Posted on 08/30/2011 3:42:19 PM PDT by smoothsailing
by Ben Smith & Maggie Haberman
August 30, 2011
In his two weeks as a presidential candidate, Rick Perry has done something that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney could do: wake up the left.
Perry panic has spread from the conference rooms of Washington, D.C., to the coffee shops of Brooklyn, with the realization that the conservative Texan could conceivably become the 45th president of the United States, a wave of alarm centering around Perry’s drawling, small-town affect and stands on core cultural issues such as women’s rights, gun control, the death penalty and the separation of church and state.
The epidemic of lefty angst isn’t just a matter of specific Perry policies though; it goes to the heart of the liberal worldview. His smashing debut on the presidential stage suggests that the victory of an urban liberal Democrat, Barack Obama, wasn’t a step toward a more progressive nation, but just a leftward swing of an increasingly wild pendulum, now poised to rocket to the right.
“His entry in the race is a signal and a wake-up call,” the Rev. Al Sharpton told POLITICO.
Perry, Sharpton said, “is looking to go to the O.K. Corral and start shooting…. Rather than the left get caught sleeping, we better load up, because he is bringing it.”
For Democrats, the pre-Perry GOP primary process was hardly for the faint of heart, as the other candidates have jockeyed to show who dislikes Obama the most. But even as the primary is fought on conservative turf, liberal leaders say they and their constituents see Perry as far worse than your average, hated Republican, and indeed as bad – if not worse – than his hated predecessor in Austin, George W. Bush. And progressives who might have had a hard time getting worked up about Mitt Romney find themselves struggling for superlatives with which to express their fear of a President Perry.
“His work as governor is unparalleled in its frontal assault on women,” said Siobhan Bennett, the president of the Women’s Campaign Forum, citing statistics on women living in poverty and without health care in Texas, and Perry’s active opposition to abortion. “He has gone farther out on a limb legislatively in his capacity as governor and has been expressly anti-woman in the legislation he has done.”
“He is beyond what we expect from conservative Republicans on the gun issue,” said Dennis Henigan, the acting president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who cited Perry’s support for gun rights on college campuses and said it was a sharp contrast with Romney’s “moderate” record. Perry’s rise, he said, had already become “a strong mobilizing force” for gun control activists, whose agenda has been largely ignored by the Obama administration.
“People are perceiving a very real threat that he could be the Republican nominee,” said Henigan, calling the prospect “quite frightening.”
Barry Lynn, whose Americans United for the Separation of Church and State is on the front lines of keeping religion out of public life, also labeled Perry an extreme figure.
“He doesn’t just go to religious right gatherings – he creates religious right gatherings and that’s a big difference,” he said, citing The Response, an 30,000-person event Perry led in Houston in early August.
Lynn said last week’s polls showing Perry in the lead among Republicans had startled his group’s supporters.
“Any time there’s a very viable candidate who has taken on the mantle of a crusader for Christ and ignorer of the Constitution, that makes very many people who care about the real Constitution very nervous,” he said.
Backers of another longstanding liberal cause, campaign finance reform, see a similar threat from Perry, given his career tapping the bottomless Texas wells of oil money and his current status as beneficiary of not one but several new Super PACs.
“It looks like Rick Perry’s campaign and its supporters are taking secret corporate spending to a new level,” said New York City Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio, who has campaigned against corporate involvement in politics. “His actions personify the corporate sponsored campaigns that many of us feared Citizens United would create.”
The death penalty, another longstanding liberal target, has figured prominently in Perry’s career: He has presided over more executions than any other governor, commuting just one sentence in his three terms years and vetoing a bill that would have banned the execution of the mentally handicapped, something the Supreme Court later outlawed.
Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Perry’s conduct of the death penalty was in fact “typical” for a conservative Southern governor, and that the high numbers largely reflected the size of his state and the length of his tenure; the rate of executions has actually declined since the Bush years.
But for death penalty foes, a symbol of Perry’s shortcomings on the issue is his rebuff in 2004 of the Innocence Project’s petitions on behalf of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man convicted of murdering his family on the basis of scientific evidence arson experts described as unreliable. In 2009, Perry abruptly replaced officials who were investigating the case.
“That’s a worrisome series of events about what people are most concerned about when they think about the death penalty – and that is innocence,” said Dieter.
Perry is certainly to Romney’s right on many of these policy issues. Romney, for instance, pushed legislation in Massachusetts that would have reinstated a death penalty only in very limited, carefully vetted circumstances. But Perry isn’t necessarily far outside the Republican mainstream in, for instance, his implacable opposition to taxes and abortion, or his support for religion in public life. His stated support for states rights might, in theory, make him less likely to intervene on social issues than some of his GOP rivals.
But Perry’s combination of policy, Southern style and an easy, unstudied adherence to contemporary religious and political conservative doctrine has put him beyond the reach even of some Democrats who sometimes cross the aisle. Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004 and has criticized Obama’s foreign policy, cited Perry’s recent stated skepticism about the theory of evolution.
“I can’t support anyone who doesn’t believe in evolution – that to me is too much,” said Koch.
And while conservatives enjoy Perry’s ability to enrage their liberal foes, some Democratic strategists have also welcomed his emergence.
