Perry is pro-gun, pro-life, pro-war-on-terror, and he has powerful Hispanic friends such as the current Presidents of Bolivia and Mexico. Hispanics now outnumber Blacks in America. Discard them at your own risk.
Perry is pro-gun, pro-life, pro-war-on-terror, and he has powerful Hispanic friends such as the current Presidents of Bolivia and Mexico. Hispanics now outnumber Blacks in America. Discard them at your own risk.
That's nice, but Perry is also running against a Democrat Hispanic with even more powerful Hispanic friends.
In 2 years, Perry hasn't done crap when it comes to accomplishments with getting the Hispanic vote and probably advanced the Democrats with Hispanics more than he did the GOP. Literally, as in Henry Cuellar.
About the only thing he's done to "attract" them is thrown the state's money at them with new programs. Some may argue that this helps him, but the bottom line is a Republican is never going to win a government handout contest against a Democrat. Perry can promise them all he wants, but the Democrats are just going to come along and promise the same plus more.
That's why if he wants to get the Hispanic vote, he's got to use another strategy. He should have appointed a conservative Hispanic Republican as SoS. He didn't and we got Democrat Cuellar. When Cuellar resigned to run against our only Hispanic Republican congressman, he should have appointed Orlando Sanchez as the replacement. He didn't. He gave the job to an old hick constable friend that nobody's ever heard of. When literally dozens of judicial benches have opened up mid term, he should have appointed (1) conservatives and (2) conservative minorities. In the majority of cases, he did neither. The benches went to trial lawyers from big city law firms.
There is a case to be made for conservative outreach to Hispanics, but Rick Perry is not it.
Also on that I'm not so confident in Perry. Yes, he's probably pro-Bush on it. But when you get into some of the finer details and related issues, the record I've seen has not been very impressive. Case in point:
About 2 months ago there was a huge pro-Israel rally in Houston, as in 2000-4000 politically charged sure thing voters. Perry was in town that day attending some fundraiser earlier on. The event's organizers included 2-3 prominent Jewish Republican activists and they went out of their way to give Republicans an opportunity to speak. Cornyn came, and so did several local republicans including our nominee for a closely contested congressional race with an open seat. They extended an invitation to Perry to keynote the thing, which would have been easily accomodated in his schedule seeing as he was already in Houston for the day. Perry said no.
But if you've followed the local news recently, you've probably seen at least one story about how Perry's been attending the opening of things Islamic cultural centers and mosques in front of crowds with less than 100 people. He made a special trip to southwest Houston a few weeks ago specifically for the opening of one. Now, don't get me wrong - opening up mosques in Texas does NOT mean supporting terrorists and far from it. But politically speaking and publicity wise, it is flat out STUPID and especially when you are skipping out on pro-Israel events.
What do you think the average voter sees when a photo of Rick Perry cutting a ribbon in front of a mosque appears on the front page of the papers, as was the case a few weeks ago? And comparatively, what do you think that same person would see if a photo appeared of Perry at a pro-Israel rally? From a strictly political PR standpoint which of the two would be better for his campaign right now?
Without a doubt it is the pro-Israel rally. Perry had that choice. He skipped the Israel rally and he went to the Mosque. Now what would you guess any old average Bubba voter out in rural Texas thinks of that?