Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry talked with a friend
in September 1991 while visiting a ranch outside Austin.
Posted on 11/06/2011 1:18:25 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Democrats had ruled the state Agriculture Department for a hundred years. Perry immediately ejected Hightower loyalists and Democratic operatives from the agency. He pledged to cut the department’s staff by 20 percent and scale down the number of regional offices around the state.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry talked with a friend
in September 1991 while visiting a ranch outside Austin.
After Rick Perry switched from Democrat to Republican in 1989, he set out to become, in the words of his mentor Phil Gramm, more Catholic than the pope.
During the next 22 years, as he rose to the top of Austin’s power grid, Perry not only left his Democrat friends behind — he helped destroy them politically. And Texas evolved into a redder-than-red state.
Perry and the GOP took down U.S. Rep. Charlie Stenholm, Texas House Speaker Pete Laney , Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower , Texas Comptroller John Sharp and many other Democrats...
Perry has portrayed his move as a matter of principle, while those Democrats, and others, say it was the result of political ambition. Expressing grudging admiration, Stenholm said, “Rick has become a master politician.”
Stenholm and Perry grew up where pump jacks, cattle and rows of cotton exist side by side on the plains of rural West Texas. Stenholm, a conservative “blue dog” Democrat, was already in Congress when he helped recruit a 33-year-old Perry to run for state representative in 1984.
....After graduating from Texas A&M in 1972, Perry spent six years as an Air Force pilot and then returned to Haskell County in 1977 to work the farm and ranch with his dad. He had gotten a taste for politics after joining the American Agriculture Movement, which brought the problems of family farmers and ranchers to public attention...........
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Geeze, the Mainstream Media must really be scared about Perry sinking into oblivion or they wouldn’t be running these PUFF PIECES to try to prop him up. I remember these same kind of stories about McCain’s war service, 4 years ago...
Personally, I prefer a Republican who the media DOESN’T want to win.
If that's the part of the article you wish to highlight, you have helped the Dallas Morning News push the point that they fail to make with the rest of their article.
Charlie Stenholm lost his seat to redistricting. He lost by 18 percentage points in the November 2004 election. Now he's a D.C. lobbyiest.....“Rick is the governor who called three special sessions on redistricting to get rid of me and others,” Stenholm said. “They took my farm and my home out of my district.”
As Phil Gramm is accurately quoted in the same piece, “Rick didn’t lose anybody who was a real friend.”
Tell me the "puff." I know you never have anything positive to post about Rick Perry but give me a clue, what's "puff" in this piece?
“I’m a little bit cautious about converts, it’s hard for me to imagine ever being a democrat.”
It’s even HARDER for me to see anyone who calls himself conservative being a leader in Al Gore’s 1988 presidential run, particularly when Gore’s conservative rating was a “9” out of 100:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/realitycheck/2000/pdf/fax0726.pdf
It’s also hard to see how ANYONE who claims to be conservative can immediately support the Democrats after their attempted IMPEACHMENT of Reagan for Iran Contra.
Nope...Perry DEFINITELY was not a conservative back then, regardless of what he claims to be. He also isn’t one now, given all the crap he’s done as governor, and especially because of his plan, announced THIS WEEK, to legalize ALL of the Illegals in this country, so they can work.
We don’t need that - we need them to simply GO HOME.
“economy
education
balanced budget
drilling
regulations
debates
Romney Care
in-state tuition
HPV shot
border security
Barack Obama
Federal mandates
no pandering for votes
terrorists using U.S. Mexican border
immigration reform
no Fed Dream Act or amnesty
AZ law
work-visa program
examine what our national work force needs are
jobs in Texas - full picture
free-trade
manufacturing in China vs U.S.
wages hurt by the cost of doing business - onerous regulations
Texas right to work state but he’s always been endorsed by Teamsters Union (jobs)
multi-national companies (U.S.)
jobs, spending, taxes, regulations
trade laws and tariffs
subsides and tax credits
energy and market place
taxes and lobbyists
Marcus Luttrell
family decision re presidential run
Parade interview “birther” “news”
Afghanistan — special ops war, troops, Obama policy, war on terror, more funding for technology and R&D
Foreign policy dependent on our economic strength
debating Obama
campaign commitment in NH
review candidates’ track record
roughness of campaign — in to win — facts can be hard-hitting
Social Security, jobs, national security, being truthful
discusses education, EPA, Energy, HHS
states rights
state transportation infrastructure
ObamaCare, medicare, medicaid, healthcare
Tom Cobrun, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan
health care insurance - state by state
health care in Texas, access, tort reform
judges, Supreme Court, federal courts
baseball “
.
.
.
Anything about his plan to LEGALIZE every Illegal in this country so they can work here (legally).
Just asking.
This is an insightful post; and of course it is hard for the left vs. right folks to forget that you must win 65% of the Independents so when you keep remembering all those checklist hot button emotional items, just try too also remember we want to win and those that I (as well as you apparently) prefer may not hold the MIDDLE ground in a General National Election. Every single candidate in the Republican field has faults. Rick Perry has the same type of political history as Regean, coming from the Left (wrong) and finally being RIGHT - but like a Blue Dog he is center-centric Right.
“Tell me the “puff.” I know you never have anything positive to post about Rick Perry but give me a clue, what’s “puff” in this piece? “
It’s a PUFF PIECE because it’s intended to help out Perry. The media does not run puff pieces on people they want to tear down...only on the ones they want to prop up. That simple.
It still amazes me that the GOP ever considered Michael Bloomberg on of their own, Giuliani is almost as extreme, as is Romney, but that is the state of things.
