POLITICO : Rick Perry schools Michele Bachmann in Waterloo (personal charm vs rock star aloofness)

Politico ^ | 08/15/2011 | Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin

[SeekAndFind]

WATERLOO, Iowa — Rick Perry came to Michele Bachmann’s hometown Sunday evening and schooled the newly minted Iowa front-runner in her native state’s demanding retail political culture.

The day after Perry announced his candidacy and Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll, the two candidates spoke to the Black Hawk County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner, the sort of endless regional event that is a staple of the long Iowa campaign.

Both candidates offered conservative standards, promising to slash government spending and ease regulations to jump-start the private sector economy. Perry promised to use his presidential veto pen “until all ink runs out to get the message across that we’re not spending all the money.” Bachmann pledged to keep faith with evangelical Republicans.

The duo also went to great lengths to burnish their local credentials, with Bachmann celebrating her Waterloo roots repeatedly and Perry name-checking Iowa companies, recalling his own 4-H gold star status and Eagle Scout upbringing, and paying repeated respect to senior Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who maintains a hog farm nearby and was seated in the crowd.

But the contrast that may lift Perry and undermine Bachmann in their high stakes battle for Iowa had less to do with what they said than how they said it — and what they did before and after speaking.

Perry arrived early, as did former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. The Texas governor let a media throng grow and dissolve before working his way across the room to sit at table after table, shake hand after hand, pose for photographs and listen politely to a windy Abraham Lincoln impersonator, paying respect to a state that expects candidates, no matter their fame, to be accessible.

But Bachmann campaigned like a celebrity. And the event highlighted the brittle, presidential-style cocoon that has become her campaign’s signature: a routine of late entries, unexplained absences, quick exits, sharp-elbowed handlers with matching lapel pins, and pre-selected questioners.

She camped out in her bus, parked on the street in front of a nearby Ramada Hotel, until it was time to take the stage. Even after a local official’s introduction, Bachmann was nowhere to be found. It was not until a second staffer assured her that the lighting had been changed and a second introduction piped over the loudspeakers that she entered the former dance hall here. By the time she made her big entrance to bright lights and blaring music, the crowd seemed puzzled.

Bachmann’s stump speech drew mostly polite applause until she closed by giving a large apple pie to “the oldest mother in the room” — a local centenarian.

Then she stayed on stage, signing T-shirts from above, which her staff then distributed to a steady but not overwhelming crowd.

Finally, she swept through what was by then an empty ballroom behind a phalanx of six aides who shielded her from reporters and the handful of Iowans who remained.

“She kept us waiting, she was not here mixing — then she was talking about what a great evening it was. How do you know? You just got here,” said Karen Vanderkrol, of Hudson, Iowa, who said she agreed with the substance of Bachmann’s speech, but that one line in particular rang false: “I am a real person.”

“She can say she’s real and part of the people, but that’s not what we do,” Vanderkrol said of the congresswoman’s behavior.

Several other attendees seemed to leave similarly disappointed.

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[Mr Rogers]

There is a pretty good case to be made that states DID have the right to leave the union. After all, a bit over 80 years earlier, 13 colonies left the British Empire...

[Mr Rogers]

“I do not believe that a homosexual is either a sinner or a barbarian”.

Maybe you don’t, but a huge percentage of Christians do. Something about the Bible...

[SeekAndFind]

RE: There is a pretty good case to be made that states DID have the right to leave the union. After all, a bit over 80 years earlier, 13 colonies left the British Empire...

_________________________________________________________________________________________

I am personally sympathetic to this view. Unfortunately, the Civil War ended that view and anyone who wants to revisit this will be considered a Confederate who wants to start another Civil War.

Ever seen the reaction by the MSM to the flying of the Confederate flag in the south?

See here for instance :

BUS DRIVER FIRED FOR FLYING THE CONFEDERATE FLAG

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03-10/news/28692540_1_confederate-flag-bus-driver-redneck

Also here :

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/confederate4.html

here :

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/02/confederate-flag-flying-halted/

and here:

http://charleston.thedigitel.com/politics/naacp-challenges-haleys-flying-confederate-flag-32949-0727

Hence, Bachmann is going to have a problem because she openly declares that one of the major influences in her life is a professor who believes that secession is a right of a state.

Rightly or wrongly this WILL be a source of controversy and she has to be prepared to answer any questions that might arise.

[Mount Athos]

I can’t begin to understand how anyone could ever claim that Homosexuality is not sinful according to Christianity.

Were you talking about some other religion maybe?