tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89200449114396326662024-02-19T18:03:04.465-06:00Rick vs. KayChronicles of Texas first big Republican primary race since the state turned Republican.Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.comBlogger1619125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-18027059448003892312012-08-15T10:46:00.003-05:002012-08-15T10:46:38.008-05:00Oh my gosh Kay just shut up...Kay is horrible...<br />
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(<a href="http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2012/08/i-am-not-a-moderate-kay-bailey-hutchison-insists/">link</a>)<br />
(<a href="http://thehill.com/video/senate/243607-sen-hutchison-governors-dont-make-the-best-presidents">link</a>)<br />
(<a href="http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2012/08/kay-bailey-hutchison-says-she-considered-running-for-president-but-it-wasnt-the-right-timing-for-me/">link</a>)<br />
(<a href="http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2012/08/kay-bailey-hutchison-doesnt-seem-to-like-rick-perry-very-much.html/">link</a>)<br />
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So clueless...<br />
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Just shut up already jeeze.Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-49460043635285854092012-01-23T17:34:00.000-06:002012-01-23T17:34:00.337-06:00Internal Turmoil... uh... ya think?Now that Rick is out of the race... notice not before... Jason Embry got some Rick staffers to talk about the internal divisions...<br />
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Here is his story (<a href="http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/rick-perry/perry-campaign-hurt-by-internal-turmoil-2116438.html">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">A close-knit team of aides and advisers helped make Gov. Rick Perry the state's most formidable politician in the past 12 years, writing and executing one winning game plan after another in Perry's three gubernatorial elections.<br />
But key members of that team played smaller and smaller roles as Perry the presidential candidate ambled toward poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire and, ultimately, a decision to depart the race two days before Saturday's South Carolina primary.<br />
[SNIP]<br />
Carney and Allbaugh butted heads. Aides loyal to Carney say Allbaugh was intimidated by Carney and wanted to play a strategy role for which he was not suited. Allbaugh sympathizers say Carney was unwilling to share power. On the Sunday night after Thanksgiving, according to three Perry campaign sources, Allbaugh told Carney not to return to Austin.<br />
"The message was, 'We'll call you if we need you,'" one source said.<br />
Carney has said little publicly about his departure, and he declined to comment for this story. But he told the Union-Leader in New Hampshire on Thursday, "I haven't been actively involved in the campaign for quite a while, a few months."<br />
When the Union-Leader asked him to explain how his role changed, he replied: "I honestly don't know the answer to that. I don't know what happened, and I was there." </blockquote>Joe Allbaugh seems to be the common denominator in all of this...<br />
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In the Texas Tribune Jay Root has a scathing piece on Joe Allbaugh's apparent ineptitude (<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/rick-perrys-civil-war-infighting-rocked-campaign/">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">“We’ve got to make sure we put our best foot forward for Rick and Penny,” a senior adviser recalls Allbaugh telling the gathering.<br />
Rick and Penny?<br />
Presumably, he meant Anita Perry, the governor’s wife.</blockquote><br />
Rick and Penny? Allbaugh was way out of his element according to this reporting...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">In the ashes of his campaign collapse, it is now clear that the tension between two distinct camps — Allbaugh and a group of Washington, D.C. consultants on the one hand, and longtime Austin-based staffers on the other — became so toxic that people who had been willing to lie down on the tracks for Perry were demoralized, worn out and looking for the exit ramp.<br />
“I’d rather take a shower with Jerry Sandusky than go through another month of this,” one veteran Perry adviser said in late December, just before the Iowa caucuses. “This campaign isn’t capable of winning.”<br />
Staffers took to calling Allbaugh “Jack,” and eventually “Uncle Jack,” because he so frequently called people by the wrong name, often even labeling the Perry operation the “Bush campaign.” It seemed that he was stuck in the previous decade, some of them said.</blockquote><br />
That is amazingly harsh... rather take a shower with Jerry Sandusky? Oh my...<br />
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It also sounds like the online team was being stymied and micro managed by Joe Allbaugh...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">In early December, at a meeting of the online team at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel, Allbaugh made it clear that he had taken over. One participant at the meeting said the online team had been trying for weeks to gain approval for targeted online media outreach, harnessing technology to draw engaged supporters in — a strategy developed when Carney and Johnson were still running the show.<br />
Allbaugh wanted more banner and display ads, which the online team considered a less effective and outdated approach, the adviser said.<br />
Allbaugh "put his hands on the table pretty forcefully,” the senior online strategist said. “He said, ‘You guys have to forget everything you’ve done up to this point.'”<br />
“'I’m in charge,'’’ the official quoted Allbaugh as saying. “'What you’re going to do is what I decide is best for this campaign.'”</blockquote><br />
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From my observational perspective... and from some drinks with two or three of Rick's real team over the past few days... I have to say the animosity toward Joe Allbaugh is set to 11 as Spinal Tap might say... it is also essentially unanimous and unfiltered... there is hardly any room for deviation... Joe Allbaugh is 100% the problem in the minds of the people I trust in Rick's organization. These aren't 20 year old interns venting about their mean bosses. These are accomplished and experienced peeps with highly specific problems with how things were run.<br />
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Here is one thing that has not been fully exposed in any of these obituary stories on Rick's campaign... not making the Virginia ballot. That was a blunder that probably ended Rick's momentum he seemed to have at that particular moment... Rick could have then gone into Iowa and said... "LOOK... it is down to Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and me... I am the only 'not Romney' candidate with the organization and the money to win... those other jokers could not even make the ballot in future states... so it is time to coalesce around me the only competent and credible candidate who has what it takes to go the distance..."<br />
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Instead... Rick not only didn't make the ballot, his disqualification was the first to be announced... so it sat out there for hours before he was joined by Newt and others...<br />
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In terms of strategic blunders, every reporter harps on "debate prep...." as if raising millions less in money and doing several days more of debate prep could have made the difference... "Oops" happened long after Joe Allbaugh had taken over let's remember... Rick got better at debating not because he had more debate prep sessions but because he was more experienced at debates... he did what 15 or 18 by the end? Also from everything we are reading Rick's back pain really did play into it all... and that seems to have subsided in recent weeks... which explains why he has been sharper in more recent debates...<br />
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Peggy Fikac and Rick Dunham offer some insight (<a href="http://blog.chron.com/rickperry/2012/01/perrys-was-a-race-run-on-2-tracks/">link</a>)...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">When the debates commenced, Perry was a self-described piñata. He also sustained self-inflicted wounds well before the infamous “oops” moment when he could remember only two of the three federal departments he wanted to close.<br />
Perry sometimes seemed confused, as in this Florida tongue-twister: “I think Americans just don’t know sometimes which Mitt Romney they’re dealing with. Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of — against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it — was before — he was before the social programs, from the standpoint of — he was for standing up for Roe vs. Wade before he was against Roe vs. Wade? He was — uh — for Race to the Top, he’s for — Obamacare, and now he’s against it. I mean, we’ll wait until tomorrow and, and, and see which Mitt Romney we’re really talking to tonight.”<br />
The campaign source said Perry had written the line out on the pad in front of him. “He just couldn’t get it out.”</blockquote><br />
What about the strategic blunder no reporter is talking about... deciding it was Iowa or bust without creating any sort of backup plan in the event that Iowa didn't go as well as planned...<br />
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Here is the thing... Rick could never do well in Iowa with his anti ethanol subsidy principles... look at who did well in Iowa... it was ethanol lovers Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney... but Rick clearly ran out of money after Iowa because Joe Allbaugh did not manage the money very well... if Rick had spent the same amount in Iowa I bet he would have gotten roughly the same place in the polls... and he could have saved it and waited around for the right opportunity... most of those who have surged in this race have surged because they have played under the radar for a while... Rick could have done that then surged after Iowa and New Hampshire... perhaps closer to Super Tuesday when it became a true dichotomy between Mitt Romney versus Rick...<br />
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And here is the other thing... when New Hampshire got cut out entirely that sent a message that Rick was a regional candidate... regional candidates don't do well even in the region they are supposed to do well in because even the home town boy is considered unelectable if he doesn't even give it a try in difficult terrain like New Hampshire... by going Iowa or bust Rick not only ended his chances in New Hampshire he ended his chances in South Carolina... and speaking of South Carolina... Rick abandoned South Carolina until retreating there after Iowa... his campaign should have been continuing the fight in South Carolina all along rather than trying to perform well from scratch and from a position of weakness after Iowa...<br />
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Other strategic blunders from my perspective that occurred under the Joe Allbaugh regime... you had these wonderful policy plans... just top notch... by far the best of any candidate... and what seemed to happen after Joe Allbaugh came in... they were rarely if ever talked about ever again... what happened to the flat tax? What happened to the big bold reforms that people got so excited about in the first place? Those were sidelined... there was intermittent talk of a part time Congress, and I am sure it tested well in polls but that was just one piece of a bigger and more comprehensive plan to clean up the cesspool known as Washington DC....<br />
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On the "Strong" ad... obviously it was a horrible mistake... it is one of the most disliked things on all of You Tube... it made Rick into a clown and will hurt his national reputation long into the future... it was on a bizarre narrow message when everyone cared about jobs and he had the best jobs credentials of any one in the field... at the time we heard that Tony Fabrizio hated it because he was himself gay... and he was some sort of lone voice of reason... but we now know it was mostly the Austin staff that hated it and the Washington consultants pushing it... that ad more than oops or anything else will likely be why Rick won't be able to win the nomination in 2016 when Obama is finishing up his second term...<br />
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Speaking of ads... why did Rick's team not focus more on how he had done amazing things in Texas... they had one or two lines about a million jobs while the rest of the country lost 2 million... but those sounded like abstract numbers standing alone and engineered or fudged to make Rick look good... because all statistics are fungible... Rick's team did engage bloggers and equip us with lots and lots of facts on the subject through daily emails, online chats, and conference calls... but it seemed like there was a big disconnect from Rick's blogger messages about all the amazing things Rick had done as governor of Texas which would have worked in my humble opinion... versus his television ad and direct mail messaging which clearly had no discernible or perhaps a negatively discernible impact... Rick's blogger out reach was also the only place I saw any serious push back on the in state tuition issue or the Gardasil issue for example... it was almost completely absent every where else...<br />
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One more thing from Christie Hoppe (<a href="http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/news_columnists/article/The-unraveling-of-Perry-s-tight-knit-team-2674094.php">link</a>)....<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">One campaign insider told me Carney was effectively fired from the presidential campaign by <a href="http://www.mysanantonio.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=news%2Fnews_columnists%2Fpeggy_fikac&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Joe+Allbaugh%22">Joe Allbaugh</a> – brought in as the “make the trains run on time” guy — around Thanksgiving and has no remaining contractual ties to Perry.<br />
Asked if Carney would work with Perry in the future, the insider said, “I don't see a scenario where that would happen,” adding that Perry “let Joe Allbaugh make personnel decisions, and this is the fruit of that.”<br />
Of course, politics is business, and Carney told me by email, “Whomever speculated on what I might do or not do is flat-ass wrong.”<br />
But politics is also personal, and the people who'd worked so hard for Perry in Texas looked shell-shocked after the off-the-rails campaign led to them being sidelined, then nationally skewered.</blockquote><br />
I hope that this disaster of a presidential race doesn't impact the 2013 legislative session... I hope Joe Allbaugh is nowhere near the Capitol when this all blows over... the disaster he left behind at FEMA under George Bush was clearly not an outlier in his career. Would Carney go back to run Rick's team after being discarded so casually when the heat got turned up a bit? We will see won't we... so far Dave Carney has shown himself to be a big man in all of this so I wouldn't put it past him to be a big man and take back over as if nothing had happened.<br />
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Emily Ramshaw closes with this (<a href="http://www.kutnews.org/post/back-texas-rick-perry-has-relationships-repair">link</a>)...<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Republican insiders in Texas say the bulk of the rebuilding Perry needs to do is with his longtime state-based staff, some of whom felt they got big-footed by national consultants in a rough-and-tumble campaign. Whether Perry simply finishes out his term as governor, runs for re-election, or makes another national run — as his advisers have suggested he could do — he will need them in his corner.<br />
“There are a lot of bruised ribs,” said the Perry adviser. “After the requisite period of time, I think you’ll see all the familiar and competent faces.” </blockquote>How bad were things that Rick not only lost his race for president... but his famously loyal team also feels like they don't know where they stand with Rick any more?<br />
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I don't know all the details of what actually went on... I doubt anyone does... even many of those on the inside... but I can say I had a feeling all along that a lot of this <i>KIND OF</i> stuff was going on, and I give Rick's peeps a lot of credit for keeping it to themselves even as the Washington consultant peeps were selfishly spilling the beans to POLITICO before Iowa even took place. How many leaks were there throughout this campaign after basically zero leaks in the history of Rick's political career with Dave Carney as the bossman? I hope candidates look at those Washington consultants and think twice before bringing them into their teams. I also hope that this marks the end of the Allbaugh era in Perryworld... and I hope Rick can go back to being an effective governor who fights the establishment rather than bringing them in to sink his fortunes...<br />
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Texas needs Rick to finish his term strong and decide what comes next... if he finishes strong in the way many of us believe he can he will be in the driver's seat yet again when that time comes for him to decide what comes next... while if he continues down the path he has been on for the past few months he will be road kill... I hope with some reflection and the daily grind of the campaign trail out of the way he can see how he was taken advantage of and how he trusted the wrong peeps...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-11343087344908862222012-01-23T12:05:00.001-06:002012-01-23T12:05:00.311-06:00Abby Rapoport is right... Rick should have stuck with his 2010 strategy...While many seem quick to write the Rick post mortems and say that the Texans just were not ready for prime time... with all due respect that is nonsense. Rick's Texas team we now know was cut out extremely early in the process...<br />
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Abby Rapoport writing in CNN nails it when she sez Rick and his peeps should have run the 2010 game plan (<a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-19/opinion/opinion_rapoport-perry_1_dave-carney-perry-folks-presidential-campaign?_s=PM:OPINION">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<div id="area-article-block-1"><div class="mod-cnnarticletext mod-articletext" id="mod-article-text-1"><blockquote class="tr_bq">But as we review all the political errors and bone-headed gaffes the campaign committed over the last six months, the biggest mistake is easy to miss: Perry and his team didn't stick with the strategies that made them such a strong political force in his home state.<br />
<img alt="" height="1" src="http://articles.cnn.com/images/pixel.gif" width="1" /><center><br />
</center><img alt="" height="1" src="http://articles.cnn.com/images/pixel.gif" width="1" /><br />
Rick Perry's 2010 gubernatorial campaign was a masterpiece of political strategy. Running against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a politician who had both better poll numbers and deeper pockets, Perry was supposed to be the underdog. By all appearances, the only way he could win, was if he could get a low-turnout primary of party loyalists.<br />
Of course, that's not what happened. His team decided to pursue what was, at the time, an unusual strategy. They charged for yard signs and didn't bother with mailers. They held off on television until just before the primary. They invested most of their dollars instead into a massive grassroots effort known as Perry Home Headquarters. They asked supporters to find 12 pro-Perry votes among their friends and family and then promise to get those people to the polls. Perry ultimately won the primary in a landslide?with unprecedented turnout.<br />
