Lawmaker who endorsed Romney now behind draft-Perry movement

The Daily Caller ^ | July 1, 2011 | Alex Pappas

[Cincinatus' Wife]

A California lawmaker who endorsed Mitt Romney for president has now signed a letter asking Texas Gov. Rick Perry to get in the 2012 race.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Assemblyman Paul Cook, a Yucaipa Republican, joined more than 20 people in signing the letter. The paper added that “more potential Romney defectors may sign the letter in coming days, according to a GOP source familiar with the meeting.” (GOP candidates’ fundraising starts slowly)

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, is viewed by many as the closest thing to the front-runner in the crowded race.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

"...“Now, more than ever, our nation needs serious, experienced and principled leadership to create jobs, control spending and rebuild the economy. We believe Gov. Perry that you embody these attributes, and we urge you to become a candidate for the Republican nomination for the office of president of the United States,” the group's letter reads.

...Among the other signers are Assembly Republican leader Connie Conway, legislators Dan Logue, Ted and Beth Gaines, Mimi Walters and former University of California Regent Ward Connerly...." Source

[Cincinatus' Wife]

In Iowa, Perry finds voters like those in Texas"... The conservative Southerner might not yet have a single office open in Iowa and he's hired no staff, yet pollsters and strategists familiar with the state's politics say he would enter the race there with a natural edge.

"Rick Perry is going to have a basic appeal to rural Iowa conservatives," said Jim Henson, a pollster and director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. "These are his people.".......

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Remember when we were young and fit! (Maybe I'm just talking about myself!).

A nice looking West Texas boy a couple of years from graduation.

Rick Perry 1969 TX A&M Yearbook, Aggieland

Perry attended Texas A&M University, where he was a member of the Corps of Cadets, a member of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity and one of A&M's five yell leaders (a popular Texas A&M tradition analogous to male cheerleaders). He interned with the Southwestern Company during the summer time as a door-to-door book salesman where he honed his communication skills. Perry graduated in 1972 with a degree in animal science. While at Texas A&M University Perry successfully completed a static line parachute jump at Ags Over Texas (a United States Parachute Association dropzone), the dropzone that was then in operation at Coulter Field (KCFD) in Bryan, Texas, just north of Texas A&M (in College Station, Texas).

Upon graduation, he was commissioned in the United States Air Force, completed pilot training and flew C-130 tactical airlift in the United States, the Middle East, and Europe until 1977. He left the Air Force with the rank of captain, returned to Texas and went into business farming cotton with his father.

In 1982, Perry married Anita Thigpen, his childhood sweetheart whom he had known since elementary school. They have two children, Griffin and Sydney. Source

Perry Awarding Iraqi Service Medals

Texas Marines

Gov. Rick Perry participates in ceremonies at Camp Mabry to redesignate the 49th Armored Division as the 36th Infantry Division. The former 49th Armored Division, which consists of approximately 12,000 soldiers, makes up almost two-thirds of the Texas National Guard. The division's redesignation as the 36th Infantry Division is part of the Texas Army National Guard's transition from a heavy armored force to a more versatile infantry force.

Texas Gov. Perry receives a warm greeting from Ghazni Provincial Governor Dr. Usman Usmani at the flight line minutes after landing at Forward Operating Base Ghazni by UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. Perry led a delegation of four other governors to visit

Lt. Col. Thomas J. Kleis (R) briefs Texas Gov. Rick Perry (C) as Command Sgt. Maj. Peter P.A. Collins (L) listens on the intelligence gathering successes the 636th Military Intelligence Battalion has achieved during their last six months of duty in

Texas Gov. Rick Perry stands with Texas service members from the 636th Military Intelligence Battalion, 71st Battlefield Surveillance Brigade and the 136th Military Police Battalion on July 20th under the Texas flag he presented to the 636th.

Rick Perry served in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from Texas A&M

C-130 Rick Perry: He flew the world before politics

Rank: Retired as a captain

Hometown: Haskell

Crew job: C-130 aircraft commander

Served in the Air Force: 1972 to 1977

Dyess AFB tour: March 4, 1974, to Feb. 28, 1977

His story: Way back before he was governor of Texas, Rick Perry had two choices as a young member of the Air Force.

He could either follow his dream and work toward becoming an instructor pilot in the sleek T-38, or he could fly the hulking C-130, planes that affectionately were referred to as "trash haulers" by Perry and his cohorts.

