Posted on 09/27/2011 9:28:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When Rick Perry entered the presidential race, he zoomed straight to the top of the polls and energized those voters looking for a practical alternative to Mitt Romney. Perry had a great resumé for a nominee — eleven years governing one of the most populous states in the country, job growth that defied a national malaise, and a track record of fighting federal regulation, especially in energy production. After the first four weeks of the campaign, though, Perry has not even begun to introduce himself to the American public, oddly choosing instead to engage on defense against everyone else in the campaign. And as for debate performances, calling Perry underwhelming would be charitable, thanks to a couple of bizarre attempts to play defense and attack other candidates on stage.
In my column for The Week, I lay out how Perry can grab momentum back and get a fresh start, in part by taking a lesson from Romney:
A candidate who enters a race late has to work harder at making that case in order to differentiate himself from the rest of the pack. That takes discipline and a campaign that understands strategy, which are both critical qualities on their own for voters to consider when choosing a contender for the difficult task of unseating a sitting president, since only three presidents in the past century have lost bids for a second term: Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush. (Gerald Ford lost his bid for his first full term.)
For Romney, that meant that he needed to change his strategy to engage — but only with Perry. Romney needed to push Perry into engaging with him on defense rather than focusing on defining himself in a positive manner, and maybe goad Perry into attacking Romney more than doing either. So far, that strategy has worked even better than Romney had to have hoped. Helped in no small part by the other candidates in the race, Romney has Perry reacting rather than acting, to the point where Perry’s second campaign video had nothing to do with Perry’s policy platform but trying to focus on edits between the first and second editions of Romney’s book. …
Fortunately for Perry, the moment has not entirely slipped away. A newCNN poll taken in the days after that debate shows Perry still leading the field, although with a slightly reduced margin over Romney. If Perry wants to reclaim the momentum, he needs to take a page from Romney and ignore the anklebiting from the also-rans on stage. Perry needs to make jobs and the economy the main topic of the debate, making the case for his leadership rather than attempting to rebut Romney’s arguments for his leadership. Instead of producing videos attacking Romney’s campaign book, Perry should be issuing one video after another highlighting Perry’s Texas record and how Perry wants to duplicate it on the national scale.
That will mean that Team Perry has to stop acting like a second-tier candidate and start acting like a frontrunner. Romney’s worst debating moments in both cycles have come when he’s had to get into defensive exchanges on stage, which is why Romney had wisely chosen to ignore attacks until he was no longer the frontrunner in the race. Perry has to copy that strategy and remain focused on positive explanations of his policies and principles, answering only the moderators on tough questions rather than the other candidates — especially from also-rans like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann. All that does is elevate their status while forcing Perry to react, a debate quality that he clearly lacks and which on occasion makes him look incoherent.
On debate performances, Andrew Malcolm provides a little context:
The Texas governor had suffered through two debate performances that could charitably be described as mediocre. He hardly looked presidential on the stage or up to the executive expectations that had pushed him to the front of the pack in polls.
Now came new polling showing his prime competitor surging to the lead in the important first primary state of New Hampshire.
Was this the end of his short presidential campaign? Or the end of the beginning in a very long presidential campaign for the White House?
No, this isn’t the story of Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign, which turns 45 days old today.
This is a cautionary tale about reading too much into the early debate showings of any party’s candidates, no matter how good or bad. Our esteemed and shall we say very veteran colleague Mark Barabak, calls our attention to a news story written almost 12 years ago, by him, as a matter of fact …
A bad start, then, is not the end of a campaign, especially when polls show Perry still in a front-runner position. But this bad start clearly calls for a change in strategy for Team Perry, and they don’t have a lot of time in which to make that change.
What “mojo?”
He can start by not calling anyone who wants illegal immigration put to an end “heartless”
The best thing about the poor Perry showing is that the country is taking another look at Cain. He was my hands down favorite when I first read about his record and he only gained my respect from that point on with his statements and ideas.
Wouldn’t it be weird if we really could get a good conservative into office. If only Jack Ryan was running...
There is only one thing for J.R. Perry to do. Drop out. Now!
Hah! I didn’t ask “what’s mojo?”; I asked “What mojo?”
Every time he gets a question and or gets attacked about TTC, Gardacil, immigration, or whatever silly subject the moderators try to “get” him with, he just needs to deflect it by saying. Sorry, but that's just not true, I have a great record on this issue, and stand by it. But I really don't think with western civilization hanging in the balance that the American people really care much about Gardacil, I think they care about we are our plans to fix this economy and he is exactly how I will go about doing it ———— insert plan here.
If he does that, or some variation of that in all the future debates, he will cruise to the nomination, but if he instead tries to haggle with a good used car salesman (Romney), he's going to get the short end of the deal every time.
Perry is not a follower of the Christ.Perry does not understand "you shall not STEAL"
As a Texas PROGRESSIVE, he steals from Americans
and gives the money to criminal aliens.
I thought we already have a POTUS with magic powers?
I think he’ll be a good governor. Better than Kay Bailey Hutchison.