It was an innovative idea based in science. In 2006, then-chief Perry strategist Dave Carney had allowed four political scientists to get up close to the campaign and study which tactics yielded the most votes.Such collaboration is almost unheard of, but the Perry folks used the information to create one of the most effective grassroots operations in the country. The professors found that most typical campaign tactics, like mailers and robocalls, have almost no impact on delivering votes. Television's effect was short lived. Only grassroots organizing actually seemed to deliver votes.<br />
It's a nice tale of political innovation. Who could have guessed what would follow?<br />
Perry's campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire were almost entirely based around television ads. In South Carolina, the team even invested in mailers?which their own research said was ineffective. Grassroots campaigns take a long time to establish, but Perry and his team chose to wait until August to jump into the race. No aspect of his presidential bid had half as much innovation as his 2010 effort.</blockquote></div></div><div id="area-main-center-road-block"><div class="mod-adcpc" id="mod-ctr-lt-in-top" style="float: left;"> </div></div><br />
I don't get it either... it makes no sense... Rick ran a cookie cutter campaign spending what seems to be millions of dollars on wasteful tactics like direct mail... they didn't heed their own lessons from 2006 and 2010...<br />
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Why?<br />
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Because as we now know Dave Carney was cut out extremely early... a true shame because I can't imagine he would have allowed Rick to flame out as badly as he did in the end... I am not saying Rick would have won but he definitely would not have burned so many bridges on his way out... making it much more difficult to win future office in Texas or nationally...<br />
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Take away the peeps... take away the personalities... I am more angry that I maxed out in my federal donation to Rick's campaign believing he would run a 2010 type of campaign... only to see my dollars wasted on Washington consultant mercenaries who didn't even care about Rick, his legacy, his reputation, or his future... THAT is what makes me angry... regardless of whether it was Dave Carney or Joe Allbaugh at the helm... and like I said... now we finally know that it wasn't Carney... a hunch I had for quite some time based on some of the bizarre things that the campaign did...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-51785552291644580732012-01-22T18:01:00.000-06:002012-01-22T18:01:00.288-06:00I had a feeling this was the case... Dave Carney wasn't "actively involved in the campaign for quite a while, a few months."This makes everything make much more sense about Rick's huge campaign implosion. I had a sense that this might have been the case...<br />
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Let me just let this speak for itself (<a href="http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120120/NEWS06/120119890">link</a>)...<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">David Carney of Hancock, a nationally-known political strategist, had been Perry's top political adviser since he ran for lieutenant governor of Texas in 1997. Carney and others left the Newt Gingrich campaign in June to go with his long-time friend and boss as he mulled a presidential run, and eventually decided to run.<br />
At first, Carney was Perry's chief presidential campaign strategist, but in the fall, when a new regime headed by former George W. Bush advisor Joe Allbaugh was brought in by Perry, Carney's role was severely diminished, even if he was not officially demoted.<br />
As it turned out, Carney was not in South Carolina today when Perry dropped out. He was home in Hancock.<br />
In fact, Carney told the Primary Status today, “I haven't been actively involved in the campaign for quite a while, a few months.”<br />
Carney, a well-respected political operative who got his start in Gov. John H. Sununu's State House office in the early 1980s and who headed the George H.W. Bush (41) White House political office, declined to criticize the Allbaugh regime in retrospect.</blockquote>It takes a big man... and I am not talking about mass... to do what Dave Carney did here... here is Dave Carney, who arguably is responsible for Rick's rise to presidential contender status in the first place... Dave Carney who has been with Perry for more than a decade... Dave Carney who we now know was not even really actively involved in Rick's campaign for years... Dave Carney who nevertheless has been the scapegoat for the ineptitude of unscrupulous Washington based consultants who actually were running the show... here is Dave Carney with a chance to settle scores and correct the record... so loyal that he refuses to engage in sniping... instead of telling the world the short comings of Joe Allbaugh... the Bushie who hand picked and groomed Michael Brown as his successor at FEMA... instead of pointing out that he was not even involved in the abortion of a campaign over the past few months... Dave Carney chose to stay above the level...<br />
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Think about that...<br />
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Here is Dave Carney... the guy who helped make Rick the success he has been... and who has been blamed for Rick's presidential implosion even though he hasn't even been involved for a long long time... here is Dave Carney, with a perfect opportunity to settle scores and let everyone know just what he really thinks of Bushie Joe Allbaugh... here is Carney's opportunity to deflect blame onto blame's rightful owner... and what does he do? He "declined to criticize the Allbaugh regime" in retrospect.<br />
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Like I said it takes a big man to do what Carney did...<br />
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A blog that popped up over the past few months the Rick Perry Report agrees with me (<a href="http://rickperryreport.com/article/2012-01-22/dave-carney-refuses-play-blame-game-rick-perry-campaign-postmortem">link</a>)...<br />
<blockquote><blockquote>Harsh criticism was leveled against Texas Gov. Rick Perry's national campaign manager Dave Carney by <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70976.html" target="_blank">unnamed sources in Politico</a> the Saturday before the Iowa Caucuses. The article didn't help the Iowa effort, and those "sources" interviewed revealed an astonishing amount of disloyalty to the candidate that hired them.<br />
But when you're a political consultant, and you see that the polls aren't going your way, it's better for the life of your career that you are the first and loudest to place the blame on the other guy. This is especially true if you're inside the Washington D.C. beltway. That fall guy became Dave Carney.<br />
Carney was hailed as a super-genius of political campaigns who, after leading the Perry fundraising to a record $17.4 million in donations in just 49 days, skillfully engineered Perry's airborne assault into the Iowa narrative, just when Iowa was attempting to create the state's own narrative that candidate Michele Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll. The bump a straw poll victory would have been was not to be because of Carney's maneuver. Playing off the Perry image, Perry announced his candidacy in South Carolina just as the straw poll results were announced.<br />
Sasha Issenberg scrambled to release his book that relied upon scientific studies of the 2006 Perry Gubernatorial campaign. It was released as an ebook on Amazon just as Perry plunged into the presidential campaign: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HE8ED4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tecoli0c-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005HE8ED4" target="_blank">Rick Perry and His Eggheads: Inside the Brainiest Political Operation in America, A Sneak Preview from The Victory Lab</a> (Amazon link in new window). "As general campaign consultant, Carney was suspicious of the various vendors selling their wares to political campaigns," Issenberg explained. "The television vendors told him to buy more TV ads, the printer told him to buy more direct mail. He wasn't sure any of it worked."<br />
The Perry campaign of 2006 hired scientists to study the effects of various campaign techniques. Issenberg's full interview:<br />
<object allowfullscreen="true" allownetworking="all" allowscriptaccess="always" data="http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/0_8sph64pf/uiconf_id/6501231" height="330" id="kaltura_player_1327250139" name="kaltura_player_1327250139" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="460"></object><br />
Issenberg explains that the results of the studies, as explained in his book, indicate that candidates get more favorable coverage in local media when the candidate visits personally than from the statewide or national press pool reports. Aggressive retail campaigning was the centerpiece of the Carney campaign, and it was copied by Allbaugh even after Carney was vanquished to Fort New Hampshire. There, like <a href="http://www.bryansbush.com/hub.php?page=articles&layer=a0605" target="_blank">Confederate General Lloyd Tilghman at Fort Henry</a>, Carney was abandoned and cut off, starved of resources and forced to surrender with only 1,500 pitiful votes on primary day in January.<br />
Carney gave his postmortem of sorts to the New Hampshire Union-Leader. His summary: There wasn't enough time to prepare and raise the cash to compete, the early debates became a huge hurdle, and there wasn't enough candidate time to tend to the "vineyard" of support he could have grown in New Hampshire.<br />
No where in his remarks were snarky criticisms of his peers or the candidate himself.</blockquote></blockquote>The POLITICO article that hit just days before the Iowa caucuses and arguably helped to stunt Rick's mild surge in the polls at that time was entirely one sided... it was all anonymous Washington consultant hacks trying to save their reputations and hides... all while Rick's actual loyal team held their fire and remained loyal and above the fray... in fact here was Dave Carney's quote at that time (<a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70976.html">link</a>)...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">Carney, a longtime GOP strategist who worked for Bush 41’s presidential campaigns, declined to comment for this story.<br />
“I don’t think so,” he said in response to an email asking to get his side. “Not much good can come from process stories like this.”</blockquote><br />
He is right... and in the history of Rick's team I have never seen anything like that POLITICO article. Heads should have rolled that very day. In fact I would wager that if heads had rolled a lot of people might have had more confidence in Rick... and you would have avoided Erick Erickson calling for campaign changes (<a href="http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/01/06/on-the-perry-campaign-shake-up/">link</a>)...<br />
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Here is a blog I wrote but didn't publish months ago because I was having trouble getting answers from my contacts at Rick's campaign who were extremely tight lipped until Friday, and I didn't want to post something without knowing I was on the right track from discussions with them... what follows is a blog I wrote in early December...<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><blockquote>This article from the Huffington Post... yes that Huffington Post... is stunning (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/08/rick-perry-anti-gay-iowa-ad-divides-top-staff_n_1136587.html">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry's newest television ad criticizing the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell was created over the objections of at least one top staff member, sources in the Perry campaign tell The Huffington Post.<br />
The spot, which began airing in Iowa on Wednesday, features the governor questioning why soldiers can serve openly in the military while children "can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school." Coming a day after Perry criticized the Obama administration for using foreign aid to defend gay rights abroad, the ad was one more note in a fairly overt dog whistle aimed at the Hawkeye State's influential evangelical voting block.<br />
But not everyone was comfortable with the script. When the ad was being crafted several weeks ago, Perry's top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, called it "nuts," according to an email sent from Fabrizio to the ad's main creator, longtime GOP operative Nelson Warfield. In a separate email to The Huffington Post, Warfield confirmed that the ad was made over Fabrizio's objections.<br />
"Tony was against it from the get-go," Warfield wrote. "It was the source of some extended conversation in the campaign. To be very clear: That spot was mine from writing the poll question to test[ing] it to drafting the script to overseeing production."<br />
That a presidential campaign would suffer from internal disagreements over a controversial ad or broader campaign strategy is far from shocking. High-stakes political operations are often rife with strategic disputes. But it is rare for those disputes to spill over into public view and even rarer (at least when it comes to Republican politics) for them to center on the issue of gay rights.<br />
It just so happens that several members of Perry's campaign staff have worked to advance LGBT causes inside the GOP. Liz Mair, a consultant to the Texas governor, serves on the advisory board of the group GOProud. And Fabrizio has <a href="http://www.lcrga.com/news/Republican-Poll-Gay-Rights/200706271544.shtml" target="_hplink">done polling for the Log Cabin Republicans</a> in addition to urging lawmakers to reconsider their approach to the culture wars and embrace basic fairness for gay Americans on the issue of marriage. He was considered an ally by pro-gay rights conservatives.<br />
This isn't a unique feature of Perry's campaign. Republican candidates are increasingly <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/14/gay-rights-republican-campaigners_n_835627.html" target="_hplink">relying on younger operatives</a> who are far more sympathetic to gay rights. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour did during his exploratory run for the presidential nomination earlier this year. But Barbour never aired a blatantly anti-gay ad campaign that demonized one of the LGBT community's signature legislative achievements.<br />
"It is the height of hypocrisy for Tony Fabrizio to have been a part of that," said Jimmy LaSalvia, co-founder and executive director of GOProud. "He has lined his pockets for years with money from the gay community to conduct polls to ostensibly help gay people in this country, and for him to be a part of this is the height of Washington hypocrisy. It is absolutely what is wrong with Washington. It is all about the payday for these people."<br />
If Fabrizio found the ad repugnant and it aired over his objections, LaSalvia argued, he should have quit in protest. "Perry said in the ad that the service of tens of thousands of patriotic gay Americans is what's wrong in this country," LaSalvia said. "That is an outrageous and un-American statement."<br />
Reached by email, Fabrizio confirmed that he was uncomfortable with the ad. But he said he was going to follow the advice he has given to candidates throughout his career: "If you start answering personal attacks, you are just rewarding the attacker."<br />
Other sources familiar with the Perry campaign have said that Warfield is the one driving the sharp cultural conservative tones that have come from the candidate in recent days. In addition to coming out against openly gay service in the armed forces, the campaign has tested voter reaction against taxpayer-funded abortion and defunding Planned Parenthood.<br />
Reached by phone, Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for the Perry campaign, called the internal disagreements and the external criticism over the ad "irrelevant."<br />
"This ad is about the governor's faith, the governor's belief and his campaign, not about any one else," Sullivan said. "And the ad talks about what Perry views as this administration pushing a liberal agenda in places like the military, while at the same time praying at football games, moments of silence at school and celebrating Christmas in the public arena is frequently verboten and certainly not defended by this administration. The bottom line is that the ad is about Governor Perry's faith and his belief."<br />
Sullivan noted that Perry has not formally come out for reinstating Don't Ask, Don't Tell, should he become president. His decision to criticize the open service of gays in the military, in short, was made from a personal, not a policy, perspective.<br />
"It seems Governor Perry wants to be theocrat in chief, not commander in chief," said R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans.</blockquote>This is not the Rick or Rick campaign I know. Tony Fabrizio is allegedly the top consultant and strategist on Rick's campaign. He is throwing the entire campaign under the bus. He is throwing Rick himself under the bus when Rick is already under fire for making what many believe is a really bad and controversial advertisement. The backlash was too much for Tony on this so he just looked out for himself instead of his candidate or his campaign he is allegedly the boss of. And who are these peeps anyway? Are they even looking out for Rick's reputation here, or are they just trying to make a buck? This is really strange... I have never seen such breakdown on Rick's team in decades of following his career.</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>Even if Tony is right about hating this commercial... and he is right... for this infighting to be aired this way is such a break from the entire history of Rick's team.</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>Rick's old team would never have let this happen. In the entire history of Rick's team I have never ever seen anything remotely like the public infighting in this article. Rick's team doesn't even leak things except on purpose, until now. They have always been so disciplined. So loyal. So on message. What happened there? Why did Rick's team throw out the playbook from 2010 and bring in these second rate national consultants who air their dirty laundry and fight with each other in public? This is just so bizarre.</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>This is really strange. Rick has run such a tight ship for so long... his peeps are always loyal to him... he just wins and wins and wins. Bash him for this or that but judging from his legislative accomplishments and results he is the most successful governor in modern American history. </blockquote><br />
<blockquote>He gets what he wants. He gets things done. I just hope these national consultants do not ruin Rick for the 2013 session...</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>Can someone fill me in on what in happening? I am feeling very out of the loop and even Rick's team I know from Texas won't talk to me about this issue.</blockquote></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
Now we know... and I suspect much more will come out soon... so far we now know that the campaign team that did such a solid job in 2010 was not manning the controls throughout much of what we have seen in recent months...<br />
<br />
