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Posted on 10/18/2011 11:45:22 AM PDT by Brookhaven
The Rick Perry campaign recently came out with a campaign ad highlighting the fact that Mitt Romney enacted a state run health care system in Massachusetts. I found the ad particularly powerful, because I feel that nationalized health care should be a litmus test for Republicans. No candidate that has supported a state run single payer health care system is, in my humble opinion, fit to the be the GOP nominee in 2012.
Then I found this in Rick Perry’s Wikipedia entry:
In 1993, Perry, while serving as Texas agriculture commissioner, expressed support for the Clinton health care reform proposal, describing it as “most commendable.”
Rick Perry was a public supporter of HillaryCare.
I understand Rick Perry was a Democrat, and support of HillaryCare was a popular position for Democrats. Still, it raises the obvious question: if Rick Perry supported HillaryCare, how can he attack Romney over RomneyCare?
Isn’t Rick Perry being hypocritical in his attacks on RomneyCare, when Perry himself was a proponent of HillaryCare? If so, shouldn’t Rick Perry apologize to Mitt Romney for attacking Romney over something Perry also supported in the past–a governmnent run, single payer health care system?
The letter in question is short and simple. As agricultural commissioner of Texas he commends Hillary for taking on the problem of health care asked that she and her committee consider the difficulties and challenges of his constituents.
The letter was written about two months after Bill Clinton was sworn in and six months before there was testimony or legislation.
In no fair-minded or honest way can it be characterized as support for the HillaryCare plan that did not yet exist.
IIRC. This was covered before on several threads and amounted to nothing.
Its another red herring from the anti-Perry smear merchants.
For someone who is so far down in the polls an not expected to win the GOP primary you all spend a lot of time on him. It seems it would behoove you to spend time on the someone much closer to being the winner such as Romney rather than someone who appears to be out of it.
Do you all use the same Freeper thesaurus?
I will give you credit, unlike so many others, you look it over and pick out the bigger words.
“Does Rick Perry Owe Mitt Romney an Apology?”
NO
What you’re talking about.
Care to explain that?
Oops! Too long at the keyboard. My apologies.
Anyone who wants to use Post #24 can it’s available.
Sorry RA.
Fugettaboutit. ;^)
Rick Perry was young, he needed the work.
This was 5 months before Hillary's task force submitted a plan. It is a tough sell to claim he supported a plan that didn't exist yet.
I remember those days. I had the same conservative views that I have now in 2003 and 1993 and 1983.
It was clear to every conservative in the country what the goal was for Hillarycare, because they said what the goal was.
In his campaign, Bill Clinton talked about health care being a "right" of all Americans.
He had already talked about defining a basic package of health care that every American would have a right to receive.
They had appointed big government arrogant liberal d-bag Ira Magaziner to head things up.
All of us conservatives were fighting this thing tooth and nail at the time.
Hillary was trying to keep the proceedings secret because the idea was to write the bill in secret and then spring it at the last minute and try to ram it through.
You can argue that Rick was a liberal in 1993 and only became a conservative later, that would be fine.
But I remember those days and those of us who were conservative were fighting like hell to push the RINOs like Bob Dole into fighting this thing, it was clear to all what the goal was. Conservatives certainly weren't commending Hillary and lobbying for government favors for some specific group.
You are a bit late on the draw here. Paul brought up the letter in the debate at the Reagan Library in which Perry slammed him for his letter dissing Reagan.
http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/politifact/092411_perrylettertoclinton.doc
Above is his letter. There was concern at the time the results would put rural area’s in a bind by putting small health care facilities out of business. I see his letter as a a request to not screw over the rural people. I don’t see it as praising the plan.
The Clintons were in charge with Democratic House and Senate at the time. In April 1993, many expected that this was going to be put in place and tried to minimize the damage.
