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 ...
But if you lived through Reagan and were still a Democrat, then you didn’t learn enough. Perry obviously didn’t.
Your bar is so low that one mistake 20 years ago disqualifies a guy? Guess you’re going to stay home in the next election. No one can meet your expectation.
..and the words drift into independent and blue dog democrat ears... ‘Perry supported Democrats...’
Thank you, ABC, for going out of your way to help a GOP candidate. ‘course, I’m sure you imagined that this would cause conservatives to sit at home, on their hands.. Well, a lot of them already intend to, so you won’t change their minds. But you’re doing a great job with those who already planned to go to the polls.
Stuff like this from the MSM will only help Perry. A lot of Republicans and Independents are former Democrats. This kind of article opens up people’s eyes to the fact that the Democrat party of today is not the same party that existed in the 1980’s. There are no more Sam Nunn’s or Henry Jacksons. The 1988 version of Al Gore is a wholly different animal from the lunatic Al Gore who exists today.
Algore looks like a beached whale. His remarks about racial bias while giving an interview to someone was utterly sickening it was so phony.
Agreed. It does seem many have forgotten that election. I too can remember Gore was the most conservative democrat running for the nomination. There is video of Gore criticizing Bush Sr for not doing more about Saddam and his ties to WMD and terrorism. There is also that line in the democrat debate where every dem criticized the operation in Grenada and Gore said he was proud of what our troops did (causing the crowd to cheer). I believe his wife was key to getting explicit lyric warnings placed on records.
He wound up being a liberal twit, but to deny that (at the time) he was seen as the more conservative dem in the race is simply a rewriting of history in hindsight.
Ironically (for ABC/White House), his past as a democratic politician probably only helps him among the independents and weakens State Media’s attacks on him, where they are trying to paint him some sort of “radical”.
He should admit it was a mistake and not make excuses about Al Gore being a conservative. If that is his definition of “conservative” then Perry needs his head examined.
And don’t forget the Gore/Dukakis flap over Willie Horton..
Hallelujah and Amen!!!
Very good.
fully vetted, gotta love it.
while I agree with you in part, the press “vets” who they want to vet.. The current Prezzie hung out with a terrorist.. and the press said “nothing to see here, move on everybody”.. Perry simply was a dem, and they are using that, with some degree of success, to split and fraction the Tea Party vote. We can’t let them.. People grow and gain wisdom. 1988 was a long time ago. hmmmm,. our current Prez was hanging out with Rev Wright and a terrorist and smoking dope at that time.
I can’t wait to try to convince my liberal friends to support Perry by telling them that he’s actually independent because he used to be a democrat.
Perry can easily use that to his advantage.
Winston Churchill reportedly said, “If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
I agree entirely with the second part of the quote.
in Perry’s defense, who knew Gore was going to begin suffering the effects of full-on dementia at age 50?
So long as Al Gore was representing Tennessee in the US Senate, he tried to appeal to conservatives. That’s why he was Clinton’s nominee for VP in 1992. Al Gore may have been pushing global warming even back in 1988, but histrionics about global warming didn’t start till he was revving up his 2000 campaign for President.
When I was 17 and 18 I was a socialist. I am not one to hold a person’s acknowledged and repented of past against them.
Read the testimony of some of the posters. Gore has changed a lot since the 80s. He is, at least externally, a very different guy.
SERIOUSLY?
It's not a problem for Democrats!
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