As someone who believes that campaigns matter... this is really infuriating... especially since I gave the max dollar amount to Rick's 2012 hopes... only to see him end the campaign less than three weeks into 2012... I gave my money thinking I was giving to the Rick I've seen in action and his campaign team I have seen succeed over the years... instead I was giving to enrich consultant mercenaries based in Washington at Rick's expense... and make no mistake this campaign hurt Rick nationally as well as back home... in a big way. Had Rick kept his real team together they would never have let him tarnish his legacy and harm his future hopes the way he did...<br />
<br />
Three points....<br />
<br />
<ol><li>I hope Rick ditches Joe Allbaugh, Tony Fabrizio, Nelson Warfield, and all of the other Washington peeps like a bad habit. They are clearly to blame for the campaign failing. I hope blame is assigned properly...</li>
<li>I hope Rick can make amends with Dave Carney and his old team and bring them back into the fold, if they will have him again. They may not after being discarded so casually.</li>
<li>I hope Rick doesn't allow this to make him cynical about the conservative movement... it would be easy to turn his back on those who so cynically turned their back on him... but he is an important figure and I hope he remains committed to conservative causes rather than what is politically expedient... in this campaign he often veered toward what was politically expedient in the extreme short term...</li>
</ol></div>Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-91609778280059535312011-08-24T15:12:00.000-05:002011-08-24T15:12:44.218-05:00Flurry of new polls sez Rick is the top dog...Rick is the new front runner nationally... which is a scary place to be... but a good place to be as well... you can bet a pretty penny the attacks will only amplify against Rick from all corners... including some on not really the far right so much as the "aligned with another candidate" right.<br />
<br />
Gallup is the gold standard, and they have Rick truly surging (<a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/149180/Perry-Zooms-Front-Pack-2012-GOP-Nomination.aspx">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<blockquote>Shortly after announcing his official candidacy, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has emerged as rank-and-file Republicans' current favorite for their party's 2012 presidential nomination. Twenty-nine percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents nationwide say they are most likely to support Perry, with Mitt Romney next, at 17%.</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3ogBmYR3mlfrtLmuq8-fpbCl0UXRcoNwKNN4BvsH3pz2Tftmcctcrc2aew_5qymxtXWgSuK5_0YaHIS4penQ-GfB7d74yH98jd6VgZRAR2m3kmR2kh1vGsHW7pNSqRKctPXt3uq2D1sw/s1600/gallup.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3ogBmYR3mlfrtLmuq8-fpbCl0UXRcoNwKNN4BvsH3pz2Tftmcctcrc2aew_5qymxtXWgSuK5_0YaHIS4penQ-GfB7d74yH98jd6VgZRAR2m3kmR2kh1vGsHW7pNSqRKctPXt3uq2D1sw/s1600/gallup.png" /></a></div><br />
The Daily Caller also has Rick surging this week (<a href="http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/24/perry-dominates-problems-for-romney-in-new-daily-callerconservativehome-tracking-poll/2/">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Perry now leads the field in all five categories polled this month: first choice, most electable, second choice, best at dealing with the economy, and best at keeping Washington spending under control — often by a large margin.<br />
Perry is the top choice for 29.3 percent of Republicans, handily trouncing Michele Bachmann’s 17.0 percent and Mitt Romney’s 11.1 percent.<br />
But Perry has not just captured the hearts of Republicans; he has also captured the minds of those who are pragmatically looking not just for a nominee they like, but for one who can beat President Barack Obama. He is also considered far and away the most electable, with 46.5 percent naming him the most viable candidate to beat the incumbent president. Romney takes just 19.8 percent of the vote in this category, a sharp drop from July, when he led in this category with 33.5 percent. Michele Bachmann’s share has dropped to just 9.6 percent, falling precipitously from 21.1 percent in July.<br />
That’s particularly problematic for Romney.</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3nnTMXUFsp4ULIU1Wb0mtKJCeZI_nJdyIkwHsHzKWYqebY4hSJ3gjKvuIF52_JfwAohIAcT8NtA0WCZr0fZQ8Fo0-3PYfmf1oSIcTpE6c7v31jZLK8g39e5AMSBWA8KZ8nTxvQWhNvk0/s1600/washington+under+control.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3nnTMXUFsp4ULIU1Wb0mtKJCeZI_nJdyIkwHsHzKWYqebY4hSJ3gjKvuIF52_JfwAohIAcT8NtA0WCZr0fZQ8Fo0-3PYfmf1oSIcTpE6c7v31jZLK8g39e5AMSBWA8KZ8nTxvQWhNvk0/s320/washington+under+control.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw2fjbzpyfNYuc_xTYa35sF-uCQ1uPimd0Xa7rP3MelBJrdx2Vdiq3ZIQQqpbIom6pzf9DnIMScwd1Vjh0a3VzHH2KXjBHZSmpxT_I4yJLmorE36GfKS1xwqq0rTKfIhUh6dPIN6Rfu6g/s1600/best+job+on+economy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw2fjbzpyfNYuc_xTYa35sF-uCQ1uPimd0Xa7rP3MelBJrdx2Vdiq3ZIQQqpbIom6pzf9DnIMScwd1Vjh0a3VzHH2KXjBHZSmpxT_I4yJLmorE36GfKS1xwqq0rTKfIhUh6dPIN6Rfu6g/s320/best+job+on+economy.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRzsiDesv_tHYc-bUSYop_omd8S9jLsBmwxFRcqVdgWbxq1hjNE9hhcYvY9ZPJxvUrXwaVc9A15eiIwA9ButY_q1GrHspMi-8es4QuNRXpn9KmrwDAzNxnCacsyrpAV_VUOlPzgrvyJg8/s1600/second+choice.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRzsiDesv_tHYc-bUSYop_omd8S9jLsBmwxFRcqVdgWbxq1hjNE9hhcYvY9ZPJxvUrXwaVc9A15eiIwA9ButY_q1GrHspMi-8es4QuNRXpn9KmrwDAzNxnCacsyrpAV_VUOlPzgrvyJg8/s320/second+choice.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7bPRu0XD_BySr6guh611mEDpf731HVwXpYPPJQI1UiD-3tN9Y8B46Vq7J7UrorfnjK1gwUmKKiqKivxRX3VZ7eIv6yWfMLldWiuGoLhprLSrGlDUw6p_A6v5_308gCPQ_R1VS-vM44i8/s1600/most+electable.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7bPRu0XD_BySr6guh611mEDpf731HVwXpYPPJQI1UiD-3tN9Y8B46Vq7J7UrorfnjK1gwUmKKiqKivxRX3VZ7eIv6yWfMLldWiuGoLhprLSrGlDUw6p_A6v5_308gCPQ_R1VS-vM44i8/s320/most+electable.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvgrBdJGqeUPT2ub9nhyphenhyphenzPnbwXPed1J8ekIo_TvPlAdSruAnXPj42SG2-HeI0iN0beDJBapx4aZCgqULIG0SjmG6Do7a4vATVCpSJKMshrDJ1JMFFrmgjKGJAG-qlKpDq8-2d_furEACI/s1600/top+pick.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvgrBdJGqeUPT2ub9nhyphenhyphenzPnbwXPed1J8ekIo_TvPlAdSruAnXPj42SG2-HeI0iN0beDJBapx4aZCgqULIG0SjmG6Do7a4vATVCpSJKMshrDJ1JMFFrmgjKGJAG-qlKpDq8-2d_furEACI/s320/top+pick.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Rick as a second pick beats everyone else's first pick. </div><br />
<br />
PPP is one I hate... they oversample Democrats and do a really poor job in Texas in particular... but they also have Rick surging in Iowa and nationally (<a href="http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2011/08/perry-leads-nationally.html">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<blockquote>In PPP's first national poll since Rick Perry's official entry into the Presidential race he's jumped out to a double digit advantage. Perry's at 33% to 20% for Mitt Romney, 16% for Michele Bachmann, 8% for Newt Gingrich, 6% for Herman Cain and Ron Paul, 4% for Rick Santorum, and 3% for Jon Huntsman.<br />
<br />
Conservative voters have been looking for a candidate that they can rally around and Perry's filling that role. Romney continues to lead with the small portion of voters describing themselves as moderates at 27% t0 20% for Bachmann and 15% for Perry. But Perry gets stronger and stronger as you move across the ideological spectrum. With 'somewhat conservative' voters Perry leads by 15 points with 38% to Romney's 23% and Bachmann's 11%. And with 'very conservative' voters the advantage expands to 22 points with him at 40% to 18% for Bachmann and 14% for Romney.</blockquote><blockquote>[SNIP] </blockquote><blockquote>Perry also leads head to heads with both Romney (52-36) and Bachmann (56-26). In the match up with Romney Perry picks up Bachmann supporters (47-37), Cain supporters (61-29), Paul supporters (43-28), and Santorum supporters (68-21). Romney gets Gingrich supporters (51-35) and Huntsman supporters (76-24).<br />
<br />
In the match up with Bachmann Perry wins Cain supporters (49-38), Gingrich supporters (52-32), Paul supporters (44-28), and Romney supporters (53-20). Huntsman supporters (24-21 for Bachmann) and Santorum supporters (44-43 for Perry) split pretty evenly. </blockquote>Rick looks like he may be the guy... and in match ups with Obama he is usually about neck and neck... although Rick was actually leading among independents... and Rick seems to do better among likely voters than just casual registered voters...<br />
<br />
The game plan now might be to keep Rick on a slow and steady pace. Don't overexpose him. Fight back all the smears and lies from the left and right alike.<br />
<br />
A big national lead is important, but a small lead in Iowa can quickly turn into a 4th place finish in the Iowa Caucuses. New Hampshire also remains an up hill climb for Rick, although his fiscal message he stuck with during the 2010 election in Texas could play very well there. South Carolina is likely his for the taking. Florida may be close, but Rick should do well with voters eager for jobs and an improved economy. Nevada, the same....<br />
<br />
A few big hurdles are on the way. Debates. The expectations on Rick will be extremely high to perform well at the upcoming forums and debates. He may be underestimated since he didn't debate Bill White, but people falsely claiming off hand that "Rick never debated in 2010" are just not telling the truth... he debated twice in the primary and did well enough to put Kay away by 20+ percentage points and avoid a runoff...<br />
<br />
The final big hurdle is money. Rick needs to raise a lot of money and have a lot of money in the bank... he needs to get his super PAC operations in order. He still has a lot of staff to hire in various states and back home in Texas, and he still has a lot of television commercials to produce and air. Those take money. Money will be a big driver of this race, and if Rick can show a solid number after this quarter in which he got a late start he could make it a two person race with Romney... if he does that he wins the nomination even with occasional minor gaffes and errors and missteps... it would just be too difficult for anyone else to overcome that. Still... Romney will have more money than Rick and will likely decide soon to start attacking... but Rick has withstood a lot of money in negative ads spent against him over the years and done just fine...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-12792059701594382532011-08-22T10:45:00.000-05:002011-08-22T10:45:53.316-05:00Rick and Al Gore...Texas political reporter R.G. Ratcliffe sort of sets the record straight on Al Gore (<a href="http://rgratcliffe.com/perrysphere/2011/08/22/rick-perry-was-never-al-gores-texas-1988-chairman/">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<br />
<header class="entry-header"> <blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Rick Perry was NEVER Al Gore’s Texas 1988 chairman</b></span><br />
<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="http://rgratcliffe.com/perrysphere/2011/08/22/rick-perry-was-never-al-gores-texas-1988-chairman/" rel="bookmark" title="9:13 am"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2011-08-22T09:13:53+00:00" pubdate="">August 22, 2011</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://rgratcliffe.com/perrysphere/author/rgratcliffe/" rel="author" title="View all posts by rgratcliffe">rgratcliffe</a></span></span></blockquote><blockquote>OK, whack on Republican Gov. Rick Perry in his presidential campaign for having once been a Democrat.<br />
Whack on Rick Perry for endorsing Al Gore in his 1988 presidential run.<br />
But would everyone quit saying he was Gore’s state chairman, because it is simply not true.<br />
Gore in 1988 was viewed as the Southern conservative alternative to Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis. The leaders of the Gore campaign in Texas were House Speaker Gib Lewis, Democratic Chairman Bob Slagle and Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby.<br />
On Jan. 5, 1988, Gib brought Gore to Austin to receive the endorsement of 27 state legislators. One of them was Rick Perry. If Perry even spoke that day, his words were so lame that they did not get quoted in news stories. In the Houston Chronicle and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Perry was just listed in alphabetical order as one of the lawmakers backing Gore.<br />
I have tried to find a news release from the event to see if there was any possibility that it said something like: Legislative co-chairs for Gore. But I have not found anything like that. So I recently asked an Austin political consultant who was deep into the Gore campaign that year if Perry was chairman. He told me no. He said Perry did the news conference and then a one-day endorsement fly-around of some of the legislators. And that was it.<br />
But the Texas politician who was a state presidential campaign chairman that year was Democrat John Sharp, who was backing Dukakis. In his 1998 lieutenant governor’s race against Perry, Sharp started telling people Perry was Gore’s campaign chairman. Sharp’s campaign in media accounts started off calling Perry vice-chairman of Gore’s campaign, then co-chairman and finally chairman. Perry and his campaign responded to his backing of Gore, but never repudiated the title.<br />
Here is the simple truth. Rick Perry endorsed Al Gore in an effort to suck up to Speaker Gib Lewis in hopes of gaining a House leadership position in the 1989 Legislature. It didn’t happen. Then in the interim afterward, when the Calendars Committee chairman resigned, Perry wanted that position. Gib snubbed him and gave it to speaker pro tem Hugo Berlanga. About 10 days later, Perry switched parties and said he likely would run against Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower.<br />
From beginning to end, it was pure political opportunism. If you want to criticize Perry, criticize him for that. But he was never Al Gore’s Texas chairman.</blockquote></header> <br />
I think a little more context is in order... it was pro gun pro life Southerner Al Gore versus far left liberals like Gephardt, Dukakis, and others... endorsing Al Gore was ironically a way for Rick to prove he was a conservative Democrat and not the new breed of very liberal Democrats...<br />
<br />
You might even look at it and conclude that Rick decided when Dukakis won the 1988 nomination that liberals had won the internal battle there was no more hope of reforming his party... Democrats were not worth saving or reforming or returning to their Jeffersonian roots...<br />
<br />
So he became a Republican... and the rest is history...<br />
<br />
More recommended reading on the Al Gore thing (<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/guest-column-perry-as-a-very-conservative-democrat/">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<blockquote>Any discussion of the governor's political past should take into account the following context. First, in the early 1980s in rural West Texas, most if not all routes to Austin ran through the Democratic Party, a party divided into liberal and conservative factions. Second, in 1984, the Democratic Party held more than three-quarters of the seats in the Texas House, which in turn was run by a speaker (Gib Lewis of Fort Worth, 1983-93) from the party's conservative faction. Third, Perry's voting record on the House floor placed him in the conservative wing of the conservative faction of the Texas Democratic Party. Fourth, during Perry's short tenure in the House, the space within the Texas Democratic Party for politicians with conservative ideological profiles such as Perry's was rapidly disappearing. In the end, given Perry's conservative ideological position and the evolving nature of partisan politics in Texas, by 1989 Perry had but two choices if he wished to pursue a career as an elected official in Texas: change his political beliefs or change his party. He opted for the latter.</blockquote><br />
Here is another good read (<a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/06/rick_perrys_conservative_credentials.html">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;">As the Texas Democratic party was slowly taken over by that liberal movement emanating from Austin and increasingly, Houston, millions of conservative Texas Democrats changed parties to remain true to their conservative beliefs. Rather than being cause to question Perry's authenticity, his switch is a testament to the solidity of his conservative principles. As I and so many other Southerners are fond of saying, "We didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Party left us," which is exactly what happened to Rick Perry.</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;">The other thing to remember is that Rick also said he felt Al Gore had "gone to hell" since the 1980s...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;"><object height="345" width="420"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gSYnWkIVj38?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gSYnWkIVj38?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="345" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;">I know this "former Democrat" thing must be really baffling for a lot of people outside of Texas... or outside of southern states... but there are <b>still </b>a number of conservative Democrats in the southern states although that number is rapidly dwindling...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman', times;">If you know anything about Texas politics, you know that former GOP presidential candidate Phil Gramm who is so hated by the left was also a Democrat at one point in his life... </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman', times;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;">Ronald Reagan was also a Democrat who loved FDR until somewhat late into his life... Rick switched to the Republican side before Texas really switched several years later... in fact everyone thinks of Texas as this GOP bastion for so long, but Republicans still did not control the Texas legislature until 2003...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman', times;">When I see the stuff about "Al Gore's campaign manager" I usually just tune out the person saying it because they are obviously not very well versed in recent political history... and if I were to come up with a venn diagram of the people who say that line and some of Ron Paul's nuttier conspiracy theorists, it would look like just one circle... it is the exact same people pushing the Al Gore stuff... </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman', times;">Read these things. Ask some Texans not affiliated with Ron Paul and not under the age of about 35 or 40 about the old days in Texas politics and you'll realize... again... ironically that Rick supporting Al Gore was an attempt to prove his conservative bona fides... and having once been a Democrat likely makes him a stronger not weaker candidate... </span>Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-68539438759117438352011-08-17T12:35:00.000-05:002011-08-17T12:35:53.185-05:00Rick's masterful entry into the 2012 presidential race...Rick's entry into the presidential race was truly amazing. Bachmann's win in Iowa's straw poll was rendered irrelevant. Then Rick schooled Bachmann on her own turf in Waterloo... some are already calling it her "Waterloo" as in her big folly of arrogance that caused her to fall. Politico tells the story (<a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61366.html">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<blockquote> But the contrast that may lift Perry and undermine Bachmann in their high stakes battle for Iowa had less to do with what they said than how they said it — and what they did before and after speaking.<br />
