Free Republic

....Tough-guy politicians may not actually make the best leaders, but they've been shown to be popular with voters and able to win major elections. Currently, no other leading candidate (not Mitt Romey, Ron Paul or Michele Bachmann) in the Republican field comes across as more macho than Perry. Evidence of Perry's machismo is surging on the internets. The Twitter feed @RickPerryFacts is a constant stream ofChuck Norris-esque statements about Perry. They're funny, but I also can't help but think they don't speak to a yearning of some part of the human psyche: A basic desire for a strong, tough-guy leader....

I spoke to a group of politically active, so-called conservatives last week at a hotel here in my New Mexico hometown. One of the topics that kept coming up was whether I despised Texas Gov. Rick Perry as much as I despised most other candidates that the Republican/Democrat regime is trying to force me to pick from in the next election. Let’s think through some deep thoughts and do fact-checking on Perry and the entire Left/Right paradigm as most people seem to see it right now: You can spend about five minutes on the governor’s official website confirming that Rick...

clip--- As governor of the state that shares the largest border with Mexico, Perry defended his record on immigration, including his support for allowing illegal immigrants to get in-state tuition rates at Texas universities but opposing such a law on a national level. "I'm a big believer in the 10th amendment," Perry said. "Whether they allow for tuition increases or decreases or whatever it might be in that state, it needs to be the states making that decisions." Perry wouldn't wade into a national immigration reform debate, deferring to his position that those decisions should be made on the state...

Texas Governor Rick Perry, the latest GOP candidate to enter the 2012 presidential race, looks to challenge former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Perry entered the race on August 13th after announcing his candidacy at an event in South Carolina. Perry’s announcement, which stole the spotlight from the Ames Straw Poll, put to rest several months of speculation about the Texas Governor’s decision to run for the GOP nomination. During his presidential announcement, Perry said “we cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership.” Perry also added that “page one of...

Rick Perry: A Candidate For Whom 'UnPresidential' Is A Virtue Texas governor's stance on economy and global warming may play well with the US right, but it turns off independents Chris McGreal 19 August 2011 Rick Perry, seen here campaigning in New Hampshire, has drawn criticism over his boasts about new jobs in Texas. There are not many contenders to be president of the United States who consider it an asset to be called unpresidential. But then Rick Perry is not looking for the support of those seeking a president like any other. At least not for now. The Texas...

Rick Perry has many ideas about how to change the American government's founding document. From ending lifetime tenure for federal judges to completely scrapping two whole amendments, the Constitution would see a major overhaul if the Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate had his druthers. Perry laid out these proposed innovations to the founding document in his book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. He has occasionally mentioned them on the campaign trail. Several of his ideas fall within the realm of mainstream conservative thinking today, but, as you will see, there are also a few surprises.

The media may have pronounced Rick Perry the darling of the right wing, but Justin Raimondo has a different take. Perry's a liberal internationalist, just like the Texas governor before him: Another clueless Texas Governor surrounded by the same Praetorian Guard of conniving neocons who led us down the road to imperial overstretch and fiscal ruin last time around – isn’t that just what the GOP needs right now? The neocons have anointed their candidate, and it’s clear they have some sense he’s swimming upstream: "’He will distinguish himself from other Republicans as a hawk internationalist, embracing American exceptionalism and...

Charleston, S.C. When organizers were planning the third annual RedState Gathering, held earlier this month in Charleston, South Carolina, the event looked to be like the second annual RedState Gathering, which was much like the first. Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, would be a featured speaker, as he had been at the others, including last year in Austin, Texas. Perry was the reason the second annual gathering had been held in Austin. Perry wooed the redstaters. He brought the organizers out to Texas, took them to dinner, gave them a tour, took them clay shooting outside of town. RedState...

While Perry is staking his cam­paign on Texas being the top net jobs cre­ator, Perry’s ver­sion of Texas being “Open for Busi­ness” isn’t about low taxes and less reg­u­la­tion as much as it is about doing busi­ness with for­eign com­pa­nies, including selling off Texas’ sov­er­eign land and public assets to for­eign cred­i­tors, an issue which Perry’s first tele­vi­sion ad uses to take aim at Pres­i­dent Obama. A recent Wash­ington Post article doc­u­ments Perry’s work to get Chi­nese government-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pany Huawei, to base its U.S. oper­a­tions in Texas, a com­pany that the U.S. gov­ern­ment has deemed a threat to national...

