If that’s not a portrait of James Buchanan in the background, it should be.
Well, it’s official — Rick “Gov. Goodhair” Perry wants to bring his small-government, large-ego campaign to everyone’s back yard:
In Perry and the state he has led for more than a decade, Republican voters are being offered the Platonic ideal of the GOP model for economic growth — low taxes, scant regulation and limited public services.
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Texas has no income tax, ranks 46th overall for the taxes it collects per capita and has the strongest job growth in the country. The state has accounted for between 30 percent and half of the net new jobs in the country in the past two years, depending on who is counting.
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While Obama points to his universal health care law as a historic achievement, Texas is often cited as an example of the need for health-care reform: A quarter of Texans lack coverage, the highest share in the country.
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While Obama seeks to increase federal funding for education, Texas ranks 47th in the country for the level of state spending on schools. And while the Obama administration clamps down on pollution, Texas ranks highest in the country for the levels of toxic chemicals released into the water and carcinogens released into the air, according to Scorecard, an organization that tracks nationwide pollution data…
Alex Pareene, at Salon, thinks “If Rick Perry is seriously a presidential front-runner there’s something wrong with all of us”:
… Perry’s flirtations with neo-Confederate organizations and symbols — ably documented by Justin Elliott — are so extraordinarily reprehensible that it should immediately and permanently disqualify him from being taken seriously for national office. The Confederacy was not a bunch of generally well-meaning dudes who went a little too far, it was a gang of racist traitors who launched a bloody war to defend a monstrously unjust institution. Having neo-Confederate sympathies in America should be equivalent to supporting the reconstituted Fascist party in Italy, or worse. It should not be considered something that 50 percent of the nation should be willing to look past, or even embrace.
__
And if that embracing happens it’ll be in part because of a press that won’t explicitly describe a disgusting sentimental attachment to a racist, brutal regime of oppression as anything other than an acceptable ploy to pick up Southern white support.
__
This, of course, is not even mentioning the time Rick Perry fucking killed an innocent person. Which, talk about disqualifying! This is the new front-runner, the man who doesn’t care that he killed an innocent person. Whee!
And here’s Timothy Egan, in the NYTimes, on “Rick Perry’s Unanswered Prayers“:
A few months ago, with Texas aflame from more than 8,000 wildfires brought on by extreme drought, a man who hopes to be the next president took pen in hand and went to work:
“Now, therefore, I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.”
Then the governor prayed, publicly and often. Alas, a rainless spring was followed by a rainless summer. July was the hottest month in recorded Texas history. Day after pitiless day, from Amarillo to Laredo, from Toadsuck to Twitty, folks were greeted by a hot, white bowl overhead, triple-digit temperatures, and a slow death on the land.
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In the four months since Perry’s request for divine intervention, his state has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Nearly all of Texas is now in “extreme or exceptional” drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history. […] __
That was a warm-up of sorts for his prayer-fest, 30,000 evangelicals in Houston’s Reliant Stadium on Saturday. From this gathering came a very specific prayer for economic recovery. On the following Monday, the first day God could do anything about it, Wall Street suffered its worst one-day collapse since the 2008 crisis. The Dow sunk by 635 points.
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Prayer can be meditative, healing, and humbling. It can also be magical thinking. Given how Perry has said he would govern by outsourcing to the supernatural, it’s worth asking if God is ignoring him.
Unfortunately, we can’t ignore him, lest that persistent unpleasant buzzing in our collective ears ends up as a deadly infection in the bowels of our national government…
cleek
maybe not, but just watch me try.
jl
It’s deja vu all over again.
Triassic Sands
Will haircuts be an issue?
Jon
@cleek: It’s officially “and that’s good news for Rick Perry” week in the liberal media.
We can’t afford to ignore anyone. It’s tautological. It adds no meaning to anything regarding the GOP primary.
Triassic Sands
Sorry, but this is the Ewe Ess of Ay where executing people isn’t a liability. And anyway, the person he executed wasn’t innocent — he was convicted in a Texas court, and we all know what a reverence for fairness and justice the Texas courts have.
Killing innocent people might disqualify Perry in the minds of sane people, but sane people don’t vote for Republicans. Sadly, the majority of Americans aren’t sane; luckily some of the lunatics occasionally vote for Democrats.
Hunter Gathers
Rick Perry 2012. If you think that all America really needs right now is a more ignorant George W. Bush.
KCinDC
There are some sick folks among the Republican electorate (and of course Perry himself is disgusting):
Van
These stats show Texas is a success if your philosophy is “live to work”, but if you “work to live”, well…. looks like the environment, education, and many leisure amenities are expendable. Oh yea, that is the republican philosophy for the whole country, got a great laboratory there in Texas!
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Hunter Gathers:
Considering the rampant anti-intellectualism and anti-Education push in this country and how blindingly and god-awfully successful its been, that may very well be the exact advantage the GOP needs. :/
Nikita
@Anne at top: The title of this post is so…awesome. On several levels.
