Free Republic

HOUSTON, Texas — Members of the Texas National Guard currently in training at Camp Swift, near Austin, have been told to stand by for a personal briefing from Texas Governor Rick Perry. Perry is expected to arrive at Camp Swift this morning to brief the troops on his expectations of their deployment. It is still not clear as to exactly where this first batch of troops will be deployed, according to one of the soldiers currently at Camp Swift. The soldier has been at the camp receiving training this week and expects to be deployed somewhere along the border this...

Rick Perry has taken another step to being a national player and perhaps inching his way into a national presidential campaign. One of the ways is to make friends. On July 31, he filed the necessary paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to create a political committee called RickPAC. He intends to use the committee to donate contributions to like-minded Republicans. “It was set up to help fund candidates who agree with the governor’s priorities,” said spokesman Mark Miner.

Remember the laughter and snarky comments from the Left and its Ministry of Information when Texas governor Rick Perry activated one thousand Texas National Guard soldiers for duty at the southern border? “Ha ha they’ll just stand around like wooden Indians and watch ‘undocumented immigrants’ walk by,” we heard from people Beltway liberals who hate conservatives, especially conservatives with a drawl. The Left is about to get another lesson about underestimating those who live in “fly over country.” There is a local website (callthecops.net) that is reporting what Perry’s plan actually involves. Contrary to what has been postulated – even...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a response to the crisis of unaccompanied children crossing our southern border. He's calling up the National Guard. To do what? Provide daycare? In the meantime, border agents trying to handle the inflow find themselves handling such unexpected duties as changing baby diapers. In a news conference Perry insisted that his assignment of 1,000 troops to the border will be "force multiplier" to assist state troopers, the Border Patrol and other police who, unlike the National Guard, are allowed to make actual arrests and detentions. But sheriffs along the border sound unimpressed. Some told reporters...

Mexico, Northern Triangle Governments Condemn Militaristic Approach. The governments of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have voiced their concern over Texas Governor Rick Perry’s decision to send roughly 1,000 members of the National Guard to the southern border. Governor Perry said he is going to mobilize the National Guard in order to secure the border. The Mexican government sent diplomatic notes to both the US State Department and the Texas governor to express their disapproval of the measure. Sergio Alcocer, Mexican undersecretary for North America, stated that sending the National Guard to the border does not contribute toward a...

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas plans to order 1,000 National Guard troops to his state's border with Mexico in an effort to stem the tide of immigrants illegally entering from Central America, dispersing around the country once they've made it into Texas. Critics will call it a stunt and accuse Perry of showboating, but at least he is taking action, while President Obama, who took an oath to defend the country from all enemies foreign and domestic, drinks beer, plays pool and attends fundraisers as our borders are overrun. Enemies are more than adversary nations with weapons. An enemy can...

On July 3, 2014, Texas Governor Rick Perry told Members of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security that urgent federal action was required to stem the humanitarian and national security crises unfolding along the Texas-Mexico border. After almost three weeks of inaction by the Obama administration, yesterday, Gov. Perry directed Texas Adjutant General John Nichols to immediately begin preparations for the deployment of up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the U.S. – Mexico border. These troops will support the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) ongoing law enforcement surge, Operation Strong Safety, which is focused on combatting criminal...

Perhaps no state claims the sense of pride that is evident in Texas. Author Mark Davis talks about this shared sentiment in his new book "Lone Star America." This week, he spoke with Townhall about how Texas is excelling and taking the lead on just about every issue from jobs to energy to the Second Amendment. He shared some insight into policies that allow Texas to thrive economically, as well as his thoughts as to which Texans could be in the White House in 2016. Why write this book now? In 30 plus years of doing radio talk shows, conservatives...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is visiting Iowa for the fourth time in eight months, hoping for a second chance to win over Republican voters who delivered him a stinging caucus loss when he ran for president two years ago. Perry, 64, hasn't said if he plans to run again in 2016. But he's clearly considering it and is meeting Saturday and Sunday with veterans and conservative activists in the northern Iowa communities of Algona and Clear Lake. Perry has been raising funds for GOP candidates and seeking advice from political insiders since November. He is signaling he's committed to the...

