Nathan,
Gosh darn it, we'll have to agree to disagree, you betcha!
Let me see if I can find my 2x4 to help persuade you.
I heard what you said about the Gardasil...and agree with you up to the last point, in which you call it procedural rather than substantive.
The reason I disagree, is that after Bill Clinton, and especially after Planned Parenthood and the sexualization of children in the schools (think Kevin Jennings!) the *last* thing we need is encouragement of immorality on the part of schoolchildren: and a vaccine might give the same type of false security that a spermicide does -- it is not efficacious against other STD's, as you point out -- but this is a *detriment* not merely a feature. (Let alone a broken heart or loss of innocence: which affects marriage stability and therefore society as a whole down the road.)
Compounding this (though I didn't know it when I wrote the vanity last night) is Michelle Malkin's excellent article today in which she quotes Perry's representative:
"Not only did Perry defend going above the heads of elected state legislators, but his office also falsely claimed the legislature had no right to repeal the executive order. “The order is effective until Perry or a successor changes it, and the Legislature has no authority to repeal it,” Perry spokeswoman Krista Moody told The Washington Post in February 2007."
This is neither conservative (in subject) nor libertarian (in bent, behaviour). It is more like Romney meets Kerry meets Obama.
In other words, don't just consider the lack of rens mea but his ex post facto mea culpa for acting in loco parentis. :-)
For the Trans Texas Corridor --
This is Texas, second-largest state in the Union. There are likely to be comparatively few roads in good repair compared to the TTC once it is built. (Yes, I'm aware of the interminable frontage roads parallel to the main highways: with speed limits half that of the highway.) So even if it is not compulsion de jure it is pretty close de facto. I mentioned "green" simply because part of the TTC would the ubiquitous high-speed trains which seem to be all the rage.
You are correct in pointing out that there is nothing intrinsically anti-conservative in building roads and railways: but there is something of crony capitalism likely when there is so much money at stake; and your reply leaves out the little circumstance that the TTC is supposed to go from the Effing Mexican BorderTM for increased numbers of Mexican trucks...AND that the company collecting the tolls is SPANISH. Whatever happened to "Buy American?" A cynic might even suggest that the arrangement was made this way, to make any bribery or skulduggery harder to trace.
As far as "Soft on Islam" -- my piece linked to a Perry speech from 2008 or 2009 where he *quoted the Koran*.
'Nuff said. (Where is the ACLU anyway?)
Polling Data -- my point was simply that Perry's apparent surge is only seen in one major poll which did NOT include Palin as a competitor, and was taken right when Perry declared and T-Paw dropped out.
Perry is attempting to suck the oxygen out of the room, but he has not faced withering national criticism from all sides as Palin has.
Palin *is* the oxygen in the room: wheresoever she goes throughout the country she is mobbed (genuine enthusiasm, not astroturf, nor political consultants).
I read somewhere on FR today an article that Palin will hold off for about two-three more weeks to let Perry and Romney bloody each other, then enter. If you can find the article, I found it plausible, but not yet compelling my agreement.
Thanks for a detailed, fact-based, logical response without flames.
(What would your namesake have felt about Perry?)
Cheers!
(What would your namesake have felt about Perry?) What's not to like, they were both for seseesh. :-)
As to our exchange, our differences are matters of subjectivity, how much weight do we put on the implications of his actions? There is not much profit in arguing about how important or how insignificant a subjective judgment is. That is probably why we see so many of these arguments degenerate into the ad hominem on these threads when it comes down to a subjective judgment which is not subject to proof.
All we are trying to do is determine whether we are going to nominate a bona fide conservative in Perry or are we going to go back into da bushes?
By way of example in this context, I think Perry's role in mandating this drug is revealing but I'm not sure that we learn much more by arguing about whether it is a procedural or substantive difference in the manner of the parents' opt out. Even so, I'm not terribly distressed and do not put much weight on the mandate because it contains an opt out, however cumbersome. My subjective judgment tells me the governor who thinks he's dealing with cancer gets a certain amount of leeway over a governor whose mandating health insurance without any opt out and certainly more leeway than a president whose mandating health insurance on the federal level without any opt out.
As for Palin, we know we would get a bona fide conservative but we fear she cannot get elected. My subjective conclusion is that her disadvantages concerning electability are more to be feared than Perry's defections from orthodox conservatism. I weigh the likelihood of the two and the degree of harm from the two and come up with a subjective judgment: if we lose the election we lose everything (and that includes our whole experiment in democracy) but if we get Perry, we get almost everything.
I fully understand a subjective judgment that says we have got into this mess because we had 12 years of Rinos, 8 of them out of Texas, and we don't need anymore. In other words, if we win the election with Perry, we won't get much of anything.
All the best and thanks for a great vanity.