They (media pundits) keep trying to resurrect Perry’s political corpse after his suicide by “tuition for illegals” head shot.
—He can start by not calling anyone who wants illegal immigration put to an end “heartless”—
A few weeks ago I dug into some of Texas’ history. I can see why a Texan, born and raised, would say such a thing. And I think there is some truth to the statement. That is especially true if you follow the history of undocumented Mexicans in this country for the last century and back to when the western states, and Texas, were becoming what they are today.
Back in the 20’s my grandfather was paid to haul mexicans to the asparagas fields in southeastern Washington state on a flatbed truck. It was no big deal then. But then, workers, legal or not, did not cost the taxpayer anything. This was even before social security and the government gave only limited services to allow people to live their lives with significan autonomy.
Now that we are all children and wards of the state, and pay dearly for it in a myriad of taxes, fees, and licenses, we don’t like when someone else steps up to the banquet table (That we have paid for, many of us against our will) without paying.
The undocumented worker model is broken. It is not practical in our current socioeconomic culture.
The term you’re looking for is “illegal alien”.
Too late. He’s doubled down on that position, and as far as I can see, from that he cannot recover.
The polling on the illegal immigration issue is so overwhelming in favor of doing something concrete and verifiable about illegal immigration that it is mind-boggling that the political class cannot seem to get it through their heads that their position simply will. not. sell.
80$% +/- of the American electorate wants something done about illegal immigration. Now. It is only the political and chattering classes who consistently think that the 80% are deluded and wrong.
Perry decided to double down on this position. Before that, I thought he had a chance. Now I think he’s done.
—The term you’re looking for is “illegal alien”.—
Yes. It is what I normally call them. I intentionally avoided the term to see how long it would take for someone to notice. 8-P
lol - on this site it’ll get noticed in a second!
—80$% +/- of the American electorate wants something done about illegal immigration.—
I can tell you what would mitigate the situation hugely without deporting a single one: Simpley eliminate all the programs in which they cost the taxpayer money. It wouldn’t eliminate the problem, but it would be the equivalent of fixing a rip in a tire and leaving a slow leak that has to be filled every couple of weeks.
Imagine, no free education, no free health care, no free welfare. And none of the taxes currently collected to support them.
Most people would stop caring about “illegal aliens” to a huge degree. It would become a peripheral issue, like it was since most of our western states became states.
Well, except for that nasty Alamo thing.
Only if the electorate has only VERY short term memory loss can Perry redeem himself. The American people, Imho , proved in 2010 that heads are clear and eyesight vastly improved! Perry was in over HIS head.
Rick Perry, In-State Tuition, and Federal Law
September 23, 2011 5:43 P.M.
By Heather Mac Donald
Rick Perry defended his support for Texas’s in-state-tuition policy for illegal aliens in last night’s Republican debate: “If you say that we should not educate children who come into our state for no other reason than that they’ve been brought there through no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.”
Perry is right: There are compelling humanitarian arguments for treating illegal minors who did not themselves choose to break the law with far greater leniency than the parents who brought them into the country illegally. How to deal with them is the thorniest problem resulting from our broken borders. But hard cases can make bad law. Giving illegal youth de facto legal status is deeply unfair to those immigrant parents and their children who obeyed the law. And once you start handing out amnesties, you inevitably create more incentives for illegal entry. Moreover, allowing illegal students full access to Texas’s university system while making them pay out-of-state tuition like every other non-legal resident of Texas — such as citizens from Arkansas or Oklahoma — hardly constitutes a denial of education, as Perry implies.
Perry justified Texas’s mini-amnesty on federalism grounds: “This was a state issue. Texas voted on it.”
That might be a minimally colorable argument but for a little problem: Federal law explicitly forbids just what Texas did. “An alien who is not lawfully present in the United States,” declares Section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), “shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State . . . for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”
Notwithstanding this federal ban on in-state illegal-alien tuition policies, neither the Bush nor Obama administration has ever objected to such policies on supremacy-clause grounds. Even without this legislative ban, in-state tuition is far more intrusive a grab of federal lawmaking power than Arizona’s maligned SB 1070 (which officially authorizes the state’s police officers to check the immigration status of people they stop on legitimate law-enforcement grounds and whom they reasonably suspect of being in the country illegally). SB 1070 merely enforces existing federal laws. Texas’s law not only contradicts federal law, it creates precisely the patchwork of conflicting state immigration policies (i.e., amnesties in some states, not in others) which the supremacy clause is supposed to prevent.
The Texas attorney general’s effort to justify the state’s amnesty in the face of IIRIRA’s Section 505 almost laughably dodges the preemption issue with the meager argument that the “terms ‘postsecondary education benefit’ and ‘residence’ are not defined in the federal law.” His desperate defense is a reminder that once you start justifying law-breaking, however ostensibly compassionate your intentions (and one needs to ask here what position pro-amnesty Republicans would take on illegal immigration if they weren’t eager to court the Hispanic vote), you are led into further and further betrayals of the rule of law.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.