Rick Perry has pole-vaulted over Willard Mitt Romney in the race to become the top Republican to face President Obama on Election Day 2012. Texas’s governor beat Massachusetts’s former governor 29 percent to 17 percent, Gallup reported Wednesday, in the second national survey to find Perry leading by double digits among Republicans. Perry deserves this distinction. While he lacks the pro-market purity of Milton Friedman, Perry’s record should satisfy limited-government conservatives far more than Romney’s.
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• As “America’s jobs governor,” Perry is a one-man antidote to Obama’s venomous policies, which have held unemployment above 9 percent for 25 of the last 27 months. Across all 50 states, between June 2009 and June 2011, the Dallas Federal Reserve calculates that 49.9 percent of America’s net new jobs arose in Texas. July was its eleventh straight month of payroll expansion, with 29,300 Texans finding work. Nearly eleven years into Perry’s governorship, Texas inarguably is No. 1 in job growth.
During Romney’s single four-year term, however, the U.S. Labor Department ranked Massachusetts No. 47 in job growth. Employment increased just 0.9 percent between January 2003 and January 2007. At that time, U.S. job growth was roughly 5 percent, reports WSJ.com’s Brett Arends. Romney did keep Massachusetts ahead of Ohio and Michigan — two Rust Belt job sieves — and Louisiana, crushed by Katrina.
New Yorkers and Californians must be stampeding into Texas for something beyond triple-digit summer temperatures.
Cato praised Perry for introducing “a zero-based budget to force the state agencies to justify their continued existence and funding levels” and noted that “he has presided over moderate increases in the Texas general fund budget.” Cato applauded Perry’s “substantial achievement”: a $6 billion property tax cut in 2004 — including a first-year, $1.5 billion net tax reduction. However, Cato criticized Perry for partially offsetting this tax relief with a $1-per-pack cigarette tax hike and a gross receipts tax on business.
Cato observed that Romney’s “first budget, presented under the cloud of a $2 billion deficit, balanced the budget with some spending cuts, but a $500 million increase in various fees was the largest component of the budget fix.” Cato also saw that Romney “proposed modest increases to the budget and line-item vetoed millions of dollars each year, only to have most of those vetoes overridden.” In October 2006, Cato’s Stephen Slivinski predicted Romney’s current migraine: “If you consider the massive costs to taxpayers that his universal health care plan will inflict once he’s left office, Romney’s tenure is clearly not a triumph of small-government activism.”
• On health care, the free-market Club for Growth (where I twice have spoken) lauds Perry for expanding managed care within Medicaid. Among other recent modernizations, a CFG White Paper on Perry explains, “this bill could save Texas nearly $468 million over two years.” After Perry’s extensive lawsuit reforms, “the number of insurance companies offering medical malpractice insurance soared 650 percent,” along with a massive influx of doctors eager to perform diagnoses rather than depositions.
"... the cowboy-boot-wearing governor recalls President G.W. Bush in style. Unfortunately, Willard Mitt Romney reflects him in substance."
Perfect. That says all you need to know. When I held my nose to vote for Bush I knew he was a big-government technocrat, but still a better choice than Gore. Unfortunately, to the Left who still considers Bush to be a conservative, Perry will be considered not only Bush, but Bush times two, and they'll try their darndest to drum that into the heads of squishy independents and squishy Republicans.
vote for a texan governor did not work out for the country the first time and now we are going to double down. massive strategic errors(Iraq/AfPak) . not working for me how it working for you
If this was August 2007, the same article in reference to Obama might have added the following caveats: he was associated with Rev Jeramiah Wright, his middle name is "Hussein" and some might question whether he was born in the United States. It's all well and good to point out Perry's "conservative positives". But you might as well try and tackle what he'll be attacked on NOW. The fundamentalist Christian ties. His "transformation" from being a Democrat.
He'll be portrayed as 100 times that of Bush - remember Bush spoke of "compassionate conservatism". Perry keeps company with some serious Christian wackjobs. You can't compare the two in this specific area of character. Bush is mainly bashed for what he did AFTER getting the job - Iraq, Gitmo, torture.
"the cowboy-boot-wearing governor recalls President G.W. Bush in style. Unfortunately, Willard Mitt Romney reflects him in substance."
