IWF: Fresh Start for Rick Perry?

Independent Women's Forum ^ | October 25, 2011 | Sabrina Schaeffer

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I expect Gov. Perry’s flat tax plan to give him a significant boost in the polls.

Many conservative and Republican voters who were initially attracted to Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan were likely enthused with the idea of bringing simplicity, transparency, and fairness to our tax system. Still, as details of Cain’s plan – and the additional consumption tax – unfolded, voters have been looking for an alternative. In fact, despite Cain's recent surge, his tax plan is likely the reason there’s still so much uncertainty surrounding him as a candidate.

By putting forth a promising – and more realistic tax proposal – Perry not only distinguishes himself from Cain, but also demonstrates that he is committed to fiscal conservatism in a way voters continue to suspect Romney is not. The fact is Perry’s plan does more than simply address the tax system. It also focuses on balancing the federal budget, entitlement reform, and economic growth.

It’s hard to imagine this announcement won’t strengthen Perry’s position in the Republican field.

[JulieRNR21]

I was listening to Russ Limbaugh earlier and he said that he likes Perry’s Plan very much.....He also said it was ‘fabulous’.

That’s an endorsement I take seriously.

This is just a summary of the Tax Reform Section.

Fix the Tax Code

Institute Individual Flat Income Tax Rate of 20%

Allow Individuals to Choose Between Existing Tax Code or New Flat Tax System

Preserve Deductions for Mortgage Interest, Charity, and State/Local Taxes

Eliminate Tax on Social Security Benefits

No Federal Sales Tax or Value-Added Tax

Eliminate Tax on Qualified Dividends and Long-Term Capital Gains

Eliminate the Death Tax

Eliminate Corporate Loopholes and Special-Interest Tax Breaks

Reduce Corporate Income Tax Rate to 20% to Enhance American Competitiveness

Enhance American Competitiveness by Transitioning to a Territorial Tax System

Allow Locked-Up Overseas Capital to be Brought Back to the U.S. at a Reduced Tax Rate

[samtheman]

When Perry first announced I was a big supporter of his.

Wow! A ten year governor of the most successful state in the union! And a big southern state at that!

How could he not be great?

And in fact, I think Perry does have greatness in him. I think he would make a great President.

I also believe that people have purposely misconstrued his support for in-state tuition and totally ignored Perry’s explanation and the facts. (It’s not something I agree with, but I think the facts support Perry’s explanation more than they do the very, very unfair charge that he his pro-amnesty or pro-illegal-immigration.)

But what I can’t get past is this: Perry’s inability to speak. His inability to argue. His inability to articulate. His inability to think on his feet.

I don’t see how you elect a guy like that, especially on the conservative side that has 95% of the media against you 100% of the time.

How do you see that as remotely possible?

Do you think Perry is going to change? He can change his policies, he can change his team, but he can’t change his inabilities. He lacks the ability to communicate.

He is the Great Non-Communicator.

He cannot win in 2012.

He cannot win the nomination.

He cannot win the presidency.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the guy. I STILL like the guy. I am deeply saddened that I can no longer support him.

And I actually liked the way he took it to Romney in the last debate. Liked it in the sense that I liked his HEART.

But it’s his head that I think disqualifies him. And I’m not calling him stupid. I do believe he would make an excellent president, possibly even a great president, certainly a better president than Cain or Gingrich (and anyone would be better than Romney... that goes without saying).

But he is the Great Non-Communicator, and this is the 21st Century.

In the 21st century you can’t be the Great Non-Communicator and win national elections.

You just can’t.

At this point, with all his money, which will keep him in as long as he wants to stay in, he is a spoiler.

That’s the most he can hope for at this point: spoiler status.

Stopping Cain (or maybe even Gingrich) from stopping Romney.

That’s the most Perry can be right now: The anti-Anti-Romney candidate.

[Katarina]

Julie, thank you for saying all of that. I am so sick of all the Perry bashing at FR.

[isthisnickcool]

But if it seems like a rollicking good time to you, instead of sick, ok.

Well....

One persons "rollicking good time" is something that another will cringe at. That is the nature of people. Our life experiences and the age we are at bring us to different places.

As far as how we may have been raised? I was raised by saints. My parents never fought and none of the many children they had have ever even heard them even argue. That is a great thing when you are a kid but it may not be too helpful when you find yourself swimming with sharks after never seeing one before. The reality is that sometimes you have to stand and fight. Sometimes that gets nasty. Sometimes there is blood. I wish it was otherwise.

Thanks for the chat!

[isthisnickcool]

That’s the most Perry can be right now: The anti-Anti-Romney candidate.

