No, they're not.
It's very clear that the illegal immigrants are going to pay in-state tuition fees.
I've been a Perry supporter since he announced; and I had set a pretty low bar for him to justify this program. But, he couldn't justify it intellectually, he resorted to heart-tugging. He's appearing just as emotional as Michelle Bachmann and has just about lost me.
The Gardasil kerfuffle meant nothing to me, the charges of crony capitalism were cooked up and exaggerated, but a Republican president must have a better sense of how to handle illegal immigration than he does.
Barring any new entrants to the race, he can still get my vote back, but I expected far better of him in his third debate than what I saw. He made Romney appear presidential -- something I'd hoped I'd never see.
“Critics of Rick Perry are inferring that illegal immigrants get a ‘free college education’”
No I think critics are pointing out that Rick Perry supports illegal immigration and then that can be extrapolated to amnesty.
Illegal means you are not supposed to be here. So if you are illegal you sure should not be attending the state university. Its not right for Texas and its not right for any state. Its “ILLEGAL”. That is why people are upset with Perry and if he doesn’t get off this jag his campaign is going to implode.
These are not "debates". They are soundbite factories. You get a loaded question from an adversarial moderator and you get one minute to respond. I don't watch these debates because they are counter-productive. In a real debate there is a limited number of questions and the participants are given the questions before the debates, all the participants are given the same question and the participants are given sufficient time to make their positions clear.
If given five minutes to explain his position instead of 60 seconds, I think Perry might not have had to make the error of an appeal to emotion. There are logical and economical reasons to support the Texas Dream Act. But you can't do it in a quick soundbite.