Posted on 09/21/2011 7:47:46 PM PDT by freespirited
In his first one-on-one national TV interview since kicking off his presidential campaign, Texas Gov. Rick Perry referred to Mitt Romney as “Obama-lite” and charged that the former Massachusetts governor is blurring lines between Republicans and Democrats.
But Perry told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday that his differences with Romney aren’t personal.
“Oh, it’s business,” he said. “I just think it’s important for the people of America and certainly in a Republican primary to see the clear differences that the candidates have. We need to nominate someone who has a stark clear difference between the Republican nominee and President Obama. We don’t need to nominate Obama-lite.”
Perry did not answer a question from Hannity about his 2007 executive order requiring sixth-grade girls to receive a vaccine for the HPV virus, instead limiting his answer to another question Hannity asked in the same breath about his state’s policy of allowing undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition at Texas state colleges and universities.
“This is a Texas issue,” he said. “This is an education issue, not an immigration issue.”
Asked by Hannity why he used the term “secession” during a 2009 Austin tea party rally, Perry said the incident never happened.
“I never used that term at all, as a matter of fact,” Perry said.
As to why he had famously been reported as using the term, Perry said: “I have no idea to be real honest with you. It was never a factual bit of reporting. It was shouted out by an individual at an event, at a tea party, actually. And I said, ‘Listen, America is a great country, we have no reason to dissolve this union.’ I said, ‘I get it why people are frustrated because they’re seeing Washington spending this massive amount of money, we’ve got a huge debt and people are really frustrated with what they see in Washington, D.C.’ I understand that, I didn’t agree with it, but I understood it.”
At the event in question, an April 15, 2009, rally in Austin, supporters yelled “secede” while Perry addressed the crowd, according to reports at the time.
Perry, asked about those sentiments immediately afterward, told reporters: “I think there are a lot of different scenarios. Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of issues is that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We’ve got a great union, and there’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come out of that?”
Perry’s not exactly right about this piece of Texas history, according to the Texas annexation document up on the Texas state library and archives website. Upon the Lone Star State’s entrance into the union, Congress, fearing the state would be too large, passed a law allowing Texas to subdivide itself into as many as five separate states. Neither the statehood agreement nor the act of Congress gives the state the authority to secede outright.
As good a description as anything I've heard lately.
I like Perry but not his position on illegal immigration. He’s dead wrong on that. They are criminals and should be treated as such and not sent to school for a free ride to a good education. That’s just plain crap!
Yes. We don’t need a Dubya redux!
I’d question the “lite” reference...
I said the same thing - and wondering why none of the candidates assigned that name to him. Probably they all were playing nice thinking they could be his VP. Political whores - anything but speaking the truth. Obama lite or Obama white - either works.
Perry is not running for nomination anymore. He is running against Obama.
It’s easy to lob bombs about immigration when one is a governor of Alaska or a Rep. from Minnesota.
Could Rick Perry himself deport illegals during his term of governor of Texas? Nope. It was a tough call for him, but illegal immigration is not a state issue if the federal government won’t enforce the law. This applies for the W. Bush years as well as the Obama years.
As the nominee he will too easily be morphed into GWB by the lib spinsters. He will not attract the moderates.
He is a weak national candidate. I need to see a lot more from Perry to have any confidence in him.
How is Perry Dubya’s third term?
Please elaborate on your claim, because you seem to be posting it frequently these days.
The same GWB that won two terms?
BTW...GWB’s unpopularity wasn’t because he didn’t speak like a professor. Many Americans liked that. He lost popularity after they tarred him with katrina, and after Miers, amnesty and TARP.
You make some very good points. Each state has its particular problems and its particular situations and its particular constituencies. I think we call them realities.
"Once the Democrat Party has put you under their wing, you are in trouble. If they become your official defenders, you don't have a prayer. So it takes me back to this whole point about not losing Texas. Now, people got ticked off at Perry for his in-state tuition policy for children of illegals in the state of Texas. It's a tough thing because we can't afford to lose Texas and those electoral votes because Florida is not a lock and Ohio is never a lock. But Texas right now is for us. We can't lose it. We can't lose New York and California and Texas, 'cause then nothing else matters, it's over."
Right now the Democrats are buying votes with promises of "we'll help save you from those mean Republicans that hate you". The illegal issue is not going to be solved overnight, it's going to take long-term solutions. Texas has had to bear the brunt of the problem. It's going to take some "outside of the box" thinking to solve the problem in ways that don't send them running to the Democrats. The situation is dire right now - we need to win the election first!
By word-craft illegal aliens were defined as “residents” in TX. in order to gain access to taxpayer funds for college.They had to get away from the Fed Code term “domiciled” as it was the term by which they were characterized as illegal.What many folks do not know is that when Perry speaks about putting the DREAMERS on a path to citizenship via free education as a wise investment is that it is yet another huge conflict in Federal Law.Folks who have remained in the USA illegally over 6 months cause the legal hammer to bang even harder.They are supposed to be exited and not allowed for consideration for citizenship for 10 years!
I just found out today at a meeting with the attorney trying to overturn instate/grant monies to illegals is that typically they garner about 6k per semester.Citizens do not get this cash cow for college oftentimes. The grant money is first come first serve and targetted to the poor but we know who is really getting it. Perry fans have no idea how corrupt this whole system is nor his role in setting it up.
TREASON!
Did you listen to the interview? He explained it quite well. If you look, you can find a transcript and then you’ll see that a lot of this immigration issue is the media trying to gin up trouble for Perry.
You need to do further research on this. They are getting a free ride above and beyond AMERICAN CITIZENS.
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