Maybe. Maybe not. Too early to say. Get back with me on March 1st. By then things should have shaken out...

[MortMan]

The bashing on Perry threads is definitely a two-edged sword. Raising legitimate questions gets one attacked for supposed “bashing” by supporters.

Unfortunately, this seems to be all too common amongst the various factions. They cannot persuade, so they resort to name calling.

For the record, Perry is acceptable in my book, but he is not the top of my list right now. I have my eye on Cain.

Romney is not acceptable.

(And everyone can spare me the “better quality crap sandwwich speech” about Romney. My minimum standards aren’t that high, and he isn’t even close.)

[pgkdan]

But why would you want to subject yourself to the blowback here? It’s out of control.

Do you know why that is? I don't. Perry's Christian, family focused and happily married, pro-life, pro gun, pro military, an early and vocal advocate for limited government. A 10TH Amendment advocate and he's the onlt Governor who's taken on TSA and EPA...these are all things that FReepers would have lauded at one time. To see the way some around here attack Governor Perry you'd think he was really barack obama.

[Yosemitest]

Perry, acceptable? You've got to be kidding.
How could an UN-AMERICAN, PRO-ILLEGAL, ANTI-PERSONAL HEALTH ISSUES like Perry be electable?
How many dollars has Perry wasted to support ILLEGALS over American Citizens? And he wants to be Persident?
Perry should cross the border and become President of Mexico.
He doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell.

[dirtboy]

Go Rick go and come out for a border fence. Then all will be forgiven.

It will be an order of magnitude more difficult for Perry to convince skeptics that he is serious about a border fence when he did the opposite when he started his presidential run. Perry had one clear shot out the gate to win over the skeptics, and instead he shifted his aim and blew a gaping hole in his foot. And the bleeding in the polls has continued unabated. Largely because what Perry was pushing regarding border security already has been shown to not work. A fence just around urban areas already has shown that it simply pushes the traffic into rural areas. Reliance on technology without a fence doesn't work either. Throw in Perry parroting the La Raza talking point about 35 foot ladders for a 35 foot fence and he really lost his chance to get national-level traction on this issue.

Conservatives want a candidate who will learn from past mistakes and not demand that we repeat them.

[TADSLOS]

Push on, Rick Perry! Push on past Ron Paul for fourth place in the polls!

LOL!

[MortMan]

May I ask who you are supporting?

[Quicksilver]

... Perry's Christian, family focused and happily married, pro-life, pro gun, pro military, an early and vocal advocate for limited government. A 10TH Amendment advocate and he's the onlt Governor who's taken on TSA and EPA...these are all things that FReepers would have lauded at one time. To see the way some around here attack Governor Perry you'd think he was really barack obama.

Indeed. One FReeper couldn't bring himself to say that Perry's judicial nominees are preferable to Bill Clinton's.

RUSH: Let me just say I've met Rick Perry a couple of times. I have no doubt in my mind that he's a conservative, none whatsoever. I don't have any doubt that Herman Cain is conservative. ...

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/10/24/romneycare_for_illegal_immigrants

[dennisw]

Slick Rick should hire me as campaign director. I’ll tell him how to change on illegal immigration and a few other things all he needs is some fine tuning. What’s hilarious is a guy who comes off as tough and macho is so gay on America’s borders and national sovereignty. But he can and will change or he can stay where he is and rule Texas.

Then we end up with President Mittens who is better than President Jug Ears and Moochelle

[magritte]

Perry ain’t St. Sarah, that’s why.

[Yosemitest]

Sure, and there's an article that is at the core of my thinking.

Palin was my first choice
Bachmann is now my first choice, and Cain is my second.
Newt is my third choice, and I might consider Rick Santorum.

But Romney, Perry, Ron Paul, Huntsman, and Johnson are NOT acceptable,
and if on the ballot for the general election for President or V.P., would cause me to do a write in.

There's no way in hell I can compromise my values.

Jack Kerwick wrote an article on May 24, 2011 titled The Tea Partier versus The Republican and he expressed some important issues that I agree with.

Thus far, the field of GOP presidential contenders, actual and potential, isn’t looking too terribly promising.

This, though, isn’t meant to suggest that any of the candidates, all things being equal, lack what it takes to insure
that Barack Obama never sees the light of a second term; nor is it the case that I find none of the candidates appealing.
Rather, I simply mean that at this juncture, the party faithful is far from unanimously energized over any of them.

