Rick Perry Compares Trump to Cancer, Know-Nothings, and Joe McCarthy in Double-Barreled D.C. Speech

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry ratcheted up his assault on rival GOP hopeful Donald Trump another notch during a speech in Washington, D.C. today, calling the ex-reality TV star “a cancer on conservatism,” comparing his views on Mexican immigrants to that of the Know-Nothing Party, and saying his political tactics were reminiscent of Joe McCarthy.

The former Texas governor spoke before a sober crowd of around 100 Republican dignitaries at the Willard InterContinental Hotel in D.C., discussing the power of conservatism to induce economic growth and criticizing the field of Democratic contenders for the White House.

But when Perry shifted from policy to Donald Trump, his staid speech turned passionate. “He offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as ‘Trumpism,’” Perry said of the real-estate mogul. “A toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.”

“Let no one be mistaken,” Perry said. “Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded.”

“Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded.”

He returned to the theme in detail later in his speech, unloading on Trump with a fiery condemnation of his controversial comments about Hispanics and Arizona senator John McCain. “I, for one, will not be silent when a candidate for the high office of the president runs under the Republican banner by targeting millions of Hispanics, and our veterans, with mean-spirited vitriol,” he said.

“This is not new in America,” he said, recalling how the Know-Nothing movement of the 1840s scapegoated Irish and German immigrants. “These people built nothing, created nothing,” Perry said. “They existed to cast blame and tear down certain institutions. To give outlet to anger. Donald Trump is the modern-day incarnation of the know-nothing movement.”

Perry wasn’t done, either. He went on to savage Trump for his claim that former POW John McCain wasn’t a war hero. Trump “couldn’t have endured for five minutes what John McCain endured for five and a half years,” he said, earning his only applause line of the afternoon.

“When a candidate under the Republican banner would abandon the tradition of magnanimous leadership of the presidency, when he would seek to demonize millions of citizens, when he would stoop to attack POWs for being captured, I can only ask as Senator Welch did of Senator McCarthy: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir?’” Perry said.

#related#Most Republican candidates have tread lightly around Trump, denouncing his most egregious remarks but otherwise avoiding the current GOP frontrunner. But not Perry. With low national poll numbers that could disqualify him from the first Republican debate on August 6, his ardent and escalating attacks on Trump are seen by some observers as a bid to raise his status with Republicans disgusted by Trump’s candidacy.

But when asked about the politics behind the onslaught — and whether his continuous attacks may be inadvertently strengthening Trump attacks — Perry was unmoved. “I’m not particularly concerned about that,” he said. “I’m concerned about standing up for what I believe in, and what I know the Republican Party stands for. Mr. Trump is going to have to defend his statements.”

“Americans may have a dalliance with this individual,” Perry said. “But I think once they look at the record — if they are true conservatives, if they care about the future of this country — then that dalliance will not last very long.”

— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.