Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry continued his attack on Social Security over the weekend, calling it a "Ponzi scheme" and a "monstrous lie" to younger Americans who should not expect to get back their contributions upon retirement. "It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people. The idea that they're working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie," Perry said, according to the Houston Chronicle. "It is a monstrous lie on this generation, and we can't do that to them," Perry told a crowd a The Vine...

Until a few weeks ago, the race for the Republican presidential nomination seemed wide open. There was a presumptive front-runner, Mitt Romney, but he held first place mostly because he was a familiar face; his support among Republican voters appeared broad but not deep. Many conservatives at the party's core weren't happy with Romney, and a line of would-be champions has auditioned for their support, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann. But none of them succeeded in knocking Romney off his perch. Until now. Only two weeks after entering the...

I just read the text of Rick Perry's remarks to the Border Summit on Aug, 21st 2001. How in the hell is this stuff slipping through the cracks without a single mention in the conservative press? If this had been Obama, Sean Hannity would have been talking about it 24/7 during the last presidential campaign. There are many passages in the speech that are of great concern to me, but this one really caught my attention. ...Legislation authored by border legislators Pat Haggerty and Eddie Lucio establishes an important study that will look at the feasibility of bi-national health insurance....

We are adults and most on FR are very intelligent persons. I think we can decide if a candidate is right for us. How about stop repeating the same Gardasil, Texas corridor, immigration stories over and over and over. Most have seen them by now if they have been paying attention. Most have judged the stories and condemn Perry to hell for them or they think that a president just might have different priorities than a state governor. Screaming at us in all caps isn't going to change any minds. FR isn't the entire universe of voters. We are a...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry has asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for nearly $350 million to cover the costs incurred detaining illegal immigrants in state prisons and county jails. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Perry criticized the federal government hasn't been doing enough to secure the border with Mexico, thereby allowing illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. and use taxpayer-funded resources, including prisons and jails. It's a claim the Republican governor has made many times before. The letter was dated Aug. 10, three days before Perry formally announced he is running...

Opinion L.A. 2012 Campaign: Rick Perry And A Uniquely Anti-Gay GOP Field? August 24, 2011 You might think as much following the revelation by reporter Mark Benjamin that Republican front-runner and Texas Gov. Rick Perry once compared, in writing, homosexuality to alcoholism. Benjamin writes at Time magazine's Swampland blog: Since leaping into the GOP presidential race, Texas Gov. Rick Perry hasn't been asked if he thinks gays are born or made. But in a little-noticed passage in his first book, "On My Honor," a encomium on the Boy Scouts published in 2008, Perry also drew a parallel between homosexuality and...

As he enters the Republican presidential race, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is striking some red-meat notes on the subject of immigration. Border security, he says, is a federal responsibility -- and immigration reform will have to wait until the border is secured. Invoking his beloved 10th Amendment, he proposes that in the meantime states should have some latitude to set their own course on the subject. As for Texas, he suggests, unauthorized immigration will not be treated lightly; earlier this year he called for a state law to abolish sanctuary cities, although the bill never made it to his desk....

TX governor panders to 'The Race' Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 7/21/2010 5:20:00 AMThe head of a grassroots borders enforcement organization says it's completely inappropriate for Texas Governor Rick Perry to speak to a radical Hispanic organization that supports granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. The Republican governor recently addressed a crowd of 1,800 members of the National Council of La Raza, which calls itself the largest Hispanic civil rights organization in the United States. Critics, however, point out that La Raza means "The Race," and claim the organization is nothing more than a Hispanic supremacist organization. One of...

A new poll by Public Policy Polling puts Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the front of the GOP presidential field in Iowa and shows just how much Perry’s entrance into the race scrambled the contest for the Republican nomination. The poll, released Tuesday (.pdf), shows that 21% of the poll respondents would support Perry in the Iowa caucuses next February, outpacing the two other Republican frontrunners Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney. Romney’s campaign has been focusing on New Hampshire, a state that is considered a must win for his campaign. If the contest were simplified to a three-way race between...

Former New York Gov. George Pataki (R) plans a "major announcement" Saturday in Iowa, prompting speculation about a late entry into the field of Republican presidential candidates. Pataki, who's said before that he didn't plan to run in 2012, but has left the door ajar to changing his mind, will attend a local Republican fundraiser in Polk County on Saturday. A spokesman told CBS News that the former governor is now "seriously considering" a bid after saying in June he was "not running now." Pataki's spent most of the year in charge of a group he founded, No American Debt,...