"It was one of the great adventures of my life," Perry said. "I had a fairly pedestrian life until I was 23 years old."

Perry could count on one hand the number of trips he had taken out of his home state by the time he graduated from Texas A&M University, but everything changed when he joined the Air Force.

Flying C-130s, Perry lived in Germany and Saudi Arabia. He flew in Central and South America, North Africa and all over Europe.

"I saw all of these different types of governments and I made the connections to how the people acted and looked, and it became abundantly clear to me that, at that particular point in time, that America was this very unique place and that our form of democracy was very rare," Perry said. " ... That was the greatest gift I received from my years of being in the military, and they really shaped my outlook on the rest of my life."

Perry retired from the Air Force in 1977 — but not without one last adventure. [snip]

[Cincinatus' Wife]

He grew up in West Texas, in a farm town so small it literally was not on the state map until Perry, as governor, put it there. Life was austere; Perry was 6 before the family had indoor plumbing. His mother sewed his clothes, including the underwear Perry wore to college...... Source

[JmyBryan]

I think this guy could destroy Obama similarly to the way Reagan destroyed Mondale.

[ngat]

“Lawmaker who endorsed Romney now behind draft-Perry movement”

Perry - the country-clubbers’ second choice.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Perry has the right message and the resume.

Governor Rick Perry's Speech at Red State Conference in 2010 (Video and Notes)

In Speech Perry:

Reads the 10th Amendment – What a beautiful succinct, simple statement – words penned for a time such as this…… (nice list of rights being taken away and by whom).

Perry notes: Republicans lost because you couldn’t tell the difference between a Republican and a Democrat… (expands)

Growing mood in the country – passion across the state and when I look at Glenn Beck’s event in Washington D.C. and other events, it warms the cockles of my heart……”

Texas has led but it’s been a hell of a struggle against Washington D.C. – they must trust the people, they don’t trust the people.

Governing isn’t that hard…

First – Don’t spend all the money!

TX legislature meets 140 days every OTHER year!

TARP – Stimulus – great concern in Texas, country, world --- small businesses don’t know what shoe will fall next – what regulations – costs – job loss. Health care bill – cost – loss of access to health care…..

Second: Fair and predictable tax and regulatory policy…..

Third: Legal system that does not allow for over suing. Sweeping tort reform 2003 in TX has paid HUGE dividends. Went from Jack-pot Justice (legal hell hole) to 60% more doctors practicing in Texas from 7 years ago (expands more on this) – about access to health care.

Last step: Loser Pays tells them, you better have a case. If frivolous – fishing for settlement – they’ll foot the bill! (since this speech, Perry signed it into law)

Haley Barbour told him, If "Loser Pays" passes you can put turnstiles on the TX border and charge people to come into your state!”

THAT’S IT! Put those 4 principles into place and tell government to get the hell out of the way. – Rick Perry

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Perry - the country-clubbers’ second choice.

Them too!?

Isn't it nice how everyone likes Perry?

[GeronL]

Perry is not a conviction conservative. He is more of a moderate who gets pushed into conservative positions sometimes. Sometimes not.

[RED SOUTH]

If it looks like a W. and it talks like W. and if it walks like a W.

[txnativegop]

Perry is not a true conservative and therefore I cannot vote for him. Romney is certainly not a conservative and I will definitely not vote for him. It seems that the California politician in question should refrain from endorsing any candidates for the GOP. This politician has failed twice to endorse a conservative candidate for the GOP. Then again, he is from California and is likely more moderate in political views than others.

[allsouthern]

Shows you how screwed up you Perry supporters thinking is. You actually think this is a plus for Rino Rick? It just confirms, to us who actually have a grip on reality, that Rino Rick is more of the GOP establishment and therefore is not fit to be president. A GOP lawmaker, from Commiefornia, who endorsed Romney? Yeah, thatll sell Perry to the masses!! HA!!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Perry's Tenth Commandment ".....Rick Perry has a complicated relationship with the Bushes, which is to say that he’s hesitant to criticize them and they hate his guts. W. stayed well away from Perry’s gubernatorial-primary melee against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose oatmeal-mushy Republicanism has a distinctly Bushian savor to it. But the mark of W. was all over the campaign against Perry. Former president George H. W. Bush endorsed Senator Hutchison, an unusual step for the habitually reserved retiree, who usually stays well removed from the dirty business of vote-grubbing, surveying the groundlings from the heights of his eminence. Bush père was joined in his support by former vice president Dick Cheney, who offered an endorsement and called Hutchison “the real deal.” Hutchison was further fortified by the Bush clan’s in-house Machiavelli, former secretary of state James Baker, who led the Florida recount fight in 2000 and remains their go-to fixer. W. mouthpiece Karen Hughes came out of the political woodwork to support the insurgency, along with W.’s secretary of education Margaret Spellings. Karl Rove advised Team Hutchison. The gang was all there: All this in a primary challenge to unseat an incumbent Republican governor with one of the most conservative — and most successful — records to be found: Que paso, Bushes?

