I do not like Perry very much and he is my third choice out of the three folks discussed here - except that Bachmann is pushing him with Rollins for third, frankly. My respect for Palin remains extremely high and probably has increased with the e mail dump. She seems spotless even among the private world of email, a world that would not fine ME spotless by any stretch.
I simply am not sold, based on what you have said versus other research I have done on Perry-KBH that your rhetoric matches reality — and therefore I am not sold on your premise that Perry is violating any kind of trust.
But given the three, I’m Palin for sure.
I hear you, but the silence of Perry and Bachmann both after Tuscon and now after the email dump is further damning evidence, I would contend.
I am not and have not said they should not run. But both appear to be ramping up campaigns and hiring staff. If Palin’s emails and her crosshair ads for TEA party congressman are fair game for comment, I certainly think how these two have dealt with her is a fair comment on their character.
I for one, have a hard time seeing how Paul Laxalt or Jack Kemp, friends and ideological soulmates of Ronald Reagan’s but for whom Reagan had done much less politically than Palin has done for Bachmann or Perry, could have brought themselves to challenge the Gipper in a GOP primary. Congressman Phil Crane, however, was a Reagan protege who challenged the Gipper in 1980 and drew 7% of the vote in Iowa, allowing GHW Bush to win 33-31. Crane had every right to run, but after Reagan’s election, Crane became a pariah. Bush and Baker and Dole were all welcomed back into the fold, but Crane never got back in, even though he was a staunch conservative. The Reaganites considered him to be stalking horse and a quisling, and they never trusted him again.
Trust is the coin of the realm in politics. Neither Bachmann nor Perry (if as looks very likely, both run) will have covered themselves in glory and they are going to have to answer the character question.