Perry shooting off his mouth
Who would think a month ago that Governor Rick Perry wasn’t angry and heartless enough to lead the T-party in a presidential campaign?
But that’s the beef of some leading conservative commentators after last Thursday’s debate in Florida; Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol simply said, “Yikes.”
They are angry that Perry would pass an executive order to vaccinate young girls to protect them from cervical cancer.
They are angry that the children of illegal immigrants should be allowed to be educated in Texas schools; even Governor Perry thought opposition to this policy was heartless.
This is a hard mob to lead when you consider that they cheered the thought at one debate that someone might die in a hospital for the lack of health insurance.
They booed a gay Army man who risked his life serving in Iraq who asked whether the Republican presidential candidate, if elected, would renew discrimination against gays in the military.
What kind of man or woman wants to lead such a heartless and un-American movement to the White House?
Perry has not lost all “grace” with the T-party, however, because he shares their nightmarish vision in many other respects.
For starters, Perry kills hundreds of criminals, executes them, no matter whether they are innocent or not.
When NBC Anchor Brian Williams asked Perry, “Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those executed might have been innocent,” Perry said, “I have not struggled with that.”
Perry may not believe in evolution but he thinks our policy toward our seniors should be survival of the fittest. To T-party cheers, he promised (more clearly weeks ago) to dismantle social security. On September 7, 2011, he called Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme.”
Charles Ponzi used what he was paid by his later “marks” to pay off what was promised earlier “marks” in an ever-expanding geometric progression that just could not be sustained, and lasted about 200 days.
On the other hand, no one is misled about how Social Security works. It’s a pay as you go program in which workers today make payments that are transferred to retirees and, when today’s workers retire, they are paid by their successor workers. Social Security is the safety net that did not exist during the Great Depression, and it has been catching and saving retirees ever since 1935.
Perry’s ignorance of science is hardly limited to evolution. On August 17, 2011, he said “scientists are questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”
Actually, Perry, no, they are not. The U.S. Global Change Research Program concluded that: “The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) with important contributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities’.”
Perry scores the government for not protecting our border, thus invoking the mob nativism that’s become more evident as a core belief of the T-party. Perry charged on September 22nd that “the federal government has not engaged in (border security) at all.” But that’s completely untrue because more U.S. agents than ever patrol our border. It is, however, not what the T-party folk prefer to believe.
Ironically, Perry claims he wants less government, even as he demands that the government do more. It’s this same Governor Perry who genuflected and grasped after more federal aid to fight the wildfires across Texas.
In conclusion, the Republicans can find a more worthy nominee to run for President, and, as citizens, we must demand more of both parties than what the T-party has to offer.