Part of that was payback. Perry, generally circumlocutious on the subject of W., gave himself a little time off the leash during the 2008 Republican presidential primaries. Often caricatured as yet another snake-handling southern social conservative, Governor Perry backed thrice-married dress-wearing pro-choice lapsed Catholic Rudy Giuliani, on the theory that Rudy would be a badass commander-in-chief abroad and a reliable constitutionalist at home. Politics being politics, the Texan and the New Yorker met up in Iowa, where more than a few Hawkeye conservatives were already getting restive about out-of-control federal spending on the Republicans’ watch. Governor Perry let loose the observation that “George” — and the Bushies hate it when Perry calls him “George” in public — “has never been a fiscal conservative.” Never? “Wasn’t when he was in Texas . . . ’95, ’97, ’99, George Bush was spending money.” He also criticized Bush as being limp on immigration.

The truth hurts, but there’s more to the Bush-Perry friction than that. One longtime observer of Lone Star politics described the Bushes’ disdain of Perry as “visceral,” and it is not too terribly hard to see why. The guy that NPR executives and the New York Times and your average Subaru-driving Whole Foods shopper were afraid George W. Bush was? Rick Perry is that guy. George W. Bush was Midland by way of Kennebunkport. Rick Perry’s people are cotton farmers from Paint Creek, a West Texas town so tiny and remote that my Texan traveling-salesman father looked at me skeptically and suggested I had the name wrong when I asked him whether he knew where it was. (Governor Perry confesses that one of the politiciany things he’s done in office is insisting that the Texas highway atlas include Paint Creek, making him the hometown boy who literally put the town on the map.) Bush is a Yalie, Perry is an Aggie. Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard, and Perry was a captain in the U.S. Air Force, flying C-130s in the Middle East. Bush has a gentleman’s ranch, Perry has the red meat. The irony is that Perry, a tea-party favorite, personifies the hawkish new fiscal conservatism that has allowed the GOP to find its way out from under George W. Bush’s shadow, but he himself remains in the shade of that politically poisonous penumbra...."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

On Michele Bachmann announcement day, a tea party nod to Rick Perry “Washington - First, a disclaimer: The poll was completely unscientific. Some 160 tea partyers from around the country had gathered at the Washington headquarters of FreedomWorks, a conservative group that trains tea partyers in political organizing and advocacy. With reporters watching, the assembled activists were asked for a show of hands on the Republican presidential candidates.

The winner: Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He isn’t a candidate yet, and it’s not certain he ever will be. But Governor Perry’s “victory” is just one small indication that, were he to run, Perry would start with the goodwill of the GOP’s most energetic wing. …..”

[Paperdoll]

Who are you his mother?

[bobk333]

He might be brave enough to parachute out of an airplane, and he might be slick enough to sell books door-to-door over the summer, but is this yell leader tough enough to take on a broken government, a corrupt political system, a heavily biased mainstream media, and a malicious, beligerent, ugly Left to do what is necessary to get our government and spending under control?

Palin and Bachmann are capable of it, but I’m not sure Perry is.

[allsouthern]

You are still hanging on to that fake tea party crap? Mrs. Perry? Is that you?

[Marty62]

Oh yeah and the zero’s campaign must be getting worried. The Zero admin has REFUSED Texas disaster funds for the drought caused wild fires.

Ought oh, Perry gets in the race and MIRACLES of MIRACLES the Feds change their simple little minds and issue disaster relief.

Gawd I hate this Admin. They don’t even try to HIDE that they are using the United States Government as a POLITICAL tool against their “enemies”.

[JimWayne]

I agree with you but Rick Perry is the only one who can split the Romney voter base. Otherwise, the Tea Party votes will be split and Romney will win the nomination.

[ejdrapes]

Perry/Bachmann 2012. Works for me!