Felanius Kootea
He won’t win, but he’ll give a lot of people ulcers.
Cat Lady
Not only does our FAIL media want Bush v.2 running to amuse themselves until next November, they’d love to have another civil war break out just for teh lulz. They’ll do their best to promote the idea that Perry’s obvious contempt for the country the rest of us live in will be his strength, just like not knowing how many houses he had was all great news for John McCain. If this guy is the nominee, we thought
McCain’sPalin’s rallies got ugly. Holy fucking shit, Perry’s rallies will make those look like Brownie troop meetings. McCain never was overtly religious.jl
As I typed in previous thread, Perry’s general approach reminds me of Liberty Valance, so I would expect scenes like the following during next GOPper debate. I expect a ‘you pick it up’ moment, played by TPaw. Not sure who can be the John Wayne or James Stewart, though.
you pick it up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjZ6ztcm4LY&feature=related
lamh34
thanks for the links Anne. It never too late to keep people informed. Gonna post whatever I can find on my FB for my fam and friends. Maybe by populating my page with articles like these, the will get through by visual osmosis alone.
General Stuck
We are in a Cold Civil War, that should be clear to everyone who follows politics. And what was not normal for our politics 10 years ago, or 3 years ago, is now SOP for the GOP, and getting more so that every day. We cannot ignore Perry, because a sizable minority in this country have already seceded from the Union in their own minds, and the dude speaks their language. If he can straddle that fence and finesse the remainder of the white vote, he can certainly win. I think it will take a Rove type mentor brane, to accomplish that, and I have no idea if that exists in Perry World.
So the wingnuttery will increase with each new election, and we will all be the son of William Tell and have an arrow apple shot offin our heads, each time, until the gawds conspire and we get a Perry, or worse.
Then we will have it out the old fashioned way, again. In the age of nuclear weapons. This is likely some premature hyperbole by me, but maybe not as much as it seems. At least a third of this country wants nothing to do with the other 2/3, and they get more serious about that every day.
We might all look back in a decade or so, and yearn for a better wingnut like George W. Bush. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it.
Meanwhile, let’s read the entrails of the Obama presidency some more for any sign of impurity and blog it. Now there’s a plan.
Triassic Sands
Kevin Drum over at Mother Jones has a link to an article about Perry that discounts a lot of the criticisms of Perry — too dumb, too much of an ideologue, etc. It’s worth a look.
Ian
Watching Perry’s speech i was struck by this (not an exact quote, just of my memory)
“Obama has thumbed his nose at traditional friends and coddled our enemies. He seeks to dictate new borders on the longest standing democracy in the Middle East, our greatest ally Israel.”
Obama has returned the US foreign policy to the international norm, that both states should exist on the 1967 border. This is the ‘new border’ that Perry accuses Obama of making up.
Furthermore he talked a lot about South Carolina being a right to work state. I think he will try to make a major issue out of this. The Democratic party had best get out in front of this. A much better wording for us to use is “right to fire state.”
After about ten minutes of his speech I wanted to puke. I do not think this newly anointed front runner will be a problem for Obama to crush.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@jl: More like Kid Shelleen’s horse
t jasper parnell
According to Krugman, Texas’ job growth is a myth.
jl
And as we have seen in Texas, there is truth in the Bible.
“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”
Perry thinks he got his reward and will try to reap it now in the GOP primaries, which has nothing to with rain in Texas.
JGabriel
Given the results, the more pertinent question is whether God is punishing Perry.
.
something fabulous
O/T from all of the many salient points here to say: “Toadsuck”!? Too awesome to be true!
jl
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): One would hope so. But I might watch a GOPper debate for when TPaw says ‘I’ll giddit, Libbidy’.
General Stuck
Perry is old testament. If it doesn’t behave, kill it.
Quiddity
What I’m interested in is how Perry performs at the national level now that he’s declared. Other candidates have been out there and engaged on topics like war, the courts, economy, and social issues. Santorum, however unattractive he may be, has walked the walk (Sunday shows, cable news, op-eds). Gingrich too. And most of the others as well.
Perry’s relative quietude on issues that everybody else has been talking about makes me wonder. Why so silent? Where’s the friendly sit-down interview with the Weekly Standard? The question is, has Perry engaged with the national conservative media to any substantive degree? And if not, why?
Perry is Texas-centric, and that’s okay as far as it goes. But he’s going to have to do more than say, “I can make the Texas miracle work for the nation”.
KCinDC
@something fabulous, at first I thought it was a mistake, since I knew Toad Suck was in Arkansas. But it turns out there’s a more obscure Toad Suck in Texas.
quannlace
So. The big 3-day prayer meeting over the drought was back in April, hmm?
And……..they’ve gotten how much rain so far? Even that tropical storm that was headed for the Texas coast fizzeled out.
