Politics & Policy

Perry on Defense

By

From CNN’s Peter Hamby: 

 

The Perry campaign conducted two “tele-town halls,” dialing into the homes of targeted GOP voters across both states [Iowa and South Carolina] and asking them to hold for the governor, according to a South Carolina Republican source who received one of the calls. Perry was introduced on the South Carolina call by former South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson, Perry’s campaign chairman in the state.

The candidate immediately set about defending his record on three issues that have come to define his campaign in recent weeks: immigration, Social Security, and his 2007 executive order mandating that school girls be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer.

Comments

“He said, ‘You all have heard a lot of things out there, so let me set the record straight,’” said the source who was on the South Carolina call. “I was struck by the fact that he started out on defense instead of offense.”

Comments

Katrina Trinko — Katrina Trinko is a political reporter for National Review. Trinko is also a member of USA TODAY’S Board of Contributors, and her work has been published in various media outlets ...

Most Popular

Elections

Stick a Fork in O’Rourke

By
If, as I wrote last week here, Joe Biden may save the Democratic party from a horrible debacle at the polls next year, Beto O’Rourke may be doing the whole process a good turn now. Biden, despite his efforts to masquerade as the vanguard of what is now called progressivism, is politically sane and, if ... Read More
Elections

In Defense of the Electoral College

By
Senator Elizabeth Warren has joined a growing chorus within the Democratic party in calling for the abolition of the Electoral College. Speaking at a forum in Mississippi on Monday night, Warren said that she hoped to ensure that “every vote matters” and proposed that “the way we can make that happen is ... Read More
Education

Ivy-League Schools Wither

By
A  number of liberal bastions are daily being hammered — especially the elite university and Silicon Valley. A Yale and a Stanford, or Facebook and Google, assume — for the most part rightly — that each is so loudly progressive that the public, federal and state regulators, and politicians would of ... Read More
National Security & Defense

In Defense of the Iraq War

By
Today is the 16th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and Twitter is alive with condemnations of the conflict -- countered by precious few defenses. Yet I believed the Iraq War was just and proper in 2003, and I still believe that today. When Donald Trump condemned the war during the 2015 primary campaign and ... Read More
Elections

Beto-mania and Our Cult of Personality Politics

By
Robert “Beto” O’Rourke’s biggest fans and supporters insist he is a forward-thinking, future-oriented visionary, but no contender for the Democratic nomination feels more familiar than the former three-term congressman from El Paso. That’s because he has the highest combined score in both déjà vu ... Read More