“Whether he’s the nominee or not, he absolutely helps fire up our base,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the vice president for communications at the liberal Center for American Progress. “To the degree to which progressives are disaffected and unenthusiastic – this is their ‘holy sh**’ moment.”
Clinton strategist James Carville, however, said Perry remains his second choice.
“Actually we’d all prefer Michele Bachmann,” he said.
Emily Schultheis contributed.
© 2011 POLITICO LLC
Oh wow, I'll bet she's ecstatic!
Although I voted for her on the McCain ticket, I wouldn't vote for her in favor of Perry. Her resume really is pretty thin and only a few candidates have thinner resumes.
Some people think that her resignation is as big of a disabling stigma as you think Perry once being a Democrat is for him. I disagree on both.
If you want to revisit the threads you so amptly polluted (or were conspicuously absent from) on the discussion of the IL Senate race of 2010, feel free.
Gore was pro-abortion when he ran for President in 1988. That was the man Perry knowingly supported. Giuliani was pro-abortion when he ran for President in 2008. That was the man Perry knowingly supported. I suggest you’re the one that should do the research on your candidate. Rick Perry has more red flags than a May Day Parade.
>> let’s draft Gov. Paul LePage of Maine
Is he electable? That’s the first time I’ve heard the name that I can recall.
Mind you, electability isn’t *everything*. But it’s important. Very important. If ideology and track record and executive ability were all that mattered, I’d write in my wife’s cousin-in-law Don, or a local business leader, Jim. Either one would make a fantastic president. They are highly conservative, articulate, and have a track record of accomplishment. But we’d be looking at another four unacceptable years of Obama.
My problem with Perry isn’t exclusively that he once was a Democrat. My problem with Perry is that he’s NOT the Conservative his supporters paint him to be. That, and that he is not a leader. He’s just another blow-dried, Rove-recruited opportunistic establishment politician who looks pretty in front of a camera. Slick Willard Redux.
No, your problem is that you appear to not be capable of leading yourself and NEED others to lead you.
Senators originally were to REPRESENT the individual states.
Congressional representatives were to REPRESENT groups of citizens and the President was to preside over the government.
No where do I recall in the Constitution that we elect leaders, we elect representatives and a President.
Dammit, they work for us and not vice versa and that is your problem!
LePage has a remarkable story of rising up from abject poverty to the Governorship. He just charges ahead and does what is right and doesn’t give a damn what the opposition thinks (that includes the liberal phonies of BOTH parties).
If you have a chance, look him up. Of our freshman class of 2010 Governors, he’s about the best (and we’ve got some good ones, Scott Walker of Wisconsin being another). LePage makes Perry look like Dennis Kucinich.
Why do you believe Gov Perry is wishy washy? The list I posted earlier is not indicative of someone who is “wishy, Washy”. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Gov Perry loves this country; that Gov Perry adamantly disagreed with Bush on his ‘compassionate conservatism’ and would do everything in his power to reverse the appalling laws and regulations which have been shoved down our throats.
As I stated earlier, we are not electing a KING. The President is only one part of our Government. Remember that from school?
Not only must we throw the bastard that's in there, out, but we must elect someone who will abide by OUR wishes.
Governor Perry or Governor Palin is it; THEY understand America/Americans because they themselves have ‘worked’ through this magnificent system we have and have become what they are, due to it.
I can vote for Perry. I’d prefer Sarah if she runs, but Perry will do. As long as it’s not Mitt McCain.......
Sadly...you are one of those that are unreachable. Regarding pro-life..Gov Perry has signed the most pro-life legislation in the union. But you knew that didn’t you?
Support for DemocRAT Gore after 8 years of the most successful president in my lifetime, Ronald Reagan, speaks volumes as to who and what RINO Rick Perry is. Sure he's a phony and he will remain a phony until which time he joins the DemocRAT party where he belongs.
Amazing how many people, especially most of the Liberals, yearn for leaders to tell them what to do!
Tories still looking for a king.
WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ABOVE AND BEYOND WHAT I LISTED?
No generalities please.
You’re arguing over semantics. The people that wrote that Constitution were leaders. Many of the folks we’ve elected throughout our two centuries plus have been leaders. I separate pols into different classes, the ones that lead and the ones that mislead (politicians). I look for people that are the best. You seem to want the least of the worst. Right now, we need the best, and badly.
Are you gaining any converts?
You know the jerk that haunts ever Palin thread and talks bad about her kids and about how Palin resigned?
Or the retard that hits the Romney threads and spouts the same old, tired crap day after day after day?
Idiots, aren’t they? Pests. Laughing stocks.
And you’re one of them for the Perry threads.
:-)
Just semantics?
You OBVIOUSLY do not understand the idea of a representative republic.
Now that you’ve confirmed that, so many other things fall into place.
From here on out, talk to the hand.
Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. America loves a winner. America will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise a coward;..."
General George S. Patton May 17, 1944
There are only two in the field that know how to fight and how to be leaders. One has not declared/announced and the other is now fighting through the bullshi*. My money and backing is with him.
I don’t know why we just don’t secede. These people are from a different planet.
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