A couple of caveats are in order before we start looking at this poll. First, it comes from PPP, a Democratic pollster which has had its fair share of difficulties in sampling Republicans. It’s also early in the race, as Rick Perry just starts getting vetted and Sarah Palin hasn’t yet begun to campaign, if in fact she decides to campaign at all. Still, this is a rather dramatic result: The race is pretty close four ways in Iowa but Rick Perry is the new favorite among Republican voters in the state. Among announced candidates he’s at 22% to 19%...

....Tough-guy politicians may not actually make the best leaders, but they've been shown to be popular with voters and able to win major elections. Currently, no other leading candidate (not Mitt Romey, Ron Paul or Michele Bachmann) in the Republican field comes across as more macho than Perry. Evidence of Perry's machismo is surging on the internets. The Twitter feed @RickPerryFacts is a constant stream ofChuck Norris-esque statements about Perry. They're funny, but I also can't help but think they don't speak to a yearning of some part of the human psyche: A basic desire for a strong, tough-guy leader....

I spoke to a group of politically active, so-called conservatives last week at a hotel here in my New Mexico hometown. One of the topics that kept coming up was whether I despised Texas Gov. Rick Perry as much as I despised most other candidates that the Republican/Democrat regime is trying to force me to pick from in the next election. Let’s think through some deep thoughts and do fact-checking on Perry and the entire Left/Right paradigm as most people seem to see it right now: You can spend about five minutes on the governor’s official website confirming that Rick...

clip--- As governor of the state that shares the largest border with Mexico, Perry defended his record on immigration, including his support for allowing illegal immigrants to get in-state tuition rates at Texas universities but opposing such a law on a national level. "I'm a big believer in the 10th amendment," Perry said. "Whether they allow for tuition increases or decreases or whatever it might be in that state, it needs to be the states making that decisions." Perry wouldn't wade into a national immigration reform debate, deferring to his position that those decisions should be made on the state...

Texas Governor Rick Perry, the latest GOP candidate to enter the 2012 presidential race, looks to challenge former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Perry entered the race on August 13th after announcing his candidacy at an event in South Carolina. Perry’s announcement, which stole the spotlight from the Ames Straw Poll, put to rest several months of speculation about the Texas Governor’s decision to run for the GOP nomination. During his presidential announcement, Perry said “we cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership.” Perry also added that “page one of...

Rick Perry: A Candidate For Whom 'UnPresidential' Is A Virtue Texas governor's stance on economy and global warming may play well with the US right, but it turns off independents Chris McGreal 19 August 2011 Rick Perry, seen here campaigning in New Hampshire, has drawn criticism over his boasts about new jobs in Texas. There are not many contenders to be president of the United States who consider it an asset to be called unpresidential. But then Rick Perry is not looking for the support of those seeking a president like any other. At least not for now. The Texas...

Rick Perry has many ideas about how to change the American government's founding document. From ending lifetime tenure for federal judges to completely scrapping two whole amendments, the Constitution would see a major overhaul if the Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate had his druthers. Perry laid out these proposed innovations to the founding document in his book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. He has occasionally mentioned them on the campaign trail. Several of his ideas fall within the realm of mainstream conservative thinking today, but, as you will see, there are also a few surprises.

The media may have pronounced Rick Perry the darling of the right wing, but Justin Raimondo has a different take. Perry's a liberal internationalist, just like the Texas governor before him: Another clueless Texas Governor surrounded by the same Praetorian Guard of conniving neocons who led us down the road to imperial overstretch and fiscal ruin last time around – isn’t that just what the GOP needs right now? The neocons have anointed their candidate, and it’s clear they have some sense he’s swimming upstream: "’He will distinguish himself from other Republicans as a hawk internationalist, embracing American exceptionalism and...

Charleston, S.C. When organizers were planning the third annual RedState Gathering, held earlier this month in Charleston, South Carolina, the event looked to be like the second annual RedState Gathering, which was much like the first. Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, would be a featured speaker, as he had been at the others, including last year in Austin, Texas. Perry was the reason the second annual gathering had been held in Austin. Perry wooed the redstaters. He brought the organizers out to Texas, took them to dinner, gave them a tour, took them clay shooting outside of town. RedState...

While Perry is staking his cam­paign on Texas being the top net jobs cre­ator, Perry’s ver­sion of Texas being “Open for Busi­ness” isn’t about low taxes and less reg­u­la­tion as much as it is about doing busi­ness with for­eign com­pa­nies, including selling off Texas’ sov­er­eign land and public assets to for­eign cred­i­tors, an issue which Perry’s first tele­vi­sion ad uses to take aim at Pres­i­dent Obama. A recent Wash­ington Post article doc­u­ments Perry’s work to get Chi­nese government-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pany Huawei, to base its U.S. oper­a­tions in Texas, a com­pany that the U.S. gov­ern­ment has deemed a threat to national...