.."Over the years, Gov. Perry has established a record that is consistently pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-religious liberty,” said Dr. Dobson. “He has demonstrated his deep regard for the sanctity of life by signing more pro-life bills into law than any other governor in Texas history. He demonstrated his support for the God-given institution of marriage by strongly supporting the Texas Marriage Amendment. And he has helped lead the effort to establish the strongest protections for religious liberty in the state of Texas. No other candidate in this race measures up to the high standards established by Gov. Perry on these...

Should we be surprised, frightened, disgusted or simply say "we knew it", that in the informal mixer just after Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry spoke at a Politics and Eggs breakfast in Bedford, New Hampshire, an unknown gentlemen approaches a casual Perry like an Ian Flemming character, and proceeds to dead drop the following: "Bank of America... We will help you out"... and silently moves on. At least we know now who is funding what, and whose interests potential future president Perry will be paid to defend.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is moving aggressively to assemble a presidential campaign team in Florida and, according to at least one knowledgeable Republican source, is receiving political advice from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, under questioning from voters in recent days, has switched positions on a 2007 executive order he issued mandating the vaccination of all young girls before they enter sixth grade to ward off cervical cancer. Mr. Perry's order that Texas school girls receive the vaccine, Gardasil, made by Merck & Co., was overturned by the state legislature and never got off the ground. But it still has roiled conservatives and Christian groups for years. After long defending the decision, Mr. Perry has apologized repeatedly for the order since launching his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. As...

Rick Perry talks treason about the Federal Reserve Board. Treason is a capital offense. Is Perry suggesting the death penalty for Federal Reserve Board members? Rick Perry says Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke will have a tough time if he goes to Texas. Is Perry threatening that violence might happen to Bernanke if he visits Texas? This is sick stuff. I can think of several nations Rick Perry is fit to lead, but the United States of America is not one of them. With his latest comments, perhaps Rick Perry wants to be the running mate of Vladimir Putin...

“Scratch him off my presidential list," wrote RoadTest on the conservative site FreeRepublic.com. "We have already seen what a Muslim enabler in the White House can do."

DES MOINES, Iowa — A man in a stars and stripes bandanna tricked Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Monday. “Governor Perry, try a corn dog,” the Iowa State Fair vendor yelled as Perry and the horde with cameras surrounding him strode down the fair’s main thoroughfare. Having already passed up a couple of food vendors, Perry grabbed the corn dog, dipped it in mustard, took a bite and gratefully looked back. ’’It’s a veggie corn dog,” the vendor said. Perry looked startled for a second but soon recovered. “As long as they make it on a farm,” he said. The...

As Gov. Rick Perry has launched his presidential campaign, he’s turned to a talking point familiar to anyone who has heard him rail against the federal government over the last two years: the perfidy of the roughly $800 billion stimulus plan orchestrated by the Obama administration in 2009. “Washington’s insatiable desire to spend our children’s inheritance on failed ‘stimulus’ plans and other misguided economic theories have given us record debt and left us with far too many unemployed,” Perry said in his announcement speech in South Carolina on Saturday. In his 2010 book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America...

Full disclosure: I don't like Rick Perry for our next president. I have my reasons that aren't worth going into here. However, when I was watching the GOP debate and pro-Perry people started bringing up Rick Perry's job numbers as a cudgel against other candidates, I looked into the BLS data on Texas jobs. Having familiarized myself with the data, I started noticing claims on the Texas jobs data that started popping up that directly contradicted what I was seeing in the data. So I wanted to clear up a couple of these common misconceptions. (see the rest in the...

Georgia Republicans are beginning to line up behind Rick Perry's bid for president after flying to Austin to meet the Texas governor. State Sen. Jeff Mullis, of Chickamauga, said he's backing Perry, praising his fiscally conservative credentials and his "regular guy" appeal. Raymon White, a well-known Republican lobbyist in Georgia for clients such as the National Rifle Association, is also supporting Perry after meeting with him. White called Perry "battle tested" and "engaging." Joel McElhannon, a Georgia political consultant, organized the Texas trip and says he plans to vote for Perry.

Reacting quietly to Texas Gov. Rick Perry's weekend entrance into the GOP Presidential Primary, New Jersey Republicans worried that Perry could beat former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney and create the potential for President Barack Obama to win re-election against a too conservative candidate from the Lone Star State.