Posted on 09/01/2011 6:46:10 AM PDT by Hawk720
As he has risen to the top of national Republican presidential polls over the last few weeks, Rick Perry has been forced to confront his past — including the years he spent as a Democrat.
In particular, Perry has been fielding uncomfortable questions about his support for Al Gore in the 1988 presidential race. Perry, who did not switch to the Republican Party until 1989, served as a high-profile Texas supporter of Gore’s presidential bid.
More than two-decades later, as the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, Perry frequently cites Gore’s support of the Strategic Defense Initiative, a Ronald Reagan-era anti-ballistic missile proposal that later came to be known as Star Wars.
“I was a Democrat in my days in the Legislature in the 80′s and I was under the false idea that somehow or another that conservative Democrats could save the Democrat Party. They couldn’t,” Perry said in an interview with conservative talk show host Sean Hannity on Tuesday. “Al Gore appeared to be the most conservative — a strong Strategic Defense Initiative guy — and frankly we thought that he would be the most conservative Democrat. You, know, we were wrong.”
Last weekend, at a campaign appearance in Ottumwa, Iowa, Perry called Gore a “strong Strategic Defense Initiative proponent.”
But Gore’s support for the Strategic Defense Initiative while he was running for president in the late 1980′s was not nearly as enthusiastic as Perry implies.
In fact, just weeks before Gore launched his presidential bid in the summer of 1987, he dismissed the defense proposal as “an electronic Astrodome over the United States” in an interview with the Associated Press.
In a January 1988 interview with Florida’s St. Petersburg Times, Gore was asked whether he would support increasing research funds for the initiative. His response: no way.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I don't believe this to be true, but assuming that he is not as conservative as we would all like you're making an assumption that the Pubs will automatically fall into line with everything he wants. The Tea Party and Jim Demint in the Senate have changed the dynamic. At the very least this new conservative force will keep a Pub POTUS to the right.
All I said was he needs to stop defending his support for Al Gore. As the article notes Gore ran against SDI that year and Perry says he supported him for his support of SDI.
Perry simply has to admit this (supporting Gore) was a mistake instead of trying to jusittfy it. That is all I said.
How many times?
Well, he would also have to stop defending his support of Gore.
1994 was pretty much the turning point. Since then, all of the conservative Democrats have become Republicans.
I am not enthusiastic about Rick Perry, but I am not holding it against him that he was a Texas Democrat in the 1980s.
What do you think he meant when he said that he (Perry) went one way and Gore went to hell?
It was stupid and wrong at the time. Until he comes to that realization he probably isn’t worth voting for.
I’m going to have a good deal of trouble getting on board for a guy who thought Al Gore should’ve been elected hog reeve, let alone President of the United States.
How old are you? Do you remember the Dem candidates that year? This seems to be overly important to you ...more than to most people.
I remember Gore was the conservative candidate.
Real conservative, like all conservatives after (not before) Reagan we find them in the Democrat Party. I don’t believe for one second that Gore was a conservative.
That's something these people overlook. In 1988, the Dem candidates were Dukakis, Jesse Jackson, Dick Gephardt, Paul Simon and Al Gore. Now, with that field, which of the candidates would have been a more conservative choice for a Democrat to support in the primary?
It is also important to remember that by Perry's own admission, the last Democrat for whom he voted in a general presidential election was Carter in 1976. So while he supported Gore in the primary, he voted for Bush41 in the general election.
Okay, I’m going to take you at your word here.
Let’s think of it this way. If men of character had taken a look at the Democrat party and switched, would we be talking about that dynamic as late as the 90s?
I don’t think so. Rick did change in 1989. It’s my premise that there was plenty of cause as early as the 1972 time frame. After McGovern? Heavens. That guy was a fruit basket of Marxism.
This was just a few years before he wrote “Earth in the Balance”. The fact is that many of the positions he took during the campaign were only to make him appear as a moderate. It was politics.
Gore made a C in Earth Sciences @ Yale if I remember correctly.
I'm done with you...you sound like a broken record...if you even comprehend that.
Which is the corollary to the conservative purist argument.
Who would the TEA party have more leverage with?
a) a strong-willed "strict constitutionalist" who doesn't think they need to listen to anyone about anything
b) a pragmatic conservative who follows Reagan's 11th commandment, and points out that the left is the enemy
c) a milquetoast RINO who'd be scared to death of a phone bank meltdown whether from the right or left
d) an outright America-hating marxist
Anyone who allows (d) is anti-American.
Obama showed the left that the ideal candidate will always disappoint over-expectation, so be careful what you wish for with (a)
And finally there's a big difference between (b) and (c)
Reagan would vote for (b), even though he picked (c) for his successor.
Thanks very much for the ping/comment (LOL) #97, Liz. Very good thread (I read it earlier tonight). Thanks to all posters.
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