Posted on 08/23/2011 2:28:13 PM PDT by smoothsailing
August 23, 2011
While his critics have been eager to dismiss the Texas Governor as anti-science, the The New York Times takes a look at an upcoming electronic book, "Rick Perry and His Eggheads: Inside the Brainiest Political Operation in America." The book's author shows Perry's approach to politics is at once rigorously scientific and unconventional:
No candidate has ever presided over a political operation so skeptical about the effectiveness of basic campaign tools and so committed to using social-science methods to rigorously test them.
As the 2006 election season approached, the governor’s top strategist, Dave Carney, invited four political scientists into Perry’s war room and asked them to impose experimental controls on any aspect of the campaign budget that they could randomize and measure. Over the course of that year, the eggheads, as they were known within the campaign, ran experiments testing the effectiveness of all the things that political consultants do reflexively and we take for granted: candidate appearances, TV ads, robocalls, direct mail. These were basically the political world’s version of randomized drug trials, which had been used by academics but never from within a large-scale partisan campaign.
The findings from those 2006 tests dramatically changed how Carney prioritized the candidate’s time and the campaign’s money when Perry sought re-election again in 2010 and will inform the way he runs for president now.
The article goes on to discuss the differences between Perry's campaign approach and Obama's. While Obama's chief strategist David Plouffe is know for his technical approach to politics, the Obama campaign may not be as rigorously empirical as Perry's operation. In any event, it sounds like Perry's opponents will underestimate his campaign machine at their peril.
He is already eschewing the old methods for the ones he used in 2010. He beat Kay Bailey by running an anti-Washington campaign, even with her support and endorsement of George H.W. Bush and the rest of the Bushes (excepting W). That’s why Karl Rove and others are so extremely anti-Perry. They see that they won’t get a place at the trough this year if he becomes the candidate.
Perry forced gardasil on Texas to take care of the drug maker because he took lots of campaign cash from them , what is he willing to force on America to payoff his 2012 campaign?
"Cuz we're bad......we're nationwide!"
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Ha Ha. Thanks for that thought. Made my day.
They sure will...it didn’t work out too well when they went against him with Kay Baily, did it? In fact, today they maybe the kiss of death for a candidate.
You’re so right, Rove is about fit to be tied. He’s gotten so desperate that now he’s predicting Sarah Palin will get in the race. He can’t stand her, but all of a sudden he’s promoting her.
“Rick Perry and His Eggheads: Inside the Brainiest Political Operation in America, A Sneak Preview from The Victory Lab” [Kindle Edition]
It isn’t forced if you don’t have to do it . . . OPT OUT . . . I guess you didn’t learn much about reasoning or honesty in school, what did you do, opt out or drop out?
I’m sure you’ve seen the articles on (oh, gasp, and horror) Ted Nugent playing at the inaugural ball for Perry. He had skulls on the stage.
Funny how the same libs who have no problem with sucking a full term baby’s brains out at the moment of birth have a cow over plastic skulls on a stage.
... you know, a shot of gardasil in the a$$ and you’ll be thinking more clearly...
I'm not a Perry apologist (as one poster here has accused), but please try to be truthful and include all the facts if you're trying to dig up dirt.
Red South, I believe you have made a judgment error regarding your statement: Perry forced gardasil on Texas to take care of the drug maker because he took lots of campaign cash from them , what is he willing to force on America to payoff his 2012 campaign?
• Merck contributed a grand total of $6,000 to Perry’s reelection campaign. While it is unseemly in its timing, $6,000 is barely enough money to get noticed, much less to buy the support of a governor, least of all a “high roller” like Perry’s critics claim he is. That Merck contribution amounted to .00025 of the $24 million dollar campaign funds that he received that year.
“In Gardasil, Merck believed that they had a credible, FDA-approved, CDC recommended, fact-backed case for vaccinating young women and lobbied state officials to do so. Were they trying to make money on the drug? Without a doubt, that’s what a business does.
Perry maintains that the justification for his executive order making the shot mandatory was twofold: 1) that the vaccine offered a chance to save lives that might have otherwise been taken away by cervical cancer and, 2) that insurance companies wouldn’t cover the $360 cost of the vaccine ($120 for each of a 3-shot regimen) when it was simply an optional “recommended” vaccine. That put it out of the reach for most low-income Texans. This from the Time Magazine article (linked above), “Some pediatricians and gynecologists are refusing to stock Gardasil because many insurance companies reimburse so little for the vaccine, which costs $360 for the three required doses.”
When Perry mandated Gardasil, it would have become part of a school-related vaccine package which was then covered by insurance for simply the cost of a co-pay.
An update: from Perry’s Speech in New Hampshire at the Home of New Hampshire Deputy Speaker Pam Tucker (8/13/2011):
When a voter in New Hampshire confronted Perry on the Gardasil issue, here’s what he said, “I signed an executive order that allowed for an opt-out, but the fact of the matter is I didn’t do my research well enough to understand that we needed to have a substantial conversation with our citizenry,” he said. “I hate cancer. Let me tell you, as a son who has a mother and father who are both cancer survivors.”
Perry said he’d invested governmet resources in cancer cures, adding, “I hate cancer. And this HPV, we were seeing young ladies die at the early age. What we should have done was a program that frankly should have allowed them to opt in, or some type of program like that, but here’s what I learned — when you get too far out in front of the parade they will let you know. And that’s exactly what our legislature did.”
A cynic may not buy his explanation, but Obama would never admit to a mistake at all.
Agree or disagree, at least he listened to the people and backed off. “
I have offered this information, from an article written by Posted on July 19, 2011 by garnet92
You have Obama’s penchant for anything but the truth.
Fact: Perry received $6,000 in campaign contributions from Merck at the time.
Do you really believe that a state governor would be bribed for such a small amount of money?
Until you’ve got a money trail of millions and a clear link between the gardisal decision and the money, you’re either naive or have a hidden agenda to promote another candidate in 2012 by smearing Perry.
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