Did Perry Blow It on Social Security? (Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson certainly didn't)There is a brand of Republican who looks at President Obama’s vulnerability on the economy and says, “Go for it!” They argue that the overriding issue of the campaign should be jobs — and that everything else should be a distant second.
There is another kind of Republican who sees the election of 2012 as a tipping point for the nation — a do-or-die moment when we will either pull back from the precipice of debt and national decline or fall off the edge. This second brand of Republican is hoping that a candidate will emerge who can lay before the American people the nature of the challenge we face in a direct and forthright way. If a campaign is run and won on the need to reform our obese government, the new president will have a mandate to take the necessary steps once in office.
After Wednesday’s Republican debate, it seems that Mitt Romney represents the first group, and Rick Perry stands for the second. ………………”
Rick Perry’s Air War (with the EPA)...........>>>Texas alone opted for the unfriendly approach. It’s the only state that did not issue a plan for compliance—and Perry has made it clear that Texas has no intention of complying. The move was a blatant slap to the Obama administration—and once again gave Perry the national spotlight. Defying the climate rules offered him the perfect opportunity to loudly decry the science of global warming—which in his book Fed Up! he calls a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight”—and to slam EPA as a “rogue agency” with an “activist mind-set” that has “targeted Texas.” Such rhetoric is viral catnip to the tea party voters who could help catapult Perry to the 2012 presidential nomination.<<<..............
Metro - Carolyn and Ron Agnew, center, of Pflugerville, wait for Governor Rick Perry's arrival during the Rick Perry Welcome Home Rally at Abel's on the Lake in Austin on Saturday, August 20, 2011. LISA KRANTZ/lkrantz@express-news.net
In Texas Schools, Perry Shuns Federal Influence ………>>>When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan jabbed Mr. Perry on public schools in mid-August, it was only the latest skirmish between the governor and the Obama administration since late 2009, when Mr. Perry announced that the state would not sign on to common core-curriculum standards.<<<...
Trial lawyers prep for war on Perry America’s trial lawyers are getting ready to make the case against one of their biggest targets in years: Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Among litigators, there is no presidential candidate who inspires the same level of hatred – and fear – as Perry, an avowed opponent of the plaintiffs’ bar who has presided over several rounds of tort reform as governor.
And if Perry ends up as the Republican nominee for president, deep-pocketed trial lawyers intend to play a central role in the campaign to defeat him.
That’s a potential financial boon to a president who has unsettled trial lawyers with his own rhetorical gestures in the direction of tort reform. A general election pitting Barack Obama and Perry could turn otherwise apathetic trial lawyers into a phalanx of pro-Obama bundlers and super PAC donors. …..”
