What makes Perry guilty?
Or, at the very least, how can a grand jury indict the governor for a veto? What, for crying out loud, justifies this godless anti-Perry business when he was just doin’ his job?
Take a look at this, straight from Texas:
No one disputes that Perry, a Republican, had the authority to use his line-item veto power, guaranteed by the Texas Constitution, to eliminate the $7.5 million in two-year state funding for the public integrity unit.
That unit, charged with prosecuting public corruption cases in the state capital, is operated by the office of Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat. Nor does anyone dispute that Perry, under the First Amendment, has the unfettered right to call for the resignation of Lehmberg or any other DA.
The allegation is that Perry improperly combined the two — that he illegally tied his power over integrity unit funding to his demand that Lehmberg resign, essentially setting up a quid pro quo arrangement that crossed the line into an abuse of power.
Even after the veto, there were numerous reports that Perry’s office continued to dangle a restoration of the state funding or a future job offer to Lehmberg if she would leave office. Sources said Lehmberg rejected the deal because she questioned whether it was legal.
Asked about those reports Saturday, Perry said: “The details of my decision-making were very clear. I said early on that I was going to clearly veto those dollars as long as they had someone in that office who I had lost confidence in, and I did exactly what I said I was going to do.” …TexasTribune
If Tom Delay’s troubles are any indication, this Perry thing could drag on forever. And, of course, he will get a lot of sympathy inside Texas where he has been part of building an almost impermeable political armory. And hey, we all know Perry has indulged in skullduggery far more indictable than his war with a sodden DA.
Keep in mind: Texas is a state that loves its naughty boys. Perry, already an object of ridicule in the other 49, will need some real magic to sustain a presidential run. Another strand of Republican slime up there in Wisconsin probably has an easy edge over Perry in ’16.
Oh yeah, and we have that charmer, Ted Cruz. Some Texas Republicans would like to see Cruz and Perry run together, with Cruz at the top of the ticket.
Cross-posted from Prairie Weather
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.