On the Nature of the Perry Attacks
by Erick Erickson
Rick Perry once tried to get out of a speeding ticket.
Rick Perry once owned stock in a chain of video stores competing against Blockbuster, some of which also rented adult movies.
Rick Perry once was a Democrat.
The attacks have come fast and furious against him. But most of the attacks take on a peculiar and very telling strain.
A reporter on television or in print will utter a sentence like this, “Privately many Republican consultants suggest Rick Perry may be too Texas or shoot from the hip too much and might turn off necessary independent voters and women.”
It sounds so serious. As Alex Castellanos said on CNN the other night on John King USA, some fear Rick Perry might have “Mad Cowboy Disease.”
Let me sum this all up for you into what Rick Perry’s biggest problem is.
Whether you are talking about Alex (Team Carole Strayhorn 2006) or Karl Rove (Team Kay Bailey Hutchison 2010) or a host of other national Republican consultants, Rick Perry and his Texas team have beaten a significant portion of them.
But they did not just beat them. In many cases, Team Perry then shut the consultants who opposed him out of future business with him.
So there are scores and scores of Republican consultants who have scores to settle with Rick Perry and his team. And for guys like Karl Rove, if Perry were to win the White House, Karl and a few others would see themselves shut out of White House business for at least four years.
Rick Perry may be the only guy in America to have beaten both Karl Rove and also Obama’s own consultant, David Axelrod.
So there’s a lot of score settling in a lot of the attacks. Next time you hear some Republican consultant say Rick Perry can’t win because he is too much of a cowboy, understand that it is probably a national Republican consultant fearful they will be shut out of work if Perry wins and, more importantly, understand that the same dynamics were in place in 1980 with Reagan’s “boys from California” team of consultants and the national consultants back them said the same about Reagan — he’s too much of a cowboy conservative who will alienate key voting blocks.
That’s not to say Perry is Reagan. It is to say the GOP national consultants have been pulling the same stuff since 1980
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Wild Thing’s comment……..
I thought this was so well written and really states what has been happening.
I go further than Erickson in defense of Rick Perry.
I do not understand the outrage made by some Americans, including some Republicans, about the use of the noun treason or the adjective treasonous.
Treason does not have to involve espionage or the taking of arms against one’s own country. There is high treason. There is petty treason. Treason is betrayal.
An act of treason is simply betrayal within a group. It doesn’t have to be a country.
Doubt is the ultimate treason against faith, for example.
Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines treason as a breach of allegiance.
Oran’s Dictionary of Law defines treason as a citizen’s actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, OR seriously injure the parent nation.
Holders of public office who work in the public trust (this includes the President of the United States and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve) should be held to a higher standard in their conduct than a citizen, no ?
So when the three term Governor of Texas, now a candidate for President, calls treasonous the potential act of the Federal Reserve Chairman debasing the U.S. Dollar, the coin of the realm, with yet another round of hundreds of billions of dollars of “quantitative easing”,
and the President recklessly spends the public treasury with cumulative trillions of dollars in deficit spending and as the highest law enforcement officer in the land does not enforce the laws of Congress, just what is the problem here ?
It is a political slur leveled against officials in power holding high office who are perceived as not just failing to act under law in the public interest, but willfully acting against the public interest causing injury, and potential severe injury, to a country’s economy, its common currency, their constituents, and thus the very property and savings of all Americans now living, and those not yet born.
Accordingly, I submit and I contend conclusively that Governor Perry is fully justified in his use of the word treasonous, and with good reason in his assessment, and further still, in his steadfast refusal to retract.
Don’t let anyone belittle the days we are passing. These are serious times.
If you are a true conservative, how can you not get behind a man like this ?
And he’s only been at this for a week.
Political Correctness is folly, it is wrong, this is The PC Free Zone Gazette and I stand here with Wild Thing.
Carlos makes some excellent points here and I agree completly.
Allow me to add this to the discussion.
When the “East Coast elites” of both parties, in this case the Republicans, see that their power or influence is being usurped or threatened. What do they do? They immediately resort to attacks based upon half truths, rumors or most likely, flat out lies.
More often than not they are successful, because of the they hold the influence over the Media. This allows to use that medium, as their bully pulpit.
This all means that the Candidate in question, whether it be Perry, Palin, Bachmann, or Cain spend most of their time disassembling the statements of the above mentioned “Elites”, and thereby, have less time to cover positions on issues critical to the welfare of this Country.
Then we have someone like Romney or Huntsman come along and because they present no threat to the staus quo, they become the chosen ones of the ‘Elites’ and the Media.
This, my friends, is how we wind up with the likes of McCain at the top of the Republican Ticket.
If the true Conservatives do not prevail in the nomination of the Republican Party in 2012, then it is quite possible there will not be another chance.
NO MORE RINOS!!!!
Everything about this obama administration is treasonous.
We have needed a Perry for a long time. A Washington outsider with hard political experience. Someone whose statements are direct and who stands by those statements. In other words, a non-Rino.
I think it would be much easier to impeach obama for violating the Constitution than any other charge. The Founding Fathers made it very difficult to prove any Treasonous charge, for obvious reasons.
As for Rick Perry, He’s a man with a spine. And he is a Republican, and he knows what the “S” word means. And he’s got my vote.
I would NOT support a Karl Rove endorsed candidate after his obvious Snit and no support of Christine O’Donnell, anything Rove has to say is not worth listening too.
Since Christine O’Donnel I have not supported a Republican Candidate unless on a one to one basis and will not send a penny to the RNC.
Texas Fred did a good posting very similar to this. Here’s a good article he linked: Five Myths About Rick Perry.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/17/5-myths-about-rick-perry/
You are all so awesome. I am so fortunate to know all of you.
Thank you for your input and links.