It is true that it was the rapidity and aggressiveness with which President Obama proceeded to impose his perilous designs upon the country
that proved to be the final spark to ignite the Tea Party movement.
But the chain of events that lead to its emergence began long before Obama was elected.
That is, it was actually the disenchantment with the Republican Party under our “compassionate conservative” president, George W. Bush,
which overcame legions of conservatives that was the initial inspiration that gave rise to the Tea Party.

It is this frustration with the GOP’s betrayal of the values that it affirms that accounts for why the overwhelming majority
of those who associate with or otherwise sympathize with the Tea Party movement
refuse to explicitly or formally identify with the Republican Party.
And it is this frustration that informs the Tea Partiers’ threat to create a third party
in the event that the GOP continues business as usual.

If and when those conservatives and libertarians who compose the bulk of the Tea Party, decided that the Republican establishment
has yet to learn the lessons of ’06 and ’08, choose to follow through with their promise,
they will invariably be met by Republicans with two distinct by interrelated objections.

First,
they will be told that they are utopian, “purists” foolishly holding out for an “ideal” candidate.

Second, because virtually all members of the Tea Party would have otherwise voted Republican if not for this new third party,
they will be castigated for essentially giving elections away to Democrats.



Both of these criticisms are, at best, misplaced; at worst, they are just disingenuous.
At any rate, they are easily answerable.

Let’s begin with the argument against “purism.” To this line, two replies are in the coming.


No one, as far as I have ever been able to determine, refuses to vote for anyone who isn’t an ideal candidate.
Ideal candidates, by definition, don’t exist.
This, after all, is what makes them ideal.
This counter-objection alone suffices to expose the argument of the Anti-Purist as so much counterfeit.
But there is another consideration that militates decisively against it.

A Tea Partier who refrains from voting for a Republican candidate who shares few if any of his beliefs
can no more be accused of holding out for an ideal candidate
than can someone who refuses to marry a person with whom he has little to anything in common
be accused of holding out for an ideal spouse.
In other words, the object of the argument against purism is the most glaring of straw men:
“I will not vote for a thoroughly flawed candidate” is one thing;
“I will only vote for a perfect candidate” is something else entirely.



As for the second objection against the Tea Partier’s rejection of those Republican candidates who eschew his values and convictions,
it can be dispensed with just as effortlessly as the first.

Every election season—and at no time more so than this past season—Republicans pledge to “reform Washington,” “trim down” the federal government, and so forth.
Once, however, they get elected and they conduct themselves with none of the confidence and enthusiasm with which they expressed themselves on the campaign trail,
those who placed them in office are treated to one lecture after the other on the need for “compromise” and “patience.”

Well, when the Tea Partier’s impatience with establishment Republican candidates intimates a Democratic victory,
he can use this same line of reasoning against his Republican critics.
My dislike for the Democratic Party is second to none, he can insist.
But in order to advance in the long run my conservative or Constitutionalist values, it may be necessary to compromise some in the short term.

For example,

as Glenn Beck once correctly noted in an interview with Katie Couric,
had John McCain been elected in 2008, it is not at all improbable that, in the final analysis,
the country would have been worse off than it is under a President Obama.
McCain would have furthered the country’s leftward drift,
but because this movement would have been slower,
and because McCain is a Republican, it is not likely that the apparent awakening that occurred under Obama would have occurred under McCain.


It may be worth it, the Tea Partier can tell Republicans, for the GOP to lose some elections if it means that conservatives—and the country—will ultimately win.

If he didn’t know it before, the Tea Partier now knows that accepting short-term loss in exchange for long-term gain is the essence of compromise, the essence of politics.

Ironically, he can thank the Republican for impressing this so indelibly upon him.

I'm fresh out of "patience", and I'm not in the mood for "compromise".
"COMPROMISE" to me is a dirty word.
Let the RINO's compromise their values, with the conservatives, for a change.

The "Establishment Republicans" can go to hell!

[pgkdan]

That’s what I suspect as well.

[txrangerette]

“I want Obama gone so badly, I HAVE to support Perry now. No choice”

You say you have a lot of political experience and knowledge...

What is your reply to people who cite to you that all the polls show Cain is climbing like a rocket and zooming ahead of everyone, while Perry has dropped in polls to single digits?

[isthisnickcool]

What is your reply to people who cite to you that all the polls show Cain is climbing like a rocket and zooming ahead of everyone, while Perry has dropped in polls to single digits?

It is way too early to pick a winner. I like Cain but he has no record. He has a little more money but not enough and I have yet to see any structure supporting him on the ground. As I said before, if he is the nominee I'm all for him. If the Republicans nominate Lindsey Lohan I'd support her. Or a gerbil for that matter. All of which I believe can beat Obama.

Let's chat again late February and see where everyone stands......