I’m not mocking the stressed out folk of Texas,, just the Gov. Sorry , Perry, it’s obvious Mr. Jesus does not like you. Big time.
Hunter Gathers
@Triassic Sands: I read it, and it’s nothing more than Texas-centric emo-prog hand wringing bullshit. There have been quite a slew of Texas Dems who have come out in the past few days saying we should fear Perry. What they clearly don’t understand is that the rest of the fucking country isn’t Texas.
His shtick isn’t going to play very well north of the Mason-Dixon line, the Obama campaign will put his ‘abolish SS and Medicare’ stances front and center, his secession toe-dipping will haunt him the entire campaign, Texas has an $25 billion dollar deficit and the fact that the ‘Texas Miracle’ consists of nothing but below the poverty level dead-end jobs. Not to mention the fact that there are a slew of Texas conservatives who absolutely hate his fucking guts and are chomping at the bit to knife him in the back during the primaries, and those wounds will not heal well.
This guy is dead fucking meat.
Cat Lady
@t jasper parnell:
That graph shows that Deval Patrick should be out campaigning heavily for Obama as the counterexample to Perry – good paying jobs with health insurance. Who doesn’t prefer that?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
MMM,smoked redfish and mahi for fish tacos!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
OT: DailyKos has a link up for The How To Guide for Understanding Rioting Negros. The author claims that Michele Bachmann is part of the plan and her real name is Latavia D. Greene.
wrb
@quannlace:
Too bad Democrats aren’t capable of the obvious ad:
Voice of Dooom:
Rick Perry asked God For help.
God’s reply to Rick Perry: (montage of suffering and destruction, both pictures and voiceovers)
Does God hate Rick Perry?
Do you want your family to suffer from God’s righteous punishment of Rick Perry?
What did Rick Perry do to make God so angry?
joeyess
If this guy wins the nomination and our failed media experiment doesn’t destroy him for his neo-confederate leanings, his environmental record, his lousy record on low paying jobs and his state-mandated whackadoodle whisperings to a non-existent being, then the GOP is doomed.
If he gets elected we’re all sorely fucked.
Linda
Perry is looking good because the press is not knifing him right now. But they will. Because the mainstream press in the US are like WWF publicists, who gin up big fights and smackdowns. This week, somebody is the villian. Next week, they will be the good guy wearing an American flag. They will create controversy where there is none, and “discover” controversy when they need more eyeballs for their publication or website, or hold back on controversy until the newest conflict settles down. But they will not call anybody a nut if they are powerful enough, or have a powerful constituency, like Perry and Bachman.
If he is still a serious candidate in six months, then either the US or maybe just the Republican Party is going to hell.
joeyess
The real GOP primary will be the Fox Primary.
Keep an ear on Fox. If they start with the man-crushes and bimbo gushing, Perry is the GOP’s nominee.
Violet
@something fabulous:
There’s also Cut and Shoot, Gun Barrel City, Cool (Ha! Not this year.) and Iraan (pronounced Ira-Ann, not like that terrorist Muslin country).
KCinDC
Intrade still has Sarah Palin rated as essentially tied with Bachmann and Huntsman for third most likely GOP nominee, at 7.4%, behind only Perry at 33.7% and Romney at 29.8%.
t jasper parnell
@Cat Lady: The Tea Party, Republicans, and Conservatives more generally, it seems, would rather we all live in mud huts and pray for good health and decently-paying jobs.
Violet
@Quiddity:
What, you don’t think his Today Show interview was hard hitting enough? You know, the one where he said:
Yeah, that one.
@Hunter Gathers:
And the American people voted for George W. Bush twice. Same cowboy, different hat.
brettvk
@General Stuck:
That concept struck me earlier this week (I’ve been indulging in the flood of CW histories coming out with the sesquicentennial) and I googled it to see what other people were thinking. Imagine my surprise to find that the phrase was most prominently used by Mark Levin for a 2007 article in Canada, and by some schlub for what looks like a truly terrible vanity publication. IOW, the righties are already the casualties in the cold civil war the DFHs started in 1964. Too bad; if I’d known about it I would have started shooting before now.
Yutsano
@Violet: You can follow a link to
his bearda video of the First Lady of Texas. Hoo boy I bet she’s going to have a tight lid shut on her!Hunter Gathers
@Violet:
Fixed.
Josie
Imagine my surprise as a Texas resident upon hearing that Perry has created a jobs miracle here. My son couldn’t get a job for two years, during which he applied for everything that came down the pike. I finally coughed up the fee for trucking school (to get a commercial driver’s license) so he could get a job. Now he is mistreated along with all the other truckers, since we are a “right-to-work” state and not very hospitable to unions. But, at this point, work is work, and we desperately need the money.
gbear
@General Stuck:
So what could Perry say if he becomes president and a block of northern states decide it’s best to secede?
hamletta
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Elon James is a