This, in two sentences, states the problem with more clarity then any 100 gallons of digital ink ever could.
The main problem with Romney is not only his northeast liberalism-lite but the fact that the MSM will paint him as some sort of Darth Vader of extreme right winginess, pulling the entire center of discussion further left (it got us the Obama disaster last time). Perry will also be painted as such, but since for the most part (cough "immigration" cough) he is conservative, the goalposts won't really move like they would under Romney.
if Rick Perry is the answer you do not even know the question. another establishment militarist big spending intervention Republican never again will I vote for this type
1) Texas Dream Act- no argument there
2) anti border fence- so are a lot of people who live in Texas; build a 10 foot fence and somebody will get rich selling 11 foot ladders. Perry does advocate more boots on the border, surveillance drone flights, and a far more personnel driven approach
3) so what if states allow gay marriage? What business is it of the government's? If you want limited government, be for limited government not just that which squares with your religious morals
4) why shouldn't Texas get back at least some portion of the billions in tax dollars we're forced to send to Washington?
5) completely false- govt jobs have only been about 7% of the increase, and the ratio of people per govt employee has increased, meaning that there are more people per govt worker than there were when Perry took office External Link
The play on making Perry a dream ideal is already over the top. Recently he was pushing some dreadful class warfare, taking ugly shots at "Wall Street".
Perry sounded just like Obama.
The fashion cannot help itself, but go way overboard, which always flops.
Hopefully we have a serious, constructive, healthy competition this Primary.
Both Romney and Perry are sound CEOs from Outside the Beltway. Both proven, capable, serious, etc.
Perry has been reading a lot in his Public appearances, might not be as articulate, we shall see.
Check out the link below to Rick Perry's interview with Laura Ingraham. This guy is a dim bulb. You can even sense in the interview that Laura Ingraham realizes it, too. Finally, towards the end of the interview, after Perry's cavalcade of cliches, he says one more big, standard cliche and Laura Ingraham says "...That's all I need to hear!..." This guy will step in one cow pie after another and is already walking back on what he said in his recently released book, "Fed Up." Rick Perry is George W. Bush if George W. Bush were dropped on his head. External Link
This probably won't get approved, but why on earth would an openly gay man support anyone who wants to do everything in his power to limit his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Well, for just for starters, Perry is (still) a supporter of the Texas "homosexual conduct" statute, which made it a crime for two consenting, unrelated adults to have sex if they were of the same gender. The law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the landmark 2002 case Lawrence v. Texas, but, despite repeated efforts, Texas has yet to formally repeal the statute. When Perry was asked about the Lawrence case in 2002, he defended the anti-sodomy statute: "I think our law is appropriate that we have on the books." He wrote about the case in his 2011 book Fed Up, too, citing the Lawrence decision as the product of "nine oligarchs in robes" and an example of what's wrong with our judicial system. And last spring, when Perry ran for his third full term as governor, he did so on a state GOP platform that exlicitly stated "we oppose the legalization of sodomy."
When, oh when Dear Lord are we in the Republican Party going to learn that despite the sage wisdom of Northeastern pseudo intellectuals and the media at large (but I repeat myself) that the GOP is NOT best served by nominating the Romney. Dole, Bush(es), and escpecially the McCains of the party?
The people of this country are NOT going to vote for a Democrat Lite when they can have the real thing.
Living in Texas I think I can safely say that I know a little bit about Rick Perry. He is NOT George W. Bush. He is MORE Conservative. Not that it would take much to be more Conservative than Bush or his Dad despite what the Jeanne Garafalo's of the world think.
Is Rick Perry perfect? OF course not, but then again nobody is ESPECIALLY ANY politician.
But Perry does bring WAY MORE bedrock Conservative conviction to the Party than Mitt Romney.
Perry is not the answer. he is part of the problem. we need a true conservative not a Gore change-will not be supporting another texan-did not work out for us the first time. two massive strategic errors
Yes, once a single person from one of the 50 states has disappointed you, it would be stupid to elect another one from that state.
Look at the example of Richard Nixon. He was from California and got impeached. Thank God that the electorate didn't make that mistake again in 1980 and elect another Californian for president. Oh, wait ...
No, the lady doesn't like RINOs. Mitt Romney is a progressive. And it makes absolutely no sense to decide you don't like a politician based on the state he lives in.
