Rick Perry panic fires up the left

Politico ^ | 8-30-2011 | Ben Smith & Maggie Haberman

[smoothsailing]

Rick Perry panic fires up the left

by Ben Smith & Maggie Haberman

August 30, 2011

In his two weeks as a presidential candidate, Rick Perry has done something that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney could do: wake up the left.

Perry panic has spread from the conference rooms of Washington, D.C., to the coffee shops of Brooklyn, with the realization that the conservative Texan could conceivably become the 45th president of the United States, a wave of alarm centering around Perry’s drawling, small-town affect and stands on core cultural issues such as women’s rights, gun control, the death penalty and the separation of church and state.

The epidemic of lefty angst isn’t just a matter of specific Perry policies though; it goes to the heart of the liberal worldview. His smashing debut on the presidential stage suggests that the victory of an urban liberal Democrat, Barack Obama, wasn’t a step toward a more progressive nation, but just a leftward swing of an increasingly wild pendulum, now poised to rocket to the right.

“His entry in the race is a signal and a wake-up call,” the Rev. Al Sharpton told POLITICO.

Perry, Sharpton said, “is looking to go to the O.K. Corral and start shooting…. Rather than the left get caught sleeping, we better load up, because he is bringing it.”

For Democrats, the pre-Perry GOP primary process was hardly for the faint of heart, as the other candidates have jockeyed to show who dislikes Obama the most. But even as the primary is fought on conservative turf, liberal leaders say they and their constituents see Perry as far worse than your average, hated Republican, and indeed as bad – if not worse – than his hated predecessor in Austin, George W. Bush. And progressives who might have had a hard time getting worked up about Mitt Romney find themselves struggling for superlatives with which to express their fear of a President Perry.

“His work as governor is unparalleled in its frontal assault on women,” said Siobhan Bennett, the president of the Women’s Campaign Forum, citing statistics on women living in poverty and without health care in Texas, and Perry’s active opposition to abortion. “He has gone farther out on a limb legislatively in his capacity as governor and has been expressly anti-woman in the legislation he has done.”

“He is beyond what we expect from conservative Republicans on the gun issue,” said Dennis Henigan, the acting president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who cited Perry’s support for gun rights on college campuses and said it was a sharp contrast with Romney’s “moderate” record. Perry’s rise, he said, had already become “a strong mobilizing force” for gun control activists, whose agenda has been largely ignored by the Obama administration.

“People are perceiving a very real threat that he could be the Republican nominee,” said Henigan, calling the prospect “quite frightening.”

Barry Lynn, whose Americans United for the Separation of Church and State is on the front lines of keeping religion out of public life, also labeled Perry an extreme figure.

“He doesn’t just go to religious right gatherings – he creates religious right gatherings and that’s a big difference,” he said, citing The Response, an 30,000-person event Perry led in Houston in early August.

Lynn said last week’s polls showing Perry in the lead among Republicans had startled his group’s supporters.

“Any time there’s a very viable candidate who has taken on the mantle of a crusader for Christ and ignorer of the Constitution, that makes very many people who care about the real Constitution very nervous,” he said.

Backers of another longstanding liberal cause, campaign finance reform, see a similar threat from Perry, given his career tapping the bottomless Texas wells of oil money and his current status as beneficiary of not one but several new Super PACs.

“It looks like Rick Perry’s campaign and its supporters are taking secret corporate spending to a new level,” said New York City Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio, who has campaigned against corporate involvement in politics. “His actions personify the corporate sponsored campaigns that many of us feared Citizens United would create.”

The death penalty, another longstanding liberal target, has figured prominently in Perry’s career: He has presided over more executions than any other governor, commuting just one sentence in his three terms years and vetoing a bill that would have banned the execution of the mentally handicapped, something the Supreme Court later outlawed.

Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Perry’s conduct of the death penalty was in fact “typical” for a conservative Southern governor, and that the high numbers largely reflected the size of his state and the length of his tenure; the rate of executions has actually declined since the Bush years.

But for death penalty foes, a symbol of Perry’s shortcomings on the issue is his rebuff in 2004 of the Innocence Project’s petitions on behalf of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man convicted of murdering his family on the basis of scientific evidence arson experts described as unreliable. In 2009, Perry abruptly replaced officials who were investigating the case.

“That’s a worrisome series of events about what people are most concerned about when they think about the death penalty – and that is innocence,” said Dieter.

Perry is certainly to Romney’s right on many of these policy issues. Romney, for instance, pushed legislation in Massachusetts that would have reinstated a death penalty only in very limited, carefully vetted circumstances. But Perry isn’t necessarily far outside the Republican mainstream in, for instance, his implacable opposition to taxes and abortion, or his support for religion in public life. His stated support for states rights might, in theory, make him less likely to intervene on social issues than some of his GOP rivals.

But Perry’s combination of policy, Southern style and an easy, unstudied adherence to contemporary religious and political conservative doctrine has put him beyond the reach even of some Democrats who sometimes cross the aisle. Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004 and has criticized Obama’s foreign policy, cited Perry’s recent stated skepticism about the theory of evolution.

“I can’t support anyone who doesn’t believe in evolution – that to me is too much,” said Koch.

And while conservatives enjoy Perry’s ability to enrage their liberal foes, some Democratic strategists have also welcomed his emergence.

“Whether he’s the nominee or not, he absolutely helps fire up our base,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the vice president for communications at the liberal Center for American Progress. “To the degree to which progressives are disaffected and unenthusiastic – this is their ‘holy sh**’ moment.”

Clinton strategist James Carville, however, said Perry remains his second choice.

“Actually we’d all prefer Michele Bachmann,” he said.

Emily Schultheis contributed.

© 2011 POLITICO LLC

[Tex-Con-Man]

I want Perry to become president, appoint someone to head the Dept of Ed who will ban nationwide the teaching of evolution and mandate creationism.

I bet then we could defund the Dept of Ed with majorities in both Houses.

[samtheman]

Interesting that SHARIA (the actual application of religious law in American society) doesn’t trigger the razor-sharp instincts of these Defenders of the Constitution!

[ncalburt]

Rudy led the counter attack by the radical left to stop Bush's war on terror and far left wing dictators that Soros - Buffet pals like Hugo, Assad, Castro , and Iran's head.
He kicked butt on NYC crime while the left cried non stop.
Rudy pulled NYC back from a really bad spot.

In 2008, Rudy was one of the few that could have stopped
Marxist America hater and Soros puppet from getting elected and start to dismantle this country !
He was not a whiny wimp like McNasty was !

I don't care for some of Rudy ideas but he not some awful mess like the crazy 9-11 truth-er and Jew hater named Ron Paul.

[bfree]

The country would have better off if Rudy was the nominee instead of McCain. But you would probably still rather have obami.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Still pimping Mark Kirk, the Socialist buddy of Zero’s ?

[fieldmarshaldj]

That’s cute, it is. Perry’s still a RINO, though.

[smoothsailing]

Eliminating the Dept of Ed and the EPA would be a nice start.

[tet68]

“Any time there’s a very viable candidate who has taken on the mantle of a crusader for Christ and ignorer of the Constitution, that makes very many people who care about the real Constitution very nervous,”

Liberals talking about the “real” constitution as though
they knew what that was make me nervous.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Who were these great masses of Conservative Republicans who were going to turn out for Rudy ? He couldn’t even win a primary. But would he have fought harder that Juan in a general ? Sure. But his personal issues combined with his social positions would’ve sunk him and he might’ve ended up with LESS a % of the vote than McCain. Don’t forget Dubya poisoned the well for the GOP, too.

As for Dr. Demento Paul... well, that doesn’t much require a reply. Wackjob city.

[ncalburt]

When these CONCERNED " Perry Hater " trolls are really cornered then they will PEDDLE the idea of “Let the Dems Win this election “ and we will rise back later like a Phoenix.

In the case of Calif , these CONCERNED trolls worked to get Brown elected and NOW the Dems controlled everything in CA.
So the Dems proceeded to eliminate the Calif GOP thru redistricting all the GOP seats so now the Dems can not be stop on passing any tax increase or legislation .
Then the Dems removed Calif from the electoral college by mandating a popular vote measure . The same posters are here trashing Perry and never state who they think can defeat the Radical America haters !

[fieldmarshaldj]

Given that you can’t distinguish a Socialist crook in the GOP from the Democrats, your opinion on the subject of what is better is worthless.

[shield]

I’d like to see them do something drastic changes to the FDA...this group isn’t interesting in the American Public. They are nothing more than a policing agency for big pharma...

[fieldmarshaldj]

Ah, yes, because electing Socialist Ah-nold’s clone would’ve been so much better. He sure made California so much better, didn’t he ?

[smoothsailing]

I know what you mean. Kinda like Martin Luther King’s daughter talking about how Abraham Lincoln signed the Declaration of Independence.

[glennaro]

Why would these liberals be all upset at Perry? After all, he was once Al Gore’s Texas Campaign Manager for President and supported the liberal Rudy Giuliani ...

I think it's because the Democrat Socialists know that moderates -- who determine the outcome of close national elections and who in overwhelming numbers would prefer to vote for someone other than Obama in the next election (and know the Democrat Socialist Party is highly unlikely to provide an alternative) -- have no compelling reason to vote against Perry. This really should concern the Left.

[smoothsailing]

A general housecleaning of all the alphabet agencies is a worthy goal for a Perry first term.

[Outlaw Woman]

Please...define RINO to me as you see it. I'm fascinated

with yours and other FReeper's opinions that keep

screeching RINO. Is it:

a. Perry's Pro-Life stance

b. Perry's Pro-2nd Amendment Stance

c. Perry's Pro-Israel (recieving an award from Israel)

stance

d. Perry's service to our country being an Air Force

Pilot

e. Perry's stance on slashing taxes

f. Perry's pro market stance

g. Perry's being from Texas and has an agriculture

background

h. Perry's christian stance

What, what is it? I'm really interested to find out just what the hell else you people want. Oh you're against him because:

a. He wrote a clear letter to Hitlery before the 'healthcare' overhaul requesting that the agriculture/rural community' be considered. Which btw has been completely explained as his letter was written before the Clinton's came up with the marxist medical program.

b. Or his stance on immigration; although there is clear evidence that he has continually requested federal assistance with border security

e. Or the fact that he met with constituents (LaRaza) as Governor...which...the last time I checked the Governor, no matter what party affiliation, is the Governor of ALL in a state, and is duty bound to take into consideration all requests

f. Or his meeting with the Bilderberg foundation. Even though they requested a meeting with Perry and the topic was ENERGY; something that Perry might know something about.

g. or is it....

[kennedy]

Yes, Rudy is an outstanding man.

I would not vote for him in the Republican presidential primary, but I would actively campaign for him if he would run against either Chuckie Schumer or Hillary Clinton for NY Senator.

[heye2monn]

Those are the two biggest blots on Perry’s record, a man I otherwise admire. Texas was overwhelmingly conservative in the 1980s — not too long ago — so why did he support Gore?

And then in 2008 Perry endorsed the candidacy of the cross-dressing womanizing adulterer July-Annie. That I really do not understand.

[fieldmarshaldj]

"What, what is it? I'm really interested to find out just what the hell else you people want."

An actual Conservative, madam. Not some blow-dried, macho, puffed-up, opportunistic caricature of a Conservative.