It was clear to all of us that the plan was to impose a big government program to mandate a universal health care right.
I mean, that is what they said at the time the goal was.
The question is, was Rick Perry a conservative at the time or not?
If he was someone who really understood and believed in conservative principles, as a politician he could have been trying to rally opposition to it. It is a straw man to say he didn’t have the power to single-handedly stop it. No one did, it was a combined groundswell of opposition that stopped Hillarycare, much like the battle against comprehensive immigration reform.
If you want to argue that back then he was a liberal or that at the time he was simply a professional politician with no strong beliefs gauging where the wind was blowing, and only later came to be a true believer in conservatism, that would be a more tenable argument.
I can judge the words he wrote in the context of the time and the job he had at the time.
Rick Perry is not the perfect conservative, neither is any other candidate in the race in my opinion.
Except for Mitt Romney or Ron Paul, I would vote for any of the candidates in the current debate in the general election. If they want my vote and the votes of others, they will have to earn that chance in the up coming primary election.
This time should be rather rough-and-tumble as we vet our candidates. But we should be honest in our criticisms and fair in our comparisons. That is why I participate here on Free Republic.