While Rick is an immigrant appeaser and will eventually sell this country out to illegals, I can’t fault him for whatever he said about Romney... nobody owes Mittens anything (except a rail-ride out of town in Mass for Obamacare Lite). Can’t fault him, but WILL NOT vote for him, either.....I’ll take the darker of the two candidates for President come November 2012...
Sure, many liberals and RINOs.
When we had the fight against the Bush-McCain-Kennedy comprehensive immigration reform what that reminded me most of was the fight against Hillarycare.
It was one of those issues that divided the RINOs from the conservatives, and in both cases it looked like the Democrats and the RINOs had the upper hand for a while thanks to the efforts of the MSM.
Liberals were for it and RINOs were willing to accomodate themselves to it, and conservatives were fighting it.
Thank God there were more conservatives fighting against it than liberals/RINOs like Perry looking to accomodate himself to it.
He was the Ag Commissioner of Texas. His political power to stop the Federal Health Care reform was not much of anything.
Trying to make a public request to not screw over the farmers was a stretch at that.
How much did the Ag Commissioner in your state do to stop the Federal Health Care reform in 1993?
It was clear to all of us that the plan was to impose a big government program to mandate a universal health care right.
I mean, that is what they said at the time the goal was.
The question is, was Rick Perry a conservative at the time or not?
If he was someone who really understood and believed in conservative principles, as a politician he could have been trying to rally opposition to it. It is a straw man to say he didn’t have the power to single-handedly stop it. No one did, it was a combined groundswell of opposition that stopped Hillarycare, much like the battle against comprehensive immigration reform.
If you want to argue that back then he was a liberal or that at the time he was simply a professional politician with no strong beliefs gauging where the wind was blowing, and only later came to be a true believer in conservatism, that would be a more tenable argument.
I can judge the words he wrote in the context of the time and the job he had at the time.
Rick Perry is not the perfect conservative, neither is any other candidate in the race in my opinion.
Except for Mitt Romney or Ron Paul, I would vote for any of the candidates in the current debate in the general election. If they want my vote and the votes of others, they will have to earn that chance in the up coming primary election.
This time should be rather rough-and-tumble as we vet our candidates. But we should be honest in our criticisms and fair in our comparisons. That is why I participate here on Free Republic.
The letter alone by no means disqualifies Perry. He has a lot of good positions on a lot of issues here in the year 2011.
What disqualifies him to me is legalizing the illegals. We can reverse bad legislation, but after it happens we cannot undo amnesty for tens of millions of illegals, which is national suicide.
Fair enough, just use the same criteria for everyone.
Whose stance on dealing with the illegal aliens already in the country do you agree with?
- - - - -
Interviewing Rick Perry On Illegal Immigration
Because the federal government has failed to secure the border, states have had to act. In Texas we have sent Texas Rangers to the border, spent hundreds of millions to fight border crime, outlawed driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and passed Voter ID.
...
I called for abolishing sanctuary cities in my last State of the State address, and made it an emergency item for the Legislature. I’m a firm believer in giving law enforcement the discretion they need to do their job. Sanctuary city policies handcuff law enforcement officers in order to further a political agenda.
...
I signed that bill because getting a driver’s license is a privilege, not a right. It just doesn’t make sense to me to extend that privilege to individuals who are here illegally.
Additionally, I vetoed a bill that would have allowed the use of a matricula consular, which is an ID card used by the Mexican government, to get a driver’s license in Texas.
...
I support the right of each state to come up with its own plan to address the federal government’s failure on border security and illegal immigration.
The federal government has failed to secure the border, and states are left fending for themselves. States have every right under the 10th Amendment to pass laws and make decisions for themselves.
...
We’ve spent about $400 million of our state tax dollars to put more boots on the ground, more helicopters in the sky and better intelligence in the hands of law enforcement.
And we’ve seen real results. Our surge in manpower has created major disruptions for the drug cartels and human smuggling rings. We’ve seized millions of pounds of drugs, taken 3,500 illegal weapons off the street and made America safer.
http://rightwingnews.com/interviews/interviewing-rick-perry-on-illegal-immigration-2/
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