I made this just for you.
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
I was trying to do you a favor and let you know that you have a lot in common with douche bags on other threads, and in true d-bag fashion you celebrate being a troll.
LOL..you’re the Ash of the Perry threads!
“Rick Perry panic fires up the left”
It’s not doing much for fans of a certain non-candidate either.
There is a difference between being a leader in the government and being a leader of the government.
We chose representatives and give consent to be governed, NOT RULED!
I made this just for you.
works for me....
Do you think chanting RINO! RINO! RINO! bothers me?
Its beyond time that the RINOs came to power. I’ve been tired of the GOP as usual types we’ve been electing for years.
And yes, Palin is a RINO in every best sense of the word.
Me? I’ve been a RINO for years.
The GOP is the dumbest party in history for nominating McCain, the guy who undermined a GOP majority in both houses with a GOP president in office.
It’s time for RINOs to kick GOP ass.
Just laughing, not hating. There is more than enough hate on FR anymore.
Not really an apologist, just a realist.
“Nominate the most conservative candidate who is electable.”
William F. Buckley, Jr
Wow ... you remember Ash? You must have been here when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Good observation. I suppose I am a RINO also as the Republicans of the 2000’s have sucked. I’m not really willing to classify myself as a Republican if the Republicans of 2000 to 2008 are the standard measure.
RINO it is.
As I mentioned, you are afraid to say that you preferred Alexi getting elected rather than Kirk. You are a fraud. As you can see folks, he's just another troll.
I'd like to see the two of them run together as a ticket. Perry/Palin or even Palin/Perry, running against obama/biden.
Two conservative governors from our two largest energy producing states! An unbeatable combination, IMO.
>> I see our Concerned Trolls are back ( Perry Haters). They are doing there part to get Barry reelected too but its because are supposedly very worried ! <<
Yawn. Man, don't the Perrybots have anything better to do than insist everyone who doesn't worship St. Rick is a "Paultard" or "working for Obama's re-election"? It's starting to remind me of that bizarre time FR got invaded by Romney supporters who insisted EVERYONE who didn't want Romney as McCain's running mate was a "Huckabee fan" (news to all the Hunter, Tancredo, Thompson, etc., voters who didn't trust Romney)
This is why it's a waste of time to try and discuss facts with Perrybots. They will change the subject or simply ignore your response if it doesn't match their talking points. E.g,: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perrybot: Perry ain't GOOD enough you PURISTS? Oh yeah, well why don't YOU tell me someone who's BETTER?
Me: (Gives Perrybot long list of superior GOP presidential candidates and why they are better conservatives and just as "electable" as Ricky)
Perrybot: (leaves thread because he can't prove I'm a "Paultard" or "waiting for Sarah")
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perrybot : Rick Perry has ALWAYS been a conservative. The only reason he supported Gore back then is Al Gore was a CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRAT in 1988. Gore was an old fashioned, pro-life, pro-tobacco, family values guy that hadn't embraced global warning yet.
Me: Really? He's a link from the NFRTL proving Gore had a 0% pro-life score in 1988. And here's one from the ACU showing Gore had an 8% conservative rating, ranking him more liberal than socialist Bernie Sanders. And here's --
Perrybot : Nevermind that! Gore was the most MODERATE candidate running for President in the Democrat Party that year. He was as conservative as you're gonna get, that's why Perry --
Me: Really? Here's a link from the 1988 primary debate with Gore attacking Dick Gephardt from the left and bashing him for voting for the Reagan tax cuts and not being "progressive" enough.
Perrybot : Shut up! You must HATE Texans! And anyone from the south for that matter. Did Ron Paul send you here?
Let’s see that “long list of superior GOP presidential candidates” then.
>> I see our Concerned Trolls are back ( Perry Haters). They are doing there part to get Barry reelected too but its because are supposedly very worried ! <<
Yawn. Man, don't the Perrybots have anything better to do than insist everyone who doesn't worship St. Rick is a "Paultard" or "working for Obama's re-election"? It's starting to remind me of that bizarre time FR got invaded by Romney supporters who insisted EVERYONE who didn't want Romney as McCain's running mate was a "Huckabee fan" (news to all the Hunter, Tancredo, Thompson, etc., voters who didn't trust Romney)
This is why it's a waste of time to try and discuss facts with Perrybots. They will change the subject or simply ignore your response if it doesn't match their talking points. E.g,: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perrybot: Perry ain't GOOD enough you PURISTS? Oh yeah, well why don't YOU tell me someone who's BETTER?
Me: (Gives Perrybot long list of superior GOP presidential candidates and why they are better conservatives and just as "electable" as Ricky)
Perrybot: (leaves thread because he can't prove I'm a "Paultard" or "waiting for Sarah")
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perrybot : Rick Perry has ALWAYS been a conservative. The only reason he supported Gore back then is Al Gore was a CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRAT in 1988. Gore was an old fashioned, pro-life, pro-tobacco, family values guy that hadn't embraced global warning yet.
Me: Really? He's a link from the NFRTL proving Gore had a 0% pro-life score in 1988. And here's one from the ACU showing Gore had an 8% conservative rating, ranking him more liberal than socialist Bernie Sanders. And here's --
Perrybot : Nevermind that! Gore was the most MODERATE candidate running for President in the Democrat Party that year. He was as conservative as you're gonna get, that's why Perry --
Me: Really? Here's a link from the 1988 primary debate with Gore attacking Dick Gephardt from the left and bashing him for voting for the Reagan tax cuts and not being "progressive" enough.
Perrybot : Shut up! You must HATE Texans! And anyone from the south for that matter. Did Ron Paul send you here?
Why? Are you planning to go AWOL from the thread once I post this and “Sarah Palin” or “Ron Paul” isn’t my ONLY choice like the Perrybots insist?
Oh well, here you go, better choices that Rick Perry:
Michele Bachmann
Thaddeus McCotter
Rick Santorum
Herman Cain
Buddy Roemer
And when Pawlenty was in the race, he was a superior choice as well. Both were ho-hum governors, but Pawlenty was less fake and didn’t try to rewrite his past history. Also, he won far tougher elections than Perry ever did.
If they can’t actually win then they aren’t superior. Losers can’t make any changes. Losing to 0bama will just give him 4 more unfettered years of fundamentally transforming this country from a constitutional republic to a communist hellhole.
The other candidates bring a lot to the race and discussion but in this critical election, electability is one of the major factors we have to look at.
Great picture. If you don’t mind, I might want to use it occasionally, when the anti-Perry chorus gets too loud around here. Glad you signed it. :)
Please use it all you want, and thank you for the compliment!
As for the anti-Perry bunch, they’re losing steam, no one pays much attention to them. But they do seem to enjoy babbling to each other! :o)
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