By STEVE PEOPLES
Associated Press
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry says he opposes a fence along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Speaking to hundreds of New Hampshire voters at a private reception Saturday afternoon, the Texas governor says a fence would be ineffective and take too long to build.
Yes, surprisingly, the AP misrepresented what he said. He’s made it clear many times he wants to fully secure the border, and that will include fence where fences make sense. Nobody thinks we should fence in our entire country, and different people have different ideas of exactly how much of our border needs to be fenced. Perry doesn’t want to waste money on fences where it makes no sense.
This is an argument about technical details. It’s absurd to pretend Perry wants open borders. BordersUsa rates him good on border security. He supports building fences where people actually cross — so clearly he doesn’t want people coming into our country illegally. He also has spent hundreds of million of Texas money trying to secure the border, again proving he doesn’t want open borders.
It’s a lot easier to just say “build a fence” — and apparently for some, they’d rather have the slogan than actually figure out how to defend our borders. Others clearly think the only way to secure the border is an Israeli-style fence; but oddly they don’t want to extend the fence past the gulf or ocean boundary, nor to they want to build a fence along the gulf coast or the southern pacific coast.
Because, as it is clear, we all understand “strategic fencing”, even if we don’t all understand what the Texas border looks like.