Posted on 08/23/2011 2:25:21 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Gov. Rick Perry might have confined his remarks to a critique of the Fed's policy of quantitative easing, buying bad assets by printing more money.
He might have just expressed a fear that putting more money into circulation can cause inflation.
He might have just said that such election-year infusion will mire the Fed in politics.
But our newest presidential candidate doesn't do wonk. He does Texas plain talk. And now, upon formal introduction to coyote-shooting Perry, much of the national electorate is mulling which is scarier: That Perry believes what he says or that there is calculated purpose afoot.
Both.
Perry said last week in Iowa that if Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke were to print more money before the election, it would be “almost treasonous” and that Texas “would treat him pretty ugly.”
This was pounced upon as everything from a rookie mistake to rich irony. Perry had suggested earlier that Texas might secede from the union. Suggested, of course, without actually proposing it.
And this points to a cool calculation that merges belief and cynical purpose. He knows he espouses outlier views and figures he gets more points by espousing them with folksy flourish than by politicking around them. He certainly can't hide from them. There's a matter of the public record.
Underestimate Perry as a hick if you want. He isn't. There is more than a bit of preacher in him but mostly he knows what's worked. Brash talk sells. It marks him, he believes, as the American everyman.
So, climate change is “a scientific theory that has not been proven and ... is more and more being put into question.”
Evolution is just a theory “that's out there.”
Handlers might even now be trying to rein him in. But here's the Perry calculation. Taking on inconvenient science — and the Fed — plays well. It does in this state, where contrarianism and notions of Texas exceptionalism have long homesteaded along the Brazos.
Perry, more than Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are able, will put to the test whether what sounds true sells better than what is true. Simply, Texas' economy makes him more marketable. Mitt Romney is his GOP competition.
Perry is banking on the right wing's discomfort with Romney and that Texas, home to a long and unbroken string of Perry election successes, is more a microcosm of the country than is Massachusetts.
Not everyone, of course, even in plain-talking Texas, likens a difference of opinion on monetary policy and election-year timing to treason. But, hey, he's taking on the federal government. That's what counts.
Perry isn't a hick. Neither is he an everyman. He is an ambitious politician campaigning with a tried-and-true playbook — one who is betting that Texas' economic “miracle” will bring all the non-believers on these other issues along for the ride.
But faith — not fact — drives belief in creationism and intelligent design. Denial is all that is required to dispense with inconvenient climate change science.
Perry cannot rely on either to convince the skeptics that low taxes and light regulation are responsible for Texas job growth. It's just not that simple.
And, still, no one should count Perry out. Sadly, what might be intellectually suspect can still perhaps be politically brilliant.
Bump!
Bump!
Thank you again CW for a humorous post;)
These leftist idiots are distorting, contorting and going bonkers trying to compose anti-Perry propaganda....making no sense of their nonsense.
It’s hilarious.
So they’re giving him the Bush treatment by calling him stupid.
They really have run out of all arguments and stand like imbeciles before us with a finger up their nose with one hand while the other pulls the undies out of their rear.
I dispute the first part of that statement - college grades are not a proof-positive indicator of intellect. And the second part has yet to be proven. Perry is playing to his base and saying what he has to in order to get the nomination. But once he gets that he'll need more than his base to win the election. Time will tell just how politically brilliant he and his team is.
Not just the Bush treatment. Their intellectual bankruptcy goes back years. Every Republican from Eisenhower forward was stupid. Except for Nixon, who was evil. Like clockwork, they tar the Republican candidate or president as an idiot. Ford was stupid and clumsy. Reagan the amicable dunce. Bush I, Dole and McCain, the war heroes who nevertheless weren’t intellectually curious like their opponents (the brilliant policy mavens, Dukakis and Clinton). And, of course, Bush II was a stupid monkey. Now Perry is stupid. But what about the fact that he has won so many campaigns? Ah, well the answer to that is that he is “politically” smart and ruthless; that doesn’t mean he isn’t still an idiot. The good news is that I am getting the impression they are talking about Perry like they talked about Reagan and Bush. And Reagan and Bush won.
I, for one, am sick and tired of the stupidity and baseless arrogance of the so-called "intellectual elite"!
So, to cut to the chase, Ricardo Pherry loves importing Mehhicccans and Sharia, but wants to lynch Bernanke for destroying our currency.
I’m ok with the ropey thing.
Now about those Mehhiccans, and Sharia.............
Perry Ping
BS.....it takes more faith to believe in "evolution" than it does ID.
click on image
“It is true, as presidential candidate Perry says, that the state turned down some of the money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 because it had strings attached. Texas didn’t apply for education grants that came with conditions, and the governor famously refused $556 million in federal stimulus funds for the state’s unemployment insurance program, saying the conditions that came along with the cash would increase the long-term costs of the program.”
LOL, I will take the trunk full of hundreds, you can keep the brief case with the ones. ROFLOL
Forget the birth certificate, where is the transcirpt? Why is it that George Bush’s and Rick Perry’s college transcripts are leaked, but we don’t ever get to see a Clinton’s or an Obama transcript?
Senator Phil Graham answered that:
“ If we should vote next week on whether to begin producing cheese in a factory on the moon, I almost certainly would oppose it…On the other hand, if the government decided to institute the policy, it would be my objective to see that a Texas contractor builds this celestial cheese plant, that the milk comes from Texas cows, and that the Earth distribution center is located in Texas.”
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