That’s the main thing that bugs me about Perry on this.
Actually, two things:
1 ) That he went through 8 years of Reagan, then was Al Gore’s Campaign Manager (this is enough to nuke him in my book)
2) That he lies about if and tries to rewrite history today, i.e. “this was Al Gore before he...got to be Mr. Global Warming.”
The outright lie and trying to whitewash his own history is what ought to set off warning bells in the head of every thoughtful person.
That's a red flag for me too, I'm being consistent on this one. I had a similar problem in 2010 when some tea party groups were rallying around Adam Andrzejewski for Governor and he had this applause line on the campaign trail about how his dad was the "conservative reformer who took on George Ryan" (implying his dad ran to the right of Ryan). Adam got big kudos for that because George Ryan in 2010 was an ultra-liberal RINO/DIABLO ex-Governor behind bars for corruption.
The problem with the story is it didn't hold up to scrutiny. If you researched what he was talking about, his dad ran for the state legislature as a Democrat in 1978 in Kankakee Co. He didn't file against "George Ryan" but against any and all Republicans on the ballot, since 3 state legislators were elected per district back then. The most damning part is that George Ryan back in 1978 was Speaker of the Illinois House and a conservative icon. He had put his butt on the line to defeat the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) in Illinois at the behest of Phyllis Schlafly and had a rock solid pro-life, pro-family, tough-on-crime record in those days, and was seen as squeaky clean in his pre-Secretary of State days. Nobody would have attempted to run as a "conservative reformer" against him in the 70s, and certainly not as a RAT.
Now we have Rick Perry and his fans trying to do the same history revisionism in reverse, claiming Al Gore was a staunch right-winger in 1988 and the Texas Democrats were "the conservative party" in the 80s. Again, once you research Gore's record, the record of the RATs in the Texas legislature, and Reagan's appeal in Texas during the late 80s, these claims are not merely misleading but flat out false.
I have a real problem with politicians that try to rewrite history to make themselves look good.
If it were an isolated incident, I'd be more willing to cut Perry slack, but he has a long history of saying one thing and doing another. He's to the right of Romney, but I have a hunch if Perry had been running for office in Massachusetts he would have done exactly what Romney did. They both seem to adjust their "principles" to whatever is popular at that given moment in time.