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You sound like you are saying that government has no right to mandate anything. So, I want to see if I understand your position.

Are you opposed to laws that require parents to put children in child safety seats in their cars?

Are you opposed to every mandatory vaccination?

Are you opposed to laws requiring women to take reasonable care of themselves while pregnant?

Would you oppose government stepping in if parents refused to let their newborn born with a congenital heart defect to be operated on, even if the operation is certain to fix the problem and the baby will die otherwise?

Do you think government cannot mandate that your neighbor not pour his used motor oil in your yard?

This is the first time I’ve ever seen so many pro-life people livid about a candidate who says he will take the pro-life position in any decision. Of course, I think it’s a stupid argument for Perry to make, because it precisely opens up this line of attack. I don’t for a minute think he is arguing for a blanket right to act in whatever way he thinks would make life better for a child.

And I’m known to be on the other side of that issue. When the CPS stepped into the FLDS compound and took all their children, many conservatives were cheering government stepping between parents and their children “for the good of the children”. I opposed the move as an overstepping of government authority, and argued that children might die, but that was an unfortunate but necessary price to pay to keep tyranny from taking over.

But I think your argument is flawed, because I don’t think any conservative here truly opposes ALL government intervention to save the life of a child. We are all pro-life, so we want government to step in and force a mother to bear her child to conception. Even if she wants to take a pill and end her own pregnancy, we want government to mandate that she take care of herself and not do things that might harm her child.

We essentially want government to mandate interference in a parent’s final authority over their own lives, because we stand for being pro-life, and will chose the pro-life position in that battle.

Or maybe you don’t agree with any of that. MAybe you don’t want to make abortion illegal — I shouldn’t put words in your mouth, but there are very few pro-choice people here.

And btw, perry is not my candidate. He’s just a candidate who could beat Romney, who shot to the top of the polls, who was blessed by Sarah Palin as being conservative, and who seemed to bring together all the parts of our party, which would help us beat Obama.

So I had some hope he would solve the problem that Sarah Palin wasn’t solving because she wasn’t entering the race.

I guess he still could, but he is going to have to learn how to handle a debate. He clearly is not used to being attacked from the right. Maybe his back problems are making it hard for him to concentrate — not that this would be a good excuse, because as President he’s going to have to be in the game, back or no back.

It’s just weird because I watch his speeches and he’s a decent communicator, I watched his town hall meeting and he took questions and answered them in excellent fashion.

I just think he sucks at debating people in sound bites. And clearly he has no idea how to pick sound bites — most of his “sound bites” end up killing him. He’s not a sound bite person, he needs full paragraphs to explain what he means.

But even if I never support him, I think your argument about mandates is silly, and doesn’t actually match a conservative position on the subject in general.