Perry arrived early, as did former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. The Texas governor let a media throng grow and dissolve before working his way across the room to sit at table after table, shake hand after hand, pose for photographs and listen politely to a windy Abraham Lincoln impersonator, paying respect to a state that expects candidates, no matter their fame, to be accessible.<br />
But Bachmann campaigned like a celebrity. And the event highlighted the brittle, presidential-style cocoon that has become her campaign’s signature: a routine of late entries, unexplained absences, quick exits, sharp-elbowed handlers with matching lapel pins, and pre-selected questioners.<br />
She camped out in her bus, parked on the street in front of a nearby Ramada Hotel, until it was time to take the stage. Even after a local official’s introduction, Bachmann was nowhere to be found. It was not until a second staffer assured her that the lighting had been changed and a second introduction piped over the loudspeakers that she entered the former dance hall here. By the time she made her big entrance to bright lights and blaring music, the crowd seemed puzzled.<br />
Bachmann’s stump speech drew mostly polite applause until she closed by giving a large apple pie to “the oldest mother in the room” — a local centenarian.<br />
Then she stayed on stage, signing T-shirts from above, which her staff then distributed to a steady but not overwhelming crowd.<br />
Finally, she swept through what was by then an empty ballroom behind a phalanx of six aides who shielded her from reporters and the handful of Iowans who remained.<br />
“She kept us waiting, she was not here mixing — then she was talking about what a great evening it was. How do you know? You just got here,” said Karen Vanderkrol, of Hudson, Iowa, who said she agreed with the substance of Bachmann’s speech, but that one line in particular rang false: “I am a real person.”<br />
“She can say she’s real and part of the people, but that’s not what we do,” Vanderkrol said of the congresswoman’s behavior.<br />
Several other attendees seemed to leave similarly disappointed.</blockquote><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Ouch for Bachmann... Bachmann spent all of that money and put in all of that work almost for nothing...</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Perry's peeps put out this masterful video which is exactly the right tone and tenor... not too overboard like Tim Pawlenty's videos, but not boring either... just very well done...</div><br />
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Then Rick seemed to stick his foot in his mouth by criticizing Ben Bernanke extremely strongly... but my hunch is that this Bernanke moment is a big parallel to the secession stuff.<br />
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On both issues, Rick never said what people want to believe he said... he certainly never advocated for secession and never said Bernanke was treasonous... but the impact is still there... Rick is scoring major points with voters for speaking bluntly on an issue they agree with... that Bernanke is a bad fed chairman and the fed is printing too much money...<br />
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Then Ed Schultz took Rick's comments about debt being a black cloud not just out of context but just plain lied about what Rick meant by "black cloud." Insinuating racism, MSNBC threatened to dominate the news all week before I am sure Obama's peeps forced Ed Schultz to apologize to make it go away so they could get back to attacking Rick unfairly in other ways (<a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/08/16/ed-schultz-edits-rick-perry-falsely-accuse-him-making-racist-remark-a">link</a>)...<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.mrctv.org/embed/104680" title="MRC TV video player" width="640"></iframe><br />
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These unfair criticisms of Rick have caused peeps to rally to his defense... even peeps who don't support him necessarily yet...<br />
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On the economy, the MSM and liberal bloggers are failing to assail the unassailable... and speaking of peeps who don't even support Rick... even bloggers supporting other candidates have come to the defense of the Texas miracle... for example Political Math... the guy who did those videos with the pennies I think... has this detailed blog about how the left is not being truthful about Texas while Rick is being modest if anything (<a href="http://www.politicalmathblog.com/?p=1590">link</a>)...<br />
<blockquote>My advice to anti-Perry advocates is this: Give up talking about Texas jobs. Texas is an incredible outlier among the states when it comes to jobs. Not only are they creating them, they're creating ones with higher wages.</blockquote>What has all of this wrought so far? Rasmussen has Rick winning by double digits (<a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/gop_primary_perry_29_romney_18_bachmann_13">link</a>)... which should trouble all the other candidates yes... but I would be troubled by these numbers if I am Rick's peeps... if it gets down to a single digit race next week then suddenly Rick has stalled and lost momentum and all of that... and people like to pounce when a candidate slips a little in the polls... and the press will try to blame his Bernanke comments or the fact that more peeps have gotten to see the "real" Rick... which is all pretty shoddy and unfair but that is how it goes... even if a different pollster with completely different methodology comes out and shows Rick down by 5 points or 7 points the story might be that Rick is fading already which would not likely be true...<br />
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It is interesting to see Rick be attacked from almost every side... some on the right are fringing themselves by suggesting Rick is some kind of pro shariah candidate or that miracle vaccines are suddenly bad (<a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/15/rick-perry-and-the-hpv-debacle/">link</a>)... all while the left works itself into a tizzy about Rick being a Dominionist crazy right winger who hates science and progress... they need to get their stories straight because the stories do not match up...<br />
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Really I think Rick has seized Romney's inevitability from him... and seized Bachmann's thunder from her... the next big event will be the September 7 debate... in the meantime Rick has less than a few weeks to hone his message and raise a ton of money... If Rick can post a solid fundraising number at the end of this quarter while withstanding unfair attacks from all sides he probably solidifies support and cruises to a victory in the caucuses and primaries.<br />
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He may not be perfect to all GOP voters, but he is as close as it gets to the vast majority of them. You want a strong social conservative who is pro life and pro 2nd amendment? Check, check and check. You want a strong fiscal conservative with a strong record on job growth and keeping spending, debt, and taxes in check? Check, check, check, and check. You want a national security conservative who may be wary of some of our adventures but certainly is not suicidal or isolationist... check and check...<br />
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Rick has all the check boxes covered... he looks the part... he gives one hell of a speech... he is a fighter which is what voters want... he drives Obama and his cadre of peeps insane...<br />
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Rick has entered the race masterfully thus far... although I do believe he can perfect his stump speech and not have to read off the page... and I do believe he will have to have a much more extensive online operation out there fighting misinformation from all sides and promoting his side of the story.Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-55177970116477797582011-08-11T06:33:00.000-05:002011-08-11T06:33:01.883-05:00Is it just me, or has the MSM already gone a little crazy over the possibility of Rick running?They've already lost their marbles. Prepare for this to get even uglier as it becomes obvious that Obama is unelectable due to the economy and Rick with all of those amazing Texas job creation statistics is the best person to take the message of economic renewal to the people.<br />
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The MSM hyperbole over Rick may actually be the death knell for their credibility and relevance once and for all... Rick dealt with the same thing in Texas and basically ran around them rather than through them.. marginalizing the media in Texas in a big way... he won big... can he replicate the same strategy at the national level? It will be a lot more difficult, but Rick will have more online allies than McCain had in 2008 if he can win the nomination...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-38999369013197442302011-08-10T10:23:00.002-05:002011-08-10T10:23:00.522-05:00Kay's peeps trying to exact revenge for their shameful primary loss?Jennifer Sarver who worked on Kay's failed 2010 campaign against Rick has some words of advice on how to communicate in a campaign...<br />
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Now Sarver has turned her attention to attacking Rick's higher education reforms (<a href="http://americansforprosperity.org/080411-coalition-criticizes-forbes-ranked-researcher">link</a>)... which has raised the ire of Rick's allies... Peggy Venable of the influential Americans for Prosperity posted about Jennifer...<br />
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<blockquote>Jennifer Sarver is chair of the Texas Exes Public Relations Committee and spokeswoman for the Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education...and she is trashing Vedder and higher education reformers? Sounds like she needs a little schooling and UT needs some new public relations help. </blockquote><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">It isn't just Jennifer Sarver. It is several former Kay peeps, issuing anti Rick missives... Others have also noted the strangeness of former Kay peeps leading this attack on Rick... it just feels like a personal vendetta at this point instead of a real policy difference of opinion (<a href="http://timesoftexas.com/2011/07/09/higher-education-coalition-attack-on-perry-raises-eyebrows/">link</a>). Excerpt follows...</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><blockquote>The <a href="http://www.texaseducationexcellence.org/">Coalition for Higher Excellence in Higher Education</a> – a group that supports higher education reform ideas offered by the state’s university presidents and chancellors and has expressed concerns with some higher education reform ideas offered from outside academia – fired a rhetorical howitzer at Gov. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry" rel="wikipedia" title="Rick Perry">Rick Perry</a> yesterday. Political observers in <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=31.0,-100.0&spn=10.0,10.0&q=31.0,-100.0%20%28Texas%29&t=h" rel="geolocation" title="Texas">Texas</a> are left wondering why the organization chose to attack Perry by name and how this will play out.<br />
The coalition’s main communications consultants used to work for U.S. Sen. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Bailey_Hutchison" rel="wikipedia" title="Kay Bailey Hutchison">Kay Bailey Hutchison</a> and former president George W. Bush, two elected officials whose political interests have not always aligned perfectly with those of Perry.</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>[SNIP]</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>When asked about the statement attacking Perry by name and why it was issued, Shussler replied, “The statement was a response from the Coalition, which includes more than 200 leading Texans, including many supporters of Governor Perry, who are concerned about the negative impact of some of his higher education proposals.”<br />
Some grassroots conservatives are troubled. “I know that Perry’s uncompromising commitment to fiscal and social conservatism doesn’t always sit well with some of the more moderate members of the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.gop.com/" rel="homepage" title="Republican Party (United States)">Republican Party</a>,” said State Republican Executive Committee member Jason Moore, a talk radio talk show host on KWEL in Midland. “But I’m surprised that some of the business leaders who have joined this coalition would condone these kinds of cheap shots at Perry.”<br />
Most of the coalition’s press releases are distributed by Jenifer Sarver, who used to work on Hutchison’s staff. Sarver is chief of staff to Karen Hughes, who used to work for Gov. and later <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/george_w_bush" rel="rottentomatoes" title="George W. Bush">President George W. Bush</a>. Both currently work at the Austin office of Burson-Marsteller.<br />
Willeford said that the Burson-Marsteller firm is a paid consultant to the coalition. “As far as what is put out by the coalition and what is posted on our website, all that goes through our operating committee,” she said.</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>[SNIP]</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>But some Republican activists hope that this coalition will avoid messages that might be perceived as political attacks. “I sure hope that this coalition doesn’t allow former staffers for Hutchison and Bush to use the organization to attack Perry personally by name or harm his presidential chances in any way,” said Toby Marie Walker, a tea party activist in Waco, Texas. “Given the problems President Obama has created for our nation, the stakes are too high for that.” </blockquote></div><br />
More recently, pork barrel queen Kay seemed to take a swipe at Rick basically saying she basically has no plans to endorse him... saying it in a very petty and spiteful way which is the norm for Kay these days (<a href="http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2011/08/kay-bailey-hutchison-wont-endorse-rick-perry-for-president-says-she-wants-someone-with-private-sector-experience/">link</a>).<br />
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What a nightmare this whole thing must be for Kay... not only was she supposed to cruise to an easy victory over Rick she ended up losing by 20 something points... and now he is intrade's most likely candidate to be the Republican nominee surpassing Mitt Romney on that betting market (<a href="http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/?eventId=84328">link</a>).<br />
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For the peeps who are already putting slogans about Rick being 4 more years of Bush on bumper stickers... remember that Karen Hughes was also among Bush's big 3... Rick and W. seem to get along well personally but there is a huge chasm in the camps of the two candidates... with ironically... Rick the former Democrat being the more principled and conservative of the two... and hiring more conservative peeps around him as well as which matters tremendously when it comes to policy making...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-3149529421796533922011-08-10T08:57:00.000-05:002011-08-10T08:57:11.022-05:00More than two years ago Rick made an obvious joke about Texans wanting to leave the union... it is newsworthy now?Texans are a very independent group... and Rick has still never advocated for secession... but something that was posted and seen by many tens of thousands of people more than two years ago online has popped up again as new news in the media's drive to sensationalistically "vet" Rick (<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/more-perry-remarks-about-secession-come-light/">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<blockquote>well-known tech blogger <a href="http://scobleizer.com/">Robert Scoble</a> told The Texas Tribune on Tuesday that he remembers the meeting with Perry in the governor’s office in 2009. It's clear from interviews, <a href="http://scobleizer.com/2009/03/24/is-california-is-setup-for-a-brain-drain/">blogs</a> and Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/GovernorPerry/status/1343570054">postings</a> that the remarks were recorded nearly a month before the April Tea Party gathering, which helped launch Perry’s successful 2010 re-election effort.<br />
In the meeting, Perry can be heard speaking to the group of tech bloggers about the founding of Texas in 1836. A slideshow shows Perry pointing to a painting of the dramatic fall of the Alamo, artifacts in his office and the “Come and Take It” logo on his own boots.<br />
Texans have a “different feeling about independence,” Perry told the group.<br />
“When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation,” the governor can be heard saying. “And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”<br />
The bloggers erupted in laughter after the remarks, and the slideshow was posted under the headline “Texas Governor Rick Perry jokes about Texas leaving the United States.”</blockquote><br />
One of the tech bloggers from California I believe... perhaps Robert Scoble himself... in the recording even suggested that he would move to Texas if it became its own country... amid the robust laughter...<br />
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Heck you can buy "SECEDE" t-shirts and bumper on the drunkest part of 6th Street in Austin. For Texans it has nothing to do with George Wallace or the Deep South type of thinking and everything to do with our state's unique history... Texas was its own country at one point you see... with its own president... and its own ambassadors to other nations... and Texas is the only state to enter the United States via treaty rather than annexation...<br />
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...And given that Texas provides a disproportionate amount of jobs, tax dollars, military servicemen, oil, NFL football players, and other exports to the rest of the nation, sometimes it seems like Texas could still be its own country... and taking away the prospect of a violent Civil War Texas very well might be a lot better off as an independent nation with a continued strong affiliation with but independence from the rest of America... for Texans and non Texans the whole "secede" thing is sort of a larger than life mythology based in actual history... it is a shirt that tourists buy because they think it is funny... and a harmless line bloggers loudly laugh about because it is funny...<br />
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In the end Rick still never advocated secession... which actually irritates some of the more hard core secessionist peeps who wanted him to just sign an executive order making it happen... Ron Paul did advocate secession though... in a video defending Rick, Ron Paul went all in on secession. Ron Paul correctly tells the camera that Rick didn't call for secession... but then Ron Paul goes on to say how Texas can and likely should secede and how it is an important Constitutional principle and check on government in favor of liberty...<br />
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I guess it says a lot about the viability of the respective candidates that Ron Paul <u>actually</u> calling for secession isn't newsworthy while Rick obviously joking about others wanting secession gets the headlines... yet if Ron Paul places in the top few in Iowa's straw poll this Saturday will they start "vetting" him or do they just not even know how to handle him? I wouldn't likely vote for Ron Paul for president in a primary, and especially not this year, but I could see quite a lot of unfair, cliched and lazy media "vetting" if he were to become a top tier candidate with a strong finish as the polls currently show he will have... you have to wonder if Ron Paul <u>actually</u> talking up secession would be part of that?Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-57705376669069495472011-08-09T09:41:00.000-05:002011-08-09T09:41:12.778-05:00Wow... some epic and not to epic videos in support of Rick... all from outside groups...This one is from Students 4 Perry and it is the most compelling and on message...<br />