I couldn’t be happier that this area finally got rid of Stenholm as our congresscritter. The article says he was a conservative Blue Dog. It should’ve said he pretended to be a conservative. Good riddance. It took us 36 years but we finally did it.
“Many of them became “republican” when the wind started blowing in our favor, they are nothing but exploiters and opportunists. They will take us to the left just as surely as the democrats, only a little slower.
It still amazes me that the GOP ever considered Michael Bloomberg on of their own, Giuliani is almost as extreme, as is Romney, but that is the state of things. “
I take some issue with that. There were some converts that weren’t simply opportunists. The ones that come to mind are Senator Shelby, Senator Grahmm, and of course Reagan. They became solid Republicans and were solid conservatives...but Perry is out his own weird world, trying to shoot up little girls with drugs, trying to grab half a million acres of Texas land, and now trying to legalize at least 10 million Illegals. I don’t even have a label for him.
You need to understand the South and the state of Texas. The entire area was Democrat by tradition. Republicans were associated in those areas with the horrible Reconstruction Government after the Civil War, and with the Depression in the person of Herbert Hoover.
Now that I’ve reminded you of regional history, how did you feel about Ronald Reagan being a Democrat?
How do you feel that Herman Cain was a Democrat and voted for the Bill Clinton and Al Gore ticket?
I grew up in Kentucky and in those days (virtually) EVERYONE was a Democrat. You could be liberal or conservative but, if you wanted to be elected, you had to call yourself a Democrat.
I used to wonder why Kentucky held its election for Governor in May when other states held theirs in Nov. Actually it was the Democrat primary that was held in May, the one with all the TV and newspaper ads and all of the hoopla, i.e., the one that mattered. The actual Nov. election was a foregone conclusion as to the winner between the Democrat candidate and the Republican candidate. So if you wanted your vote to count, you had to be registered as a Democrat.
When I moved to Florida in 1980 it was same and I registered as a Democrat. But as I matured I found I could no longer live the lie and could no longer be associated with those people and that's when I switched my registration to Republican.
I suspect that Perry's situation was similar.
My family has been Southern since 1749. The harshest name my grandmother ever called anyone was “carpetbagger”. I was probably the first to register republican, in 1963, primarily over the RKBA issue. Over the following years the democrats forged ever stronger obvious marxist ties and became dominated by Yankee urban interests, and I’ll be damned if I can figure why any conservatives remained in the democrat party.
I don’t mind if they are documented to work, and that is all they are documented to do. If, they do not take jobs that are at depressed wages because of employers taking advantage, or take jobs that citizens are denied opportunities to take.
This is all predicated on securing the Border, as well, so that we nab people who are avoiding all due process by ignoring a system that would lead to appropriate employment if they followed that system.
I’m not braindead on the issue with bumper sticker rant slogans.
We share an unbelievably long border with a basket case nation. If my family were starving and there was no work to support them, and all I had to do was step over a line so I could feed them, I would, and furthermore, you would.
If you say you would let them starve rather than step over a line and feed them, you lie.
Given that, and given the crying need to secure that line and control who comes and goes and why they are coming and going, let them work. As long as that work is also controlled so it doesn’t hurt citizens of the USA.
I don’t write this for you, I write this for others who do read our threads and are interested in these thoughts.
Again what do you think of Ronald Reagan?
What do you think of Herman Cain voting for Bill Clinton and Al Gore?
Friend, people of the entire state of Texas voted Democrat for years and years and years. They NOW vote solid Republican.
You are beating a horse that died. You just don’t care for the date on which the horse died.
I explained that, and everyone is not cut out of a cookie cutter mold...people are different as to when they come to make certain changes. A lot of people voted as their parents. Their parents voted as their parents. It all stemmed back to the Civil War Reconstruction Government and later to Herbert Hoover being blamed for the Depression.
The fact that you did it sooner than someone else is fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that the others did it, too.
If you can’t acknowledge that, but would rather stew in your own juices and beat that dead horse, I can’t help it.
How does it help Perry?
"FED UP!" -- by Rick Perry [forward by NEWT GINGRICH]
Rick Perry's book "almost came too late"
"I wish this book had never needed to be written.
It almost came too late.
America is recklessly accelerating toward economic disaster. Fed Up! may be the last warning sign to the danger that lies ahead.
Rick Perry, Texas governor for the past decade, is uniquely qualified to offer a firsthand perspective on why the United States—the most successful civilization in human history—is being threatened with economic collapse.
First Principles
Faith, freedom, and free enterprise are the pillars of a strong, safe, prosperous society. Rick knows that when these principles are protected, America succeeds, and when they are undermined, America fails. But the Left has a different belief. The Left believes that most people are not capable of pursuing happiness and that a strong centralized government is best able to provide for them. While claiming compassion for humanity, the Left's policies are destructive to the human beings subject to them—as we have had to learn painfully again and again.
The Left's self-serving solution to every crisis, economic or otherwise, and many of their own doing, is always the same: inflict higher taxes on Americans to create more government programs with more rules and regulations that result in less freedom, less innovation, less safety, and less prosperity.
The problem with the Left’s one solution, as Rick forcefully explains in the pages that follow, is that it doesn't work. It's never worked, and it never will work. The record shows it.
But what the record also shows is that when power and freedom are returned to the people, when people are rewarded for work, and when government holds the line on spending, individuals and opportunity thrive. We have seen that result most spectacularly recently in Texas, and in the mid-1990s with the Contract with America Congress, when I served as Speaker of the House.....
Bump!
“How does it help Perry?”
It doesn’t mention his coddling of illegals or his plan (just announced) to legalize at least 10,000,000 of them.
That makes it a puff piece.
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