.
Might as well cut to the chase chlai: Republicans of today make republicans of yesterday look like democrats. Democrats of yesterday make democrats of today look like republicans.
Perry is not considered ultra conservative as Gov. Honestly it’s politics on both sides. He wants to be seen as such to get the nomination and others push it to try and make him less electable in the general election. Again weak reporting stating claims as “facts” without showing any basis and making other claims that are just false. It’s shallow and sad.
NOTE: the fun stuff has started — Iowa Electronic Markets.
See bottom of posting.
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Don’t forget, though, that even mildly conservative and even centrist or moderate people often have been called “far right” by the far Left.
Perry is appealing to the social and religious conservatives that are a coherent portion of Republican voters and conservatives in this country. He might beat Romney, who really is uninspiring, for the nomination (after which he’ll reveal or present other parts of him intended to appeal to other voters), or be selected as VP by Romney in order to ensure social and religious conservatives will turn out in large numbers in 2012.
(I still currently believe Obama will win.)
* * *
Iowa Electronic Markets, the really fun stuff with election speculation, has its 2012 markets going now, starting with the 2012 Presidential Election and 2012 Congressional Election markets. Graphs of Presidential Election data are available now.
Presidential: Vote Share, Winner-Take-All
http://tippie.uiowa.edu/iem/markets/data_pres12.html
Expect Presidential Nomination Markets to start sometime soon in addition to seeing data soon for the Congressional election markets (partisan composition of Congress, House, Senate). (Price histories for these Congressional markets are available.)
Yes, this is what America needs… another governor from Texas! He better wait until 2016. America still hasn’t gotten over Bush.
Of course, Jeb will clean his clock in 2016, so maybe now is better than later?
What’s “shallow and sad” is when some anonymous political hack thinks that he knows more about religious motives in the Huston area than the Huston Clergy Council. “Shallow and sad” and quite telling.
chlai88 says:
“Perry will make Bush look like a Democrat.”
Perhaps, more appropriately, Perry will make Bush look like a heathen.
Perry could do better — adopt the John Brown look holding a bible.
(holding a gun in the other hand, too)
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/johnbrown/tragicprelude.jpg
Hah! Good one. (whoops, comment too short)
first Houston, it’s spelled Houston. Second I live there. What I do know is that this letter is not about other faiths but rather homosexuality and the AFA’s work against that lifestyle. Now I can support and except that effort but that is what this is about not “inclusiveness” of other faiths. The Houston Clergy Council is a construct to disguise the LGBT source of the protest. While I quite understand their opposition to the AFA I do think the whole Houston Clergy Council thing is misleading and just add to the uncivil nature of the current political precess. Now as a direct response you have totally taken my words out of context and used them in a way that was never meant. The quote
was in reference to th OP making statements with no backing. It was a hate screed portrayed and giving info. Fine Shaun is free to do so and I’m free to state my feelings on his activities also. I at no time stated or in any way responded to the “Houston Clergy Council” because it is a complex issue that really has little to do with Perry or the bigger religious tolerance issues and I didn’t want to spend the time here getting into it.
But mouthing off about crap you clipped off the Internet when I’m here and do know whats going on will just make you look stupid and partisan, which is really what this is about. The Gov went to a modern tent revival. Big deal.