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<h1 id="watch-title"><span class="" dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="IT'S TIME FOR RICK PERRY">"IT'S TIME FOR RICK PERRY" </span></h1><br />
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This one is from Vets for Perry and is good enough I guess... it featured veteran and Texas lawmaker Jerry Patterson talking up Rick... the Veterans for Perry have a couple of other videos too promoting Rick's record as a veteran...<br />
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<h1 id="watch-title"><span class="" dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Jerry Patterson: a Veteran for Rick Perry">"Jerry Patterson: a Veteran for Rick Perry" </span></h1><br />
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Time for Rick Perry is okay... seems a little off somehow actually with some of this random b roll... also their use of the speech and clips of the crowd are out of sync and just awkward...<br />
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<h1 id="watch-title"><span class="" dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="It's Time for Perry">"It's Time for Perry" </span></h1><br />
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This one is apparently actually on television in Iowa on Fox News...<br />
<h1 id="watch-title"><span class="" dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="What if? Rick Perry for President 2012">"What if? Rick Perry for President 2012" </span></h1><object height="367" width="450"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TNSloevv56M?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TNSloevv56M?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="367" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br />
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There are new videos popping up every couple of days it seems... and now... with the Response day or prayer and fasting going well (l<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/rick-perrys-positive-response/2011/08/07/gIQAg4kQ1I_blog.html">ink</a>) and Rick possibly declaring in South Carolina at the RedState.com convention (<a href="http://www.redstate.com/erick/2011/08/08/about-charleston-and-rick-perry/">link</a>)... or maybe just declaring to declare... maybe we will see some David Weeks productions with Rick actually in them actually speaking to the American people in his own voice...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-66087935413687217262011-08-05T13:18:00.001-05:002011-08-05T13:19:18.119-05:00Everything you ever need to know about Rick...Matthew Dowd who by all accounts doesn't know Rick very well but is well known for his Bush involvement wrote a thing I have seen called "everything you need to know about Rick Perry."<br />
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Okay so what is it he has to say (<a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/the-rick-perry-i-know-20110805">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<blockquote>Having observed and known the governor, both as a Democrat and as a Republican, through 13 election cycles, I offer a primer on Perry in five key points:<br />
<ol style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: decimal; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He is an extremely astute politician with a keen sense of where voters are, and he has great instincts on message. Perry has ruthless discipline and communication. They say in politics, “Don’t let your boot off an opponent’s neck till Election Day.” Perry doesn’t take his boot off till a year after the votes have been counted and the opponent has faded into oblivion. He is actually a better campaigner than George W. Bush (Perry’s predecessor as Texas governor) was when he first entered the national scene.</li>
</ol><ol style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: decimal; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Perry has surrounded himself with a very loyal staff. His aides believe in him, and he in them. He is involved in campaign decisions, but he delegates well and doesn't stop being loyal because a mistake might be made. This is a huge advantage in the ebb and flow of presidential campaigns. </li>
</ol></blockquote><blockquote><ol style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: decimal; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">His statements <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/15/governor-says-texans-want-secede-union-probably-wont/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #005689; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">related to possible Texas secession</a> actually helped him in his recent race in 2010, and will help him in a national campaign in the Republican primaries and caucuses. In an environment where Republican voters despise the federal government, anti-Washington rhetoric is music to their ears. Conversely, this talk will hurt him in a general-election race. Moderate voters in the Midwest will see it as off-putting. </li>
</ol><ol style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: decimal; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Although he has run many times for both district and statewide office in Texas, Perry has never been fully vetted by the media. He underwent some scrutiny in his races for governor, but he has never endured the full-court press that happens in a presidential race. What the media discovers will not be as important as how he and the campaign handle the intense spotlight for the first time. Perry and some of his staffers are known to have thin skins. They will need to grow calluses if they are to succeed in the show. </li>
</ol><ol style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: decimal; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Perry has never lost a race. While many immediately list this as a positive (and it is laudable and suggests huge talent), losing at some point in your career makes you better when the inevitable problems hit. I have learned more from my losses in life and politics than from my victories. It’s the losses that really cause self-reflection and growth. President Obama and former Presidents Bush (father and son), Clinton, Reagan, and Nixon learned enormous amounts from setbacks in their political careers, and those losses eventually helped them win the White House. We know Perry can win. The real question is: Can he suffer defeat and rise to the next battle?</li>
</ol></blockquote><br />
Umm... really? That is all we need to know about Rick?<br />
<br />
I would say that some of these are sort of accurate but could apply to any candidate... and the one about Rick not being vetted? What planet is this guy on? I guess I understand the feeling that Rick will get ambushed on random trivia questions if and when he goes to Iowa or New Hampshire, but Rick is likely the most vetted of all the possible candidates including the current resident of the White House... he is constantly and often unfairly vetted... they make things up... they imagine scenarios... they exaggerate and sensationalize... they cover the same ground again and again... in his various campaigns every accusation has been lobbed at him you could think of... he has been vetted by opposition researchers affiliated with Kay, with Tony Sanchez, with Steve Mostyn, with Chris Bell... everyone has looked into every nook and cranny of Rick's life and finances... there aren't a lot of surprises.<br />
<br />
If Dowd means that Rick hasn't faced the press conference gauntlet that is also pretty dubious... although maybe he can make the point that Rick must hone a new national message that he can stay on and not get tripped up... and clarify and tighten some of his 10th Amendment talk for example so he doesn't run into trouble with the pro life peeps and anti gay marriage peeps again... all while still enticing those libertarian kinds of peeps with the federalist argument. Right now some of that is a little unexplained and hard to follow...<br />
<br />
As far as the thin skin argument goes I have not noticed that per se with most of them but definitely with some... but no more than any other staffer or consultant or advisor out there for any candidate... if anything Rick has pretty thick skin... especially compared to many of the opponents he has faced... he seems to be able to rattle his opponents more than they rattle him in other words...<br />
<br />
One thing about the thin skin argument is that none of his peeps can fire back and say "no we don't" because that proves the point... so I will say it for them... it is not really a unique attribute of Rick or his peeps. Maybe Dowd means that they hold grudges and exact their revenge on peeps who cross them... and who knows maybe there is some of that but again no more than any other political operation out there, and I really don't understand the thin skin argument from my observations over the decades.<br />
<br />
If someone set out to write "everything you need to know about Rick" I definitely don't think that would be the authoritative list no offense to Matt Dowd...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-8043649717163735702011-07-21T10:15:00.000-05:002011-07-21T10:15:16.180-05:00Rick within a few points of Obama, and he's not even running yet...You may have seen the various polls showing a "generic" Republican beating Barack Obama....<br />
<br />
What about real Republicans?<br />
<br />
Romney the front runner whom everyone knows at this point in terms of name identification is roughly tied with Obama. Rick who is obviously very well known in Texas but not as much outside of Texas is within striking distance of Obama, and Rick has not even declared his candidacy (<a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/election_2012_obama_leads_perry_bachmann_by_single_digits">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<blockquote>A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that President Obama would enjoy a modest 44% to 39% lead over Texas Governor Rick Perry. Given that choice, 10% would opt for a third-party candidate and eight percent (8%) are not sure.</blockquote>From the MSM, there is an effort right now to define Rick... as well as Michele Bachmann... as too far right especially on social issues... see the Colbert Report hit piece on Rick and his running mate God... which I guess is "funny" but maybe I am too old to get it.<br />
<br />
Still, there is a huge reservoir of undecided voters, and a huge reservoir open in terms of defining Rick. Without even running yet Rick has become the likely anti Romney choice for Republicans... Bachmann may have peaked too soon... we shall see won't we...<br />
<br />
I think this has to be very good news for Rick if he is thinking he is going to pull the trigger and run... if he jumps in the race the MSM and not so MSM on the liberal side will try to define him and Texas in the way that Obama would like... but Rick has to stay strong and confident that his record in Texas is unparalleled today in terms of adding new jobs....<br />
<br />
Rasmussen explains more and cautions against reading too much into these numbers just yet...<br />
<br />
<blockquote>It’s important to note, however, that Romney benefits from being perceived as the frontrunner. In 2004, the last time an incumbent president stood for re-election, Howard Dean was the early Democratic frontrunner and he polled best against George W. Bush. John Kerry was always a few points behind. However, once Kerry became the frontrunner in early 2008, his numbers became as good as Dean’s.</blockquote><blockquote>Polls conducted a year-and-a-half before an election provide a snapshot of where things are today but give little indication of what the mood might be on Election Day. If the economy substantially improves before November 2012, President Obama will be heavily favored to win re-election. If the opposite happens and the country endures a double-dip recession, just about any Republican challenger would be favored. If the economy stays as it is today, the race could be very competitive.</blockquote><blockquote>A good measure of the president’s re-election prospects is his <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll" target="_self" title="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Job Approval</span></a> rating among likely voters. His final vote total is likely to be very close to his final Job Approval figures.</blockquote><blockquote>Romney leads the polls for the GOP nomination among <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/romney_bachmann_cain_lead_the_pack_among_gop_primary_voters" target="_self" title="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/romney_bachmann_cain_lead_the_pack_among_gop_primary_voters"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Republican Primary voters</span></a>. However, it is far too early for the polls to give a sense of who is likely to emerge as the Republican nominee. In 2008, John McCain never took the lead in a national primary poll until December 31, 2007. </blockquote>I believe 2012 will be all about the economy. Even if the economy improves a little bit between now and election day... a 50/50 proposition... it won't be enough improvement to win. Of all the possible candidates, Rick can draw the most profound contrast on the economy... especially on job creation...<br />
<br />
I think the analysis Rasmussen puts out there is pretty solid... if the economy miraculously fully recovers, which there is almost no chance of... Obama wins easily like last time. If the economy gets worse, no way can Obama win. If the economy stays roughly where it is, or maybe gets slightly worse or slightly better, it will be a close race...<br />
<br />
America would have to add hundreds of thousands of jobs every month between now and November of 2012 just to get unemployment down below 8%... I don't see that happening... and despite the downplaying of the living, breathing Texas economic powerhouse by Paul Krugman and Rachel Maddow and those kinds of hacks... Texas factually speaking has created more new jobs than any other state in America by far... second place is not even close... Obama can't touch that.<br />
<br />
The issue becomes... Rick will need to hurry to define himself and his own record before the MSM fully defines him as they are trying to do now...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-68192294373205503192011-07-15T14:29:00.000-05:002011-07-15T14:29:05.605-05:00Rick's time as a Democrat... like Reagan's?It is interesting what people get interested in at the same time...<div><br />
</div><div>The New York Times... actually the Texas Tribune... seemed to get interested in this story about Rick being a Democrat back in the 1980s at the exact moment TIME magazine got interested in it...</div><div><br />
</div><div>First the Texas Tribune version (<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/rick-perry-democrat-years/">link</a>)...</div><div><blockquote>Gov. <a href="http://www.texastribune.org/directory/rick-perry/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Rick Perry</span></a>, a no-apologies conservative known for slashing government spending and opposing all tax increases, is about as Republican as you can get.</blockquote><blockquote>But that wasn’t always the case.</blockquote><blockquote>Perry spent his first six years in politics as a Democrat, in a somewhat forgotten history that is sure to be revived and scrutinized by Republican opponents if he decides to run for president.</blockquote><blockquote>A raging liberal he was not. Elected to represent a slice of rural West Texas in the state House of Representatives in 1984, Perry, a young rancher and cotton farmer, gained an early reputation as a fiscal conservative. He was one of a handful of freshman “pit bulls,” so named because they sat in the lower pit of the House Appropriations Committee, where they fought to keep spending low.</blockquote><blockquote>[SNIP] </blockquote><blockquote>The liberal <a href="https://www.texasobserver.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Texas Observer</span></a> called Perry the “Benedict Arnold of the Democratic Party” for siding too often with Clements, the Republican governor, and not enough with his Democratic colleagues.</blockquote><br />
This is obviously not news to readers of Rick vs. Kay... we covered this issue ad nauseum during the primary when both Kay and 9/11 Truther Debra Medina tried to use it against Rick. The problem there is that that attack was just so divorced from reality. Not only was Ronald Reagan once a Democrat, but the idea that Rick was insufficiently conservative because he was once a Democrat would get you laughed off the stage in Texas. Most Republican activists today remember just twenty years ago, when there was almost no such thing as a Republican, and the ones we did have in office were not always conservative enough for the grassroots... which is why conservative Democrats hung around for as long as they did. In fact, 2010 might have been the final gasp of air for conservative Democrats in Texas. They all either were defeated or switched parties to the Republican side. The only Democrats left now are liberals.<br />
</div><div>TIME magazine also did a profile on Rick's time as a Democrat, calling it his inconvenient truth because of his support for then-centrist Al Gore over liberals in the race (<a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2081596,00.html">link</a>). Excerpt follows...</div><div><blockquote> The tale begins in 1984, four years before Perry took the helm of Gore's Texas campaign, when Gore, then 36 and a congressional wunderkind from Tennessee, followed in his father's footsteps by winning a U.S. Senate seat. That same year, Perry, who was 34 and from much humbler roots as the son of a Texas Rolling Plains cotton farmer, won a seat in the Texas house of representatives. Both young men were handsome sons of the South and proudly touted their philosophical bearings in the regionally dominant conservative wing of the Democratic Party.</blockquote><blockquote>In 1988, seizing on the opportunity afforded by a lineup of southern primaries on Super Tuesday, Gore announced his bid for the Democratic nomination for President. Ronald Reagan's second term was drawing to a close, and Republicans were set to nominate the next in line, then Vice President George H.W. Bush. The Democratic field was wide open, with a raft of candidates to the left of Gore, who was dubbed the "southern centrist" by the press. The young Senator, described by the New York Times as "solidly built, dark and indisputably handsome," lined up a list of conservative Democratic big-name supporters, including Senators Howard Heflin of Alabama, Terry Sanford of North Carolina, Bennett Johnson of Louisiana and Sam Nunn of Georgia and Governors Jim Hunt of North Carolina and Buddy Roemer of Louisiana. (In 1991 Roemer, like Perry, left the Democratic Party for the GOP; he is now also reportedly considering a Republican presidential run.)</blockquote><blockquote>Gore shared the views of his fellow southern centrists — he opposed the federal funding of abortion, supported a moment of silence in schools for prayer, approved funding of the Nicaraguan contras and was against the ban on interstate handgun sales. It was a platform a conservative West Texas Democrat like state representative Perry could stand on, and he signed up to chair the Senator's Texas campaign. </blockquote><blockquote>Several more-liberal state Democratic Party leaders cast their lots with two of the other candidates, Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. But Gore worked the Texas legislative ranks for support, winning the backing of Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis and Lieut. Governor Bill Hobby. Lewis was especially important to appointing legislators to vital positions on fiscal committees. And so it was not surprising that 27 members of the Texas legislature, including Perry, a young two-term legislator, joined the duo in their support for Gore.</blockquote><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Both of these are pretty good and fair reads, although they may leave out some key details and add some details that are a bit overblown. You should probably read both of them if you want to carry on an intelligent conversation about old Texas politics and Rick's place in them... these are certainly better done than many of the hysterical things I have read in recent months written by people who have no idea what they are talking about but feel like they have found some scoop so they rush to tell the world "HEY DID YOU REALIZE RICK PERRY WAS A DEMOCRAT OH MY GOSH STOP THE PRESSES THE WORLD MAY END!"</div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Paul Burka, for all his nonsense lately, wrote a pretty good blog called "Dear Yankee" with several dos and don'ts for non Texans trying to write about Texas and - or Rick... and his number two bullet point is about the former Democrat thing (<a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/2011-08-01/btl.php">link</a>). Excerpt follows...</div><blockquote>2. <i>It’s not a big deal that Perry was once a Democrat.</i> To suggest otherwise will make you look foolish. When Perry was elected to the statehouse, in 1985, conservative Democrats ran the Legislature. In 1989, realizing that a conservative had little future in the party, Perry switched to the GOP. He has been a rock-solid Republican ever since and has driven the state party further to the right.</blockquote><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Texas truly is a pretty unique place, so sometimes our history doesn't translate in the context of say New York history or Massachusetts history... but Burka is right on this one... and not just about the media... <b>other presidential candidates will look foolish if they try to point and say "Rick was once a Dem, we can't trust him!"</b> My hunch is that most of them will be smart enough not to serve up that soft ball for Rick and instead may subtly use it behind the scenes, but even then... it is not a liability... and it only makes the mystique of Rick's unabashed conservatism more attractive and intriguing. So far, I see it mostly coming from the Ron Paul peeps, very loudly and repeatedly, but not very effectively.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">I will say that Rick switched to the Republican side at an earlier point in his life than President Ronald Reagan switched to the Republican side as I have been reminded by Rick supporters... if asked in a debate or in a big national interview, Rick probably can't call himself the next Reagan, but he could sure hint at it... because that's who we're all looking for... the next Reagan.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Finally I would leave you with this blog from the American Thinker on Rick's journey from Democrat to Republican back in the 1980s (<a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/06/rick_perrys_conservative_credentials.html">link</a>). Excerpt follows...</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><blockquote>In the articles, blog posts and their attending comments being posted here at American Thinker and at other websites about the possibility of Texas governor, Rick Perry entering the presidential race, there seems to be some question as to Perry's authenticity as a conservative and Republican because he was once a Democrat and was Al Gore's Texas campaign manager in 1988.</blockquote><blockquote>As someone who lived almost thirty years in Texas, perhaps I can clarify the issue. The Democratic Party that controlled Texas for 150 years was more conservative than half the current Republican Party nationwide. Just a few decades back, everyone in Texas was a Democrat. I was raised a Democrat and married into a long-time, Yellow-dog Democratic family in West Texas. We were all conservatives except for a couple of rebellious hippie types residing in Austin, which at that time was becoming the liberal capital of the South.</blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"></div><blockquote>As the Texas Democratic party was slowly taken over by that liberal movement emanating from Austin and increasingly, Houston, millions of conservative Texas Democrats changed parties to remain true to their conservative beliefs. Rather than being cause to question Perry's authenticity, his switch is a testament to the solidity of his conservative principles. As I and so many other Southerners are fond of saying, "We didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Party left us," which is exactly what happened to Rick Perry.</blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;"><blockquote>By the way, the Democrat who beat out Al Gore for the candidacy in that primary was a Massachusetts liberal, Michael Dukakis. Another primary candidate was Jesse Jackson. Gore, from Tennessee, and Dick Gephardt from Missouri were considered the conservatives in that primary race.</blockquote></span></span><br />
<blockquote>Too many Americans forget that Al Gore hasn't always been the flaming liberal he is now. Gore was the scion of an old Southern family, son of a U.S. Senator who once advocated using nuclear weapons to end the Korean War. While more liberal than most Southern Democrats, Gore's father was conservative enough to refuse to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like his party, he gradually became more liberal, too much so for his conservative Tennessee constituents, who booted him out of office in 1970 and handed political power to the Republican Party for the first time since Reconstruction.</blockquote><blockquote>So Al Gore was a product of a liberalizing Democratic party in that 1988 primary, but he was still more conservative than all the other candidates except Gephardt. By campaigning for Al Gore in 1988, Rick Perry was not betraying his conservative principles, he was, like so many of us, simply a product of the changing political times, another Southern Democrat slowly awakening to the fact that he was being abandoned by his increasingly liberal party. It is noteworthy that it was the very next year after he campaigned for Gore that Perry changed party affiliation.</blockquote><blockquote>I can see how being around Al could do that to you...</blockquote></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">I do hope to see Rick on stage answering this question, because I really feel like he could both knock it out of the park with independents and moderates, and reassure the hard core base of the GOP, in one fell swoop. If anything, Rick's background gives him a special connection to those rural or formerly rural peeps in places like Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, and Indiana, won by Obama... Rick can relate to them. He can relate to former Democrats or "Reagan Democrats" who also aren't really Democrats anymore but may not be so sure about those fat cat Republicans either...</div>Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-2161009840149446692011-07-11T10:21:00.002-05:002011-07-11T10:37:01.403-05:00Bush Peeps vs. Rick Peeps? A Feud? Overblown?Douglas MacKinnon sez the Rick vs. Bush thing is way overblown (<a href="http://www.statesman.com/opinion/mackinnon-dont-believe-the-anonymous-chatter-about-a-1598000.html">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
<h1 class="articleHeadline" style="text-align: center;">MacKinnon: Don't believe the anonymous chatter about a Perry-Bush feud<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"> </span></h1><br />
<blockquote>For all of those trying to make that into something it's not, I've got some news for you. Most Republicans, conservatives, independents and Americans who are paying attention could care less. Ultimately they just want to know two things: Is Perry going to run, and if he is, does he represent the adult leadership the voters are so desperately seeking?</blockquote><blockquote>What does bother people are anonymous quotes from cowardly political aides who operate from the shadows and make not so thinly veiled threats. That New York Times story showcased two of them. The first "warned Mr. Perry against establishing his own conservative bona fides by criticizing Mr. Bush, saying, ‘If you're really trying to be the nominee and want to go the distance, you just don't want the former president of the United States and his people working against you.' "</blockquote><blockquote>The second chimed in with, "He's going to need all the help he can get from all the Republicans he can muster, so he ought to be prudent about that."</blockquote><blockquote>A few things about those anonymous threats. First, do these "close associates" of Bush really mean to say that if Perry does happen to have an honest difference of opinion on policy, that he's not allowed to voice it? Ever? Second, that if Perry does vocalize a difference, then Bush's "people" are going to work against him? What's that mean, exactly? Back another Republican? Donate to the Obama campaign? Hold their breath until they turn blue? What?</blockquote><br />
I agree with a lot of this. Blood got a little boiling at times between a camps during the 2010 race. Remember, my whole thing was that I had great friends on both sides of the Rick vs. Kay divide. A lot of those Kay peeps were Bush peeps, but a lot of those Rick peeps were also Bush peeps, something often overlooked by people trying to drive a certain agenda.<br />
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I will say though that Karen Hughes does seem like she is cruising for a bruising (<a href="http://www.lonestarreport.org/Home/tabid/38/EntryId/1262/Higher-Education-Coalition-attack-on-Perry-raises-eyebrows.aspx">link</a>). No matter how often I have seen her praise Rick and his campaign when she speaks at luncheons and gatherings, she still does seem to end up on the other side from Rick on many important and hotly debated issues. For example, Rick and his conservative allies are trying to shake up colleges and universities and tame the explosion of costs and the bubble forming in higher education ... Karen Hughes' public relations shop is meanwhile issuing press releases trashing Rick and the efforts of the reform minded think tanks on behalf of the UT administration... one wonders how many taxpayer dollars are being spent trashing reform and rallying around the status quo but I digress...<br />
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Even on this issue... it doesn't feel like something that will kill relations between Bush peeps and Rick peeps. Karen Hughes is just one person. Karl Rove who was also a Kay person is on television regularly pimping Rick as a great communicator, great fundraiser, a smart and savvy politician, and all of that...<br />
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Don't forget also when Bush's campaign manager Joe Allbaugh endorsed Rick over Kay... and many other staffers worked for both Bush and Rick... there are a lot of examples of the Bush team being with Rick, but the examples of them not seem to dominate the headlines.<br />
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Rick has some policy differences from George W. Bush. No Child Left Behind was a signature piece of legislation for Bush. Rick hated it because it expanded federal power and dumped costs and mandates onto Texas and other states... Bush never or rarely used his veto pen to the point of allowing a lot of spending... Rick has vetoed many billions in spending and line item vetoed a lot as well. Rick is generally more conservative than Bush on some issues... but that doesn't mean they don't get along or that Bush's peeps... other than maybe Karen Hughes on ed reform... are going to actively work against Rick....<br />
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Rick will obviously get questions about Bush if he hits the campaign trail. Rick will need to distance himself from some of the policies of Bush... and if pointing out substantive policy differences antagonizes the anonymous Bush peeps who feel the Bush legacy is their legacy... well... they are just being petty.<br />
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Strangely enough Rick mostly benefits from the perception that there are two distinct camps and Rick's camp is different and disliked by the Bush camp... yes Bush's reputation is rapidly being rehabilitated especially when people remember that the "terrible jobless Bush economy" had an unemployment rate of 5.2% on average while Obama's "recovery" is planted firmly above 9%... still... Bush still gets blamed by a lot of Americans for the economic situation we are in right now. Rick has the economy going his way but he may have some difficulty convincing peeps that a man from Texas has the solutions due to the Bush baggage... that is just a reality... and the reality is that Rick is reportedly going to call Bush for advice on running for president... they are friends in that professional sense... and I think they both realize the legacies and histories will be written later... and in the meantime politics sometimes requires distancing yourself a little bit from your friends...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-4066613251328952322011-06-28T11:06:00.000-05:002011-06-28T11:06:53.147-05:002012 watch... Rick beats Michele Bachmann among teapartiers....Rick recently dominated a Freedom Works Straw Poll of tea party peeps (<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2011/0627/On-Michele-Bachmann-announcement-day-a-tea-party-nod-to-Rick-Perry">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<blockquote>Washington</blockquote><blockquote>First, a disclaimer: The poll was completely unscientific. Some 160 tea partyers from around the country had gathered at the <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Washington%2c+DC" target="_self"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Washington</span></a> headquarters of <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/FreedomWorks" target="_self"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">FreedomWorks</span></a>, a conservative group that trains tea partyers in political organizing and advocacy. With reporters watching, the assembled activists were asked for a show of hands on the Republican presidential candidates.</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>The winner: <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Rick+Perry" target="_self"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Texas Gov. Rick Perry</span></a>. He isn’t a candidate yet, and it’s not certain he ever will be. But Governor Perry’s “victory” is just one small indication that, were he to run, Perry would start with the goodwill of the <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Republican+Party" target="_self"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">GOP</span></a>’s most energetic wing.</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Texas Tribune boss Evan Smith tweeted a hint to Michele Bachmann's peeps about a story in the Texas Tribune about Rick's allegedly controversial views on things...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXRIqTP8uIWLSU84jt2njLnycVaZ8Y8UQ-rs2gOBAir-HoGhjisfqu_T5f-8B_whiQh5MgNXnpybqKlctJ8et-nO5QckC27CtgPIG3xWanxvkz3UWkseUVZihlPIf5oGQTJwsnGX2SYgw/s1600/evanasmith.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXRIqTP8uIWLSU84jt2njLnycVaZ8Y8UQ-rs2gOBAir-HoGhjisfqu_T5f-8B_whiQh5MgNXnpybqKlctJ8et-nO5QckC27CtgPIG3xWanxvkz3UWkseUVZihlPIf5oGQTJwsnGX2SYgw/s400/evanasmith.png" width="400" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXRIqTP8uIWLSU84jt2njLnycVaZ8Y8UQ-rs2gOBAir-HoGhjisfqu_T5f-8B_whiQh5MgNXnpybqKlctJ8et-nO5QckC27CtgPIG3xWanxvkz3UWkseUVZihlPIf5oGQTJwsnGX2SYgw/s1600/evanasmith.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
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Maybe some wishful thinking by Evan Smith, no fan of Rick's, or maybe he just wants conflict because conflict gets more eye balls on his website...<br />
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Jay Root wrote up a story on Rick's book and some of the things he wrote in it (<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/rick-perry-no-stranger-to-controversial-views/">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<blockquote>Months before liberal Congressman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-government/reps-barney-frank-ron-paul-want-to-end-federal-ban-on-marijuana-cede-enforcement-to-states/2011/06/23/AGd7OphH_story.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">teamed up</span></a> with Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, to back an effort to de-criminalize marijuana, Perry was making essentially the same point in his book, writing that Washington has greatly overstepped its bounds by making pot use a federal crime.</blockquote><blockquote>“It ought not be the federal government’s job telling them they can’t do it,” Perry said in that November interview. “I totally and completely disagree with the concept of legalizing marijuana, but it ought to be California’s decision.”</blockquote><blockquote>Perry has made the same argument about same-sex marriage. He’s against gay marriage himself — reflecting the conservative state he represents — but he has argued in favor of allowing each state to decide for itself what its policy will be.</blockquote><blockquote>“If you don’t support the death penalty and citizens packing a pistol, don’t come to Texas,” Perry says. “If you don’t like medical marijuana and gay marriage, don’t move to California.”</blockquote><blockquote>....</blockquote><br />
<blockquote>Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia and veteran presidential campaign analyst, said the 2012 GOP primary is a good forum for Perry to be putting forth edgy proposals. Tea party enthusiasts are demanding that politicians shake up Washington and enact deep spending cuts.</blockquote><blockquote>“I don’t think he has a thing to worry about on these items in the Republican primary. There are a lot of cross currents that will protect him,” Sabato said. “So many of them have unorthodox positions. It’s a choose your poison type of election year for Republicans.”</blockquote><br />
I don't know that these positions are even very controversial... most Americans oppose gay marriage but probably don't mind if some other state allows it... most Americans don't smoke marijuana or want it legal near them, but they don't care if California makes it legal... if you believe in states having rights, you have to take the good with the bad I guess...<br />
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Rick's positions on entitlements being a ponzi scheme are spot on as well.... and will only help in 2012... Rick is ahead of his time maybe but controversial seems to be an overused word by the msm.... they declare it controversial therefore it is... technically anything is controversial if you have more than one side on the issue... even mom and apple pie are controversial because you could always find people to support and oppose anything...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-12350652007073113892011-06-13T09:46:00.000-05:002011-06-13T09:46:58.194-05:00Cal Jillson officially jumps the shark... "you can't run for president bashing the national government"SMU political science professor Cal Jillson came up with this doozie in an article about whether Rick might run for president (<a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/06/speculation-builds-about-perry-presidential-bid">link</a>). Excerpt follows..<br />
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<blockquote>"So much of what made him successful in Texas has been his bashing the national government," Jillson said. "And <b>you can't run for president bashing the national government</b>."</blockquote><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm................</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">I don't know if Rick is running or thinking of running or anything like that, but the winner of the 2012 election will absolutely be the most effective basher of national government.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">The other thing that is so funny about Jillson's comment is Rick was constantly questioned by "experts" just like Jillson about why his gubernatorial campaign was so focused on Washington... because surely he had some ulterior presidential motive behind it... why else would he ever talk about Washington... no Texas campaign would ever do that... it doesn't make sense, and it remains to be seen whether it will work in Texas.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Now it is the opposite? Professors in general, not just Jillson, may have jumped the shark with this comment.</div>Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-15169330387530667242011-06-02T11:51:00.000-05:002011-06-02T11:51:21.178-05:00Is Rick running?It sure seems like Rick may be suddenly thinking about running... and why wouldn't he?<div><br />
</div><div><b>ECONOMY AND JOBS</b></div><div>Texas has the best economy in America, with more jobs and more prosperity than any other state. Other people are more knowledgable about this than I am, but the contrast between Texas and Illinois or Texas and the rest of the country is pretty startling... and if jobs and the economy are a big issue how could you not pick the governor with the absolute best track record of any in the nation...</div><div><br />
</div><div><div><b>FISCAL ISSUES</b></div><div>Rick was one of the only peeps against bailouts back when bailouts were the coolest thing in the world... Rick will be the only candidate who can say he has actually cut spending... and that he has done it more than once... Rick was against ethanol mandates from the beginning which conventional wisdom says makes winning Iowa more difficult but my belief is that Iowa Republicans will respect someone who is principled and doesn't pander on something that has obviously failed. Rick has been strong for a balanced budget amendment, which I think would be a popular campaign plank in a run for president...</div></div><div><br />
</div><div><b>BORDER SECURITY AND IMMIGRATION</b></div><div>Rick seems to have found a very good formula on immigration and border security. He appeals to Hispanics because his rhetoric is not caustic, and he doesn't call for drastic measures that seem more like racism or discrimination. On the other hand, he is one of the most hawkish elected officials out there when it comes to securing the border itself and criticizing the federal government for their failure on the issue. While Rick might not win the more jingoistic "they took our jobs" crowd in some place like Iowa, he appeals to the vast majority of reasonable voters with his tough on border security but not angry at Mexicans views.</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN POLICY</b></div><div>He is one of the only possible candidates with actual military experience having served in the Air Force for several years in the 1970s... flying missions all over the world. Rick has visited Iraq and Afghanistan many times and seems to be a rock star with the military rank and file, not to mention Israel, China, Europe, and other places in an official capacity. Rick also seems to have found a happy medium between the "neocon rethuglican" pro-war all the time caricature and the crazy pacifist anti-war peacenik caricature of peeps like Ron Paul or Howard Dean... from what I gather Rick supports the idea of the war on terror, supported going into Afghanistan and Iraq, but thinks it's now time to extricate America as best we can from those theaters and rethink the way we fight our battles... in a smarter way that keeps our homeland secure but also doesn't sacrifice our brave young men unnecessarily... It will be hard to call him just another Bush on foreign policy, but he's also not as irresponsible as the Ron Paul isolationist bent...</div><div><br />
</div><div>Bottom line is that Rick probably has more foreign policy experience as a sitting governor than the current president has after more than two years as the actual president... and Rick definitely has more experience and credibility on military issues and national security than almost any other Republican in the race...</div><div><br />
</div><div><div><b>SOCIAL ISSUES</b></div><div>There may not be a more pro life governor in the history of this country than Rick. There may only be a handful of more pro second amendment governors ever. Rick has the social issues locked down, but interestingly he has framed his philosophy in a way that says to the socially moderate or socially liberal Republicans that he is for states deciding these issues instead of the federal government... still... nobody will mistake Rick's faith... he has cultivated a rabid following at mega churches around Texas, and when he preaches at these churches, he clearly knows the Bible and is not just pandering or awkwardly giving a prepared speech... he is a social conservative in his heart... despite being accurately described as libertarian leaning as well... his philosophy may be contradictory for some, but it is the sweet spot of the Republican Party...</div></div><div><br />
</div><div><div><b>TEA PARTIES</b></div><div>How many candidates went to tea parties in April 2009? Not many prominent ones. In fact most prominent politicians sneered at the notion. Rick embraced the tea party movement from the earliest days. He is a favorite among conservative activists, online right wing bloggers, and precinct chairman type people, and others. Rick knows how the tea parties work. He wouldn't ever pander to them or try to control them the way some candidates do... but he would be the candidate with the most tea party support the instant he got into the race.</div></div><div><br />
</div><div><b>FUNDRAISING</b></div><div>Rick is from Texas. He has been the Republican Governors Association finance chairman and is now the overall chairman... he knows how to raise money. His campaign raised a lot of money online in 2010. He has proven he can raise a lot of money in one day... although federal limits may make it a lot more difficult since he has always raised money in Texas without limits...</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>CAMPAIGNING</b></div><div>Rick is a great campaigner. He embraces social networking and online media. He is made for television with his tan skin and full head of hair... like the Marlboro man image he has held since twenty years ago when he first started getting into politics... many who have seen him in action know that he is disciplined unlike almost any other candidate... he gets up early and doesn't get off message... he trusts his army to fight his battles, and he does what he needs to do without driving his staff about minutiae crazy like many politicians...</div><div><br />
</div><div><div><b>PERSONAL STORY</b></div><div>Rick has a great personal story. He would be the least privileged president in American history in terms of his upbringing. His house did not have running water for a good part of his childhood, from what I have read in the past. He literally had an outhouse for a long time. His mother sewed his clothes and even underwear until he went into the military. He was not rich... he did not live in Indonesia and attend a Muslim school... he grew up in Paint Creek, Texas and fought for his success the hard way. He knows how to ride a horse. He knows how to fly a plane. He knows how to shoot a gun. He runs. He rides bikes... and rides the other kind of bikes... he shoots coyotes and loves his dog... Rick is the kind of exciting candidate that Republican primary voters can get a tingle up their leg about... and his personal story appeals to middle class Americans in middle America... plus Hispanics and others who also may have grown up without privilege... Rick was an Eagle Scout... he is definitely the picture of the fifties kid who grew up and avoided the hippie dippie drug scene and opted for the straight laced pro America scene throughout the sixties and seventies...</div></div><div><br />
</div><div>Plus Rick has been extremely well vetted in his personal life... and his personal life despite some salacious rumors that have popped up and been shot down is pretty boring... he married his high school sweetheart... has two young adult kids... he has so many schedulers and handlers and peeps around him that if he had gone off to "hike the Appalachian Trail" I think we would all know about it by now... juicy things like that do not stay secret over the course of tough campaigns year after year after year against candidates with crazy amounts of money for opposition research...</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>CONTRA</b></div><div>Does Rick have detractors? Has Rick been governor long enough that he has pissed some people off on some little issue? Of course... and unlike say Romneycare or Pawlenty's support for ethanol and other liberal ideas or Herman Cain's support for bailouts, none of Rick's so called mistakes are deal killers for reasonable people.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The biggest downsides to Rick are pretty miniscule. He supported allowing girls to be vaccinated against HPV, which causes cervical cancer. He overturned himself before that ever actually happened, after he saw the public outcry over the issue. The knock is that he wanted to personally inject little girls with a dangerous STD drug, but that is silly. People would have been able to easily opt out under his plan... but again, he saw the public reaction and killed the plan before it ever took effect.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Another one is on the fringe of conspiracy theories... they call him a Bilderberger because he spoke at a conference along with dozens of other major politicians of both parties. When Rick has been asked about it in public, he usually makes it sound like he went in, gave a speech, shook a few hands, and left... and that the whole thing was pretty unremarkable. When I see someone bring up Bilderberg, I automatically dismiss them as a kook, and so should you. Maybe Bilderberg has some secret society aspects to it, but it seems pretty clear Rick is not even in their club.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The other one is the Trans Texas Corridor... which is perhaps the most visionary idea in transportation since the interstate highway system... imagine if I told you that there are private companies willing to build new transportation infrastructure, including roads, trains, and utilities, and do it on their own dime. Obviously they need something in exchange... and that is usually tolls and fares on roads and trains, respectively. Plus, they obviously have to be able to buy the land along the right of way using eminent domain. Meanwhile, the government would still build non toll roads and expand and maintain existing highways so people have "free" options. </div><div><br />
</div><div>There is nothing unconservative about transportation privatization, but people objected to it being a "land grab" (as if government-built roads don't use land) or that it was a foreign company (it was a San Antonio based company with a Spanish partner)... or they just didn't like the idea of roads not being "free" (government-built roads cost more taxpayer dollars and take longer to build). The best part of Rick's plan was that it would take these many many billions of dollars from the private infrastructure companies and give that over to the state to expand and maintain "free" roads like I-35. As it is, Texas can't afford to build new roads or repair and maintain existing roads into the future. We don't get enough of our own highway dollars back from the federal government. We have too many people moving here, yet gas tax revenue is both declining and being eroded by inflation... either you are for privatization of some new construction projects or you are for higher taxes... either you are for private companies playing a role in building roads, or you are for not having new roads. The case for the TTC is solid. The criticisms are almost always misguided. Rick has gone out of his way to push eminent domain reform to prevent abuse of private property rights. I think there will just always be a very vocal sub set of peeps who oppose toll roads and view "freedom" as being able to drive without paying the costs associated with driving on safe, efficient roadways. Like the HPV vaccine, the TTC is dead anyway, so it's not even a real issue.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Other knocks on Rick are that he endorsed Rudy Giuliani in 2008, and Rudy was not conservative enough... Rick's rationale was that he could beat Hillary Clinton, which was true at the time. The press try to knock his job creation funds like the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Emerging Technology Fund as being slush funds for rewarding friends and supporters, but no matter how many articles they write, people still like the idea that Texas can entice businesses and close the deal with tax breaks for moving here. Creating jobs and attracting businesses from other states is hard to knock. Otherwise, being called Governor "Good Hair" is not actually a negative in the way that liberals use it. Being in office too long is another knock, but that's not really a knock when you're an outsider running against Washington... and you are new to most peeps. Other things I have heard are that he worked for Al Gore in the 1980s back when Al Gore was the conservative choice in the Democratic Party... and remember that being a Republican in Texas before about 1990 didn't mean you were conservative, just as being a Democrat in Texas back then didn't mean you were liberal. Texas was basically a one party state with liberal Democrats and conservative Democrats. Rick was always a conservative Democrat. If anything, I think having been a Democrat way back when but having a conversion helps Rick. It helps him in the Ronald Reagan or Phil Gramm comparison... both former Democrats and future Republican heroes. It helps him with the millions of voters out there who understand exactly where Rick is coming from. It's not about party, it's about principles.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Another so called problem that usually ends up being a positive is the "secession" stuff. Rick never actually used the word secede. Nor did he advocate for it... he in fact said we had a good union and that he sees no reason to dissolve it. Still, the Rachel Maddows of the world casually throw out that "Rick is a secessionist" line with such regularity that many may think it is actually true. If asked, the secession comment actually allows Rick to talk about his strongest points... that people are fed up with the federal government's one size fits all mandates on the states...</div><div><br />
</div><div>The other big knock is what people are calling Rick's "Bush Problem." Others might call it Bush Fatigue. Rick is from Texas. Ironically, the Bush team may snipe and undermine his efforts because they don't like Rick, all while the anti Bush peeps will bash Rick for being another George W. Bush. Rick can't win on that, and the Bush and Texas handicap might set him back. That being said, Rick can overcome that by distancing himself from George W. Bush on a few key issues and showing that Texas is the most bustling economy in the country under his tenure.</div><div><br />
</div><div><b>THE ONLY HOPE</b></div><div>Whether Rick ultimately runs or not, he may very well be the only hope to win in 2012. Obama is strong but vulnerable, especially on the economy. In terms of the primary, who other than Rick unites all the various portions of the Republican electoral coalition? Who brings fiscal conservatives, tea party peeps, traditional conservatives, social conservatives, midwest conservatives, national security conservatives, and the rest all together? Rick excites crowds in Manhattan and California, just as much as he excites crowds in Abilene and Tyler, Texas.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I support the movement to draft Rick into the race. I think... contrary to conventional wisdom... that Rick has the luxury of waiting a few more months to make his move. He has a platform as RGA Chairman... he is traveling around the country for that... he has plenty of exposure in the media but not too much exposure... Rick can play the wait and see game a few more months before making a move, but if he is even just considering getting in, he may want to continue talking like he may get in, in order to scare away the money and committed support from other candidates.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Could one of the declared candidates win? Of course they could. Republicans will rally around our guy to defeat Obama regardless of who it is... but unless Rick thinks Obama is unbeatable in 2012 and instead has his eye on 2016, why not flirt with the "Draft Rick" movement a little bit until you make your final decision?</div><div><br />
</div><div>If Rick runs, I think he may exceed expectations yet again after being underestimated... can he ride that all the way to the White House? It will be tough, but he may be our only hope.</div>Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-34660128978700543272011-04-15T08:57:00.000-05:002011-04-15T08:57:00.086-05:00New blog on the scene... the race to replace Kay...This new blog called Replacing Kay Bailey is not my doing although it looks a lot like Rick vs. Kay design wise...<br />
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<a href="http://replacingkaybailey.blogspot.com/">http://replacingkaybailey.blogspot.com/</a><br />
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Interesting... the senate race will get heated in the coming months I predict... and it doesn't really matter who the Democrats put up in 2012... the winner of the Republican primary will be the winner of the general election...<br />
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The logic then becomes which candidate is the most conservative and can send the biggest message to Washington... right now the grassroots heat seems to be with Michael Williams and Ted Cruz... with Roger Williams maybe a bit lagging behind those two...<br />
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Tom Leppert's run thus far as been fraught with problems but he has a lot of wealthy associates he can tap for donations... Elizabeth Ames Jones had a state wide tour nobody showed up to but she may be able to raise some money who knows...<br />
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The rumor mill is also saying that Dewhurst may just be comfortable as Liet. Governor for now and may run for Rick's spot in 4 years... although if he gets into the senate race he is probably the front runner based on name and money.<br />
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Others like Craig James are probably non starters... but he has good name identification and a good amount of money...<br />
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It will be interesting to follow along. I think the first quarter FEC reports are somewhat revealing but not really all that much... there are a couple of candidates who can compete with or without money... others will need to raise a lot more than a measly million dollars to be competitive with Dewhurst should he get into the race... I would also caution reading too much into the first quarter numbers since some candidates were pushing raising money the whole time and others weren't... the next quarter will probably get more interesting, and the aggregate of all the quarters will start to add up pretty quickly...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-90270891748219058072011-04-08T15:52:00.000-05:002011-04-08T15:52:00.143-05:00Rick the 2012 frontrunner?What?<br />
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Among some big name governors Rick is in the lead according to a new poll... (<a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/04/07/new-2012-gop-face-texan-rick-perry">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<blockquote>The Washington Whispers Poll has discovered a new <a href="http://politics.usnews.com/topics/subjects/republican-party"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Republican </span></a>2012 contender: Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Considered a very long shot by GOP pundits and political analysts, nearly one in three of those in our poll chose Perry as the sitting governor most suited to challenger President Obama.</blockquote><a href="" id="read_more"></a> <blockquote>By getting 29 percent to choose him, the two-term Perry shows that he could be a force in the upcoming Republican primaries, though it also suggests that voters aren't satisfied with the more established GOP names in the <a href="http://politics.usnews.com/topics/subjects/2012-presidential-election"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">2012 </span></a>field.</blockquote><blockquote>The poll was also good news for New Jersey Chris Christie and Indiana Sen. Mitch Daniels, Christie won 27 percent, Daniels 22 percent, as the governors ready to run against Obama.</blockquote><blockquote>But our Synovate eNation Internet poll was more bad news for Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who's planning to run for president. As in other polls, Barbour came in last in the Whispers poll, taking just 10 percent. Even little-known South Carolina first-term Gov. Nikki Haley beat him with 12 percent.</blockquote><blockquote>Governors are back on top of the Republican presidential heap as voters look for a 2012 nominee. Which sitting governor is best suited to challenge President Obama?</blockquote><blockquote>Texas Gov. Rick Perry 29%</blockquote><blockquote>New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie 27%</blockquote><blockquote>Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels 22%</blockquote><blockquote>South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley 12%</blockquote><blockquote>Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour 10%</blockquote><blockquote>Source: The Synovate eNation Internet poll was conducted March 25-29 among 1,000 nationally representative households by global market research firm Synovate.</blockquote><br />
Are you shocked by this?<br />
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I would have thought Barbour was higher... This poll really doesn't include former governors or current Congress men and women... but among current governors Rick gets the highest marks...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-50654055110994333932011-03-09T10:10:00.000-06:002011-03-09T10:10:24.899-06:00Rick standing firm on not tapping the rainy day fund...Rick and Grover Norquist had a press conference yesterday to reiterate the importance of keeping the rainy day fund as much intact as possible (<a href="http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/03/08/2906723/perry-urges-texas-lawmakers-to.html">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<blockquote>The state's reserve fund is expected to grow to more than $9 billion by 2013.</blockquote><blockquote>"Our rainy-day fund is a very valuable asset," Perry said. "It's like insurance ... against a future that continues to be uncertain."</blockquote><blockquote>Perry also said he worries that if lawmakers tap the fund now, they'll avoid addressing fiscal problems that may cause future shortfalls.</blockquote><blockquote>"If we use the rainy-day fund, we just kick the can down the road," Perry said.</blockquote><blockquote>Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, echoed Perry's remarks and praised the governor's fiscal conservatism. He said Republican gains in the November elections "put a restraining order on Keynesian economics," referring to the school of economics that argues that sometimes it makes sense for the government to increase government spending to boost demand during an economic downturn.</blockquote><blockquote>Norquist said he's worried that some states are using current budget woes to ignore that message from voters.</blockquote><blockquote>"Texas for the last 10 years has served as an example for other states," Norquist said.</blockquote><br />
On the other side of the aisle, you have moderate some might say RINO Republicans joining liberal Democrats in calling for most or all of the fund to be used...<br />
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If you are one of those new legislators pondering which way to go on this, do you go in the direction of the tea party, Americans for Tax Reform, and Rick... or do you go in the direction of the people who just got stomped in November not to mention primaries last March...<br />
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Choices... choices... such tough choices...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-16434138300483373002011-03-09T08:30:00.000-06:002011-03-09T08:30:01.183-06:00Michael Williams wins early straw poll...Michael Williams won an online straw poll run by the Dallas County Republican Party... (<a href="http://www.dallasgop.org/posts/183">link</a>). <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="269" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6fM7sfR72fk" title="YouTube video player" width="425"></iframe><br />
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I also hear from peeps who are in the know in Dallas that Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams really blew the others out of the water... and this was even so when Lt. Governor David Dewhurst was initially in the ballot...<br />
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I also think it is interesting that they said they went through the votes and took out duplicates, including some from "family members"... LOL... someone's family member was on there voting multiple times according to Dallas County GOP Chairman Jonathan Neerman...<br />
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Michael Williams with his tea party support and grassroots cache is clearly the top candidate of "the rest" who aren't named Dewhurst... Dewhurst is in a pretty weak spot though not even coming near 40% let alone 50% in early polls...<br />
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David Dewhurst has many similarities to Kay... both can say they are conservative and point to one thing or another to prove it... both have served for many years and done some very good things... yet both are considered RINO style politicians at the end of the day when you talk to the grassroots about them... both have risen very high and become very wealthy... both are not good at firing up the crowd when giving a speech...<br />
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I think David Dewhurst is in an okay position right now in that he can finish this legislative session strong and prove his conservative credentials... but at the same time he has a long record that can be picked apart the same way Kay had a long record that Rick's peeps picked apart... she might say unfairly so... any and every little thing will be scrutinized in a big nasty primary fight...<br />
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In some ways I agree with Perry vs. World that Dewhurst may not even run... he may look out and realize he will probably get clobbered for his quirky eccentricities, his enormous wealth... when is Dewhurst going to release his taxes... what is he hiding, his uninspiring rhetorical style, and his less than perfect record with the strong conservative grassroots who dominate Republican primaries... would he really want to deal with all of that and end his political career the same way that Kay did... or does he think his money and strong name identification will overcome all the other candidates... and then overcome the candidate who ends up in a run off with him... does he think his record is truly strong enough... that he can run the same campaign Rick ran in 2010... kind of a "Texas is good, Rick is responsible for that, and if you disagree you must hate Texas...."<br />
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As for Tom Leppert... that guy is really having a bad start to his race... I don't really hear from Roger Williams much any more after he went fast and furious two years ago... maybe he is just raising money in private meetings if so that will look good in a few weeks when the numbers come out... Elizabeth Ames Jones had a big tour around the state but nobody bothered to show up and her entire rationale for running seems to be that she is a woman and we need another woman to replace Kay... Ted Cruz is doing a lot of the right things appearing at sizable events almost every night and it will be interesting to see how much money he can raise and whether peeps actually believe someone who has never been elected to anything has earned the trust to go to Washington and be one of two senators from Texas... I think the rumors of Craig James jumping in are fascinating... he is hated by Texas Tech peeps and has some baggage from his SMU days he might not want coming out...<br />
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Michael Williams is clearly doing something right if he is winning prominent straw polls but I think he may not hit his stride until he is actually out of the Rail Road Commission and into full time campaign mode...<br />
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Endorsements seem to be all over the map... debates are going to be muddled with too many candidates... this race might be won or lost based on nasty negative attacks, opposition research, and gaffes...<br />
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Speaking of gaffes... someone may have made a gaffe... Michael Williams' camp seems to think that calling for a Constitutional Convention is an error that will leave our rights vulnerable to ACORN style organizing and whims of the moment... while Dewhurst and Cruz have both spoken out for a Constitutional Convention to re write the document that has served the United States very well for well over 200 years and only been amended a couple dozen times...<br />
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I see the point of a Constitutional Convention, because it would allow states to rapidly change the Constitution for the better... but it would also allow them to rapidly change certain other things for the worse... it is not like the normal amendment process, it would streamline things... you could easily see states making deals with other states the way they do in Congress... you scratch my back... I will scratch your back... it is an idea that has never been done in our nation's history with the exception of the first one at the end of the 18th century and the other one that happened at the open of the Civil War in the south...<br />
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I would not feel all that comfortable about supporting a Constitutional Convention unless we have a strong and popular Republican president who could guide the public debate... unless the media play it more down the middle some day... and unless we had strong supermajorities of Republicans not just in Congress but running a supermajority of states as well... and even then who knows what people might do... I prefer the slow process even if it does mean we don't get important things added...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-89685697707467162572011-03-07T13:05:00.000-06:002011-03-07T13:05:45.980-06:00Utah senator Mike Lee endorses Ted Cruz...Both were former law clerks and both are young... Mike Lee is a new senator from Utah, and he is endorsing his friend Ted Cruz (<a href="http://cubachi.com/2011/03/07/senator-mike-lee-endorses-ted-cruz-in-tx-senate-race/">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<div><blockquote>Senator Mike Lee is throwing his support in the Texas US Senate race to Ted Cruz. In this US Senate race, Cruz is up against another Tea Party favorite, Michael Williams.</blockquote><blockquote>Lee is one of just four members of the Senate Tea Party Caucus and is already becoming one of the popular republicans in the Senate. He has made a name for himself after defeating establishment incumbent Bob Bennett for the senate seat with the backing of the Tea Party. </blockquote></div><div>There are already a few high profile endorsements in this race from peeps like George H.W. Bush... which don't necessarily mean much to Texas Republican primary voters if recent history is any indication... I think the only endorsement that really did much in the Rick vs. Kay match up was the Palin endorsement of Rick...</div><div><br />
</div><div>Dick Cheney's endorsement of Kay... the Bushes endorsing Kay... Karl Rove and Karen Hughes working for Kay... none of that especially mattered...</div><div><br />
</div><div>Mike Lee is a new senator but he is known for being a tea party guy who took down an establishment incumbent... I think this endorsement might mean more if it were more ideological or philosophical and if the race were more black and white between two prominent politicians rather than just a buddy from a Supreme Court clerkship endorsing another drinking buddy from Washington.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Where is Ron Paul? Where is Jim DeMint?</div><div><br />
</div><div>Where is Rick?</div><div><br />
</div><div>Where is Sarah Palin?</div><div><br />
</div><div>What about Big John Cornyn and Kay?</div><div><br />
</div><div>It will be interesting to see if they stay completely neutral the whole time or if some of these prominent peeps tip off the candidate they support even just subtly...</div>Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-57871226396040606102011-03-07T08:19:00.003-06:002011-03-07T08:19:00.239-06:00Rainy Day fund... Rick is against using it... Susan Combs, Jim Pitts are for it...Did these peeps not learn anything from the year 2010? Voters actually want cuts to government... tapping the rainy day fund is the easy way out... it may be sprinkling and even raining in Texas, but it's not really storming right now... yet Susan Combs our Comptroller wants to tap the rainy day fund... and so does the budget go to guy in the House Rep Pitts....<br />
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Meanwhile Rick is on record opposing using the rainy day fund... whether Rick gets his way or Combs and Pitts get their way, there will still be cuts... and some people will still be upset about those cuts either way... but with Rick's way, we shrink government and preserve the rainy day fund for a real emergency... with Susan Combs' way or Jim Pitts' way we shrink government less and don't exactly preserve the rainy day fund for the future...<br />
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Even the liberal Texas Observer sees what is going on here as a fight for what the tea party asked for in the 2010 elections (<a href="http://www.texasobserver.org/floor-play/good-news-for-social-conservatives-bad-news-for-fiscal-ones">link</a>). Excerpt follows...<br />
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<blockquote>The staunch fiscal folks may not have had such a great day.</blockquote><blockquote>Thursday morning, several GOP leaders on the Appropriations Committee pushed for bringing more dollars into the budget, rather than trying to remedy the state's $27 billion shortfall through cuts to state agencies and services. Increased revenue isn't popular with the "Tea Party" philosophy that government spending is largely wasteful. The committee discussion went against the "cuts-only" approach that many hard-line conservatives have promoted, including Gov. Rick Perry.</blockquote>[SNIP]<br />
<blockquote>But with one of the most conservative Texas Legislatures in recent memory, featuring a two-thirds Republican majority in the House, many expected hard-line social and fiscal policies: anti-abortion bills along side efforts to cut government programs, for instance. Bu while the social conservative bills are moving forward at quite a clip, there's clearly a softer stance on such fiscal policies. The budget cuts will undoubtedly be widespread and painful, but at least a vocal GOP contingent is working to minimize some of them. </blockquote><blockquote>I'm not sure that's exactly what the Tea Party had in mind. </blockquote><br />
It seems like a pretty easy choice to me... keep hands off the rainy day fund, cut spending, and let's roll... be fiscal conservatives or risk backsliding into parity with Democrats...Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920044911439632666.post-30740017066605620232011-02-28T13:14:00.002-06:002011-02-28T13:14:00.625-06:00Tom Leppert off to a terrible start...Tom Leppert is having a rough start to his senate campaign...<br />
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Who?<br />
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Tom Leppert...<br />
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You know... Tom Leppert...<br />
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Helped lead Washington Mutual (<a href="http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/09/dallas-mayor-tom-lepperts-ties.html">link</a>) when they went under and had to be bought out by J.P. Morgan Chase.... bailouts anyone?<br />
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Dallas Mayor who allowed his team to give Michael Vick the key to the city over Super Bowl weekend...<br />
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Been in gay pride parades over the years (<a href="http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2011/02/25/dallas-voice-leppert-is-a-fag-lover/">link</a>)... now says he is for a Biblical definition of marriage...<br />
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Dallas taxes went up while he was mayor... now says he is a fiscal conservative who wants Washington out of our lives... sounds like he is just copying what worked for Rick in 2010...<br />
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Oversaw a period of stagnation in Dallas even while the rest of the state's urban areas are booming (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27ttdallas.html">link</a>)....<br />
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Under his leadership Republicans did well everywhere around the state in November 2010... except Dallas...<br />
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Yeah... That Tom Leppert...<br />
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His announcement went terribly this week... you have peeps like Tom Pauken openly mocking Tom Leppert for being a RINO... you have the Dallas blogs mocking Tom Leppert for being a flip flopper on gay rights (<a href="http://www.dallasvoice.com/lepperts-doma-comment-slap-face-1066453.html">link</a>)... you have an abortion of a video he put out... it looks nice but it is way too long (<a href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-representatives-in-congress/us-congress/tom-leppert-why-im-running/">link</a>)... and way too sappy and boring (<a href="http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2011/02/25/looking-at-tom-lepperts-new-campaign-ad/">link</a>)... and way too cliched...<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="269" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uQ6YIjXUrhg" title="YouTube video player" width="425"></iframe><br />
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Biggest loser in this... other than Tom Leppert? Roger Williams, whose possible Dallas constituency overlaps most with Tom Leppert's.Texas-Based Media Junkiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08030975133642699730noreply@blogger.com1