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) has been begging the federal government for years to secure America’s southern border. Now, as America faces what some are calling an “invasion” of illegal aliens, Perry said the time may come that Texas is forced to secure its roughly 1,200 mile border with Mexico with or without the federal government’s help. “We’ve been able to shut down illegal activities in certain sectors with our different operations that we’ve had,” Perry said on The Glenn Beck Program Thursday. “But I think there’s a point in time where you say, ‘You know what? This 1,200 mile border has to...

(Perry) came under sustained attack from his rivals...for signing a 2001 Texas law granting in-state tuition rates at state universities to illegal immigrant students. “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry's economic development strategy is simple: Have the federal government do what is constitutionally mandated and then get out of the way of the states. Let them compete, he says. The companies will go to the states that are the most nimble, with the right mix of regulations and taxes, the ability to educate workers and incentives that lessen risk, he said. "Competition is uncomfortable," he said Wednesday in Rock Hill. "But it's what has allowed America to maintain its edge." Perry stressed his philosophy with several different examples Wednesday before business leaders from York, Chester and...

To say that Sheldon Adelson is a major political player would be like calling the Grand Canyon a big hole in the ground. Mr. Adelson certainly puts his money where his mind is or, perhaps one could say, where his interests lie. In 2012 alone, he donated around $100 million to Republican candidates and causes. So it’s little wonder that he is quite popular among many Republican politicians eager to gain his attention and his favor. Over the past year, Adelson has aggressively sought policy returns on his political investments, and he is leading some in the GOP down dangerously...

What he said is less interesting on the merits than it is as a sign of how his strategy’s changed since 2012. The Texas Republican Party this month adopted a platform supporting access to “reparative therapy” for gays and lesbians, a widely discredited process intended to change sexual orientation. In response to an audience question about it Wednesday night, Perry said he did not know whether the therapy worked. Commonwealth Club interviewer Greg Dalton then asked him whether he believes homosexuality is a disorder. “Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the...

John Ratcliffe, Rep. Ralph Hall’s challenger in the Republican primary runoff, told the Washington Post today that one way to secure America’s borders is by putting undocumented immigrants in jail instead of simply removing them from the country. Ratcliffe said that under current laws, being in the country without documentation leads only to deportation. If undocumented immigrants faced jail time, however, he said many would leave of their own accord.

Sarah Palin's 2008 vice presidential campaign used the Heart classic Barracuda to play off the popular politician's nickname. Heart reacted quickly, demanding the campaign to stop using the song at once. Now, Heart is hoping that not only will Hillary Clinton run for the White House in 2016 but that she'll use the group's music along the way.

Economy: When not making excuses for President Obama's dismal economic record, liberals try to explain away Texas' stellar growth. But what choice do they have? The Lone Star State proves limited government works. After Gov. Rick Perry entered the presidential primaries in 2011, the left made a determined effort to dismiss the fact that his state had outperformed the rest of the country. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called it the "Texas Unmiracle." Time magazine dismissed Texas' burgeoning growth as mere luck. Others chimed in along the same lines, insisting that low taxes, limited government spending and...

I caught a bit of Rick Perry's CPAC speech today and, boy, does he have a fire in the belly. Had we seen this fire in 2012, then perhaps he would have won the GOP nomination. Of course, Perry underwent back surgery which significantly contributed to his lackluster campaign.

Same schmuck who just declared war on the Tea Party...  I was actually considering Perry a second-tier maybe for 2016, hard to argue with his economic record. But when he comes out and endorses Mitch McConnell vs. a viable Tea Party challenger (when there was no reason for him to weigh-in in the first place) it becomes clear enough to me that Rick Perry is not the man to reliably bring this country anything resembling a Reagan Revolution. He plays a good conservative when campaigning, and would most certainly portray himself as one again in 2016- but this time the stink won't...

Republican starlets Rick Perry and Sarah Palin are both known for their personalities, love of guns, sexiness, and moments of TV humiliation, but only one of them is doing something to avoid forever being labelled an idiot. After his intellectual humiliation during the last presidential election cycle — during which he was unable to remember his own policy points — Perry is becoming considerably more wonkish than we’ve previously known him, fashioning himself as something of an elder statesman, in stark contrast to Palin. The Texas governor, a pair of smart-person glasses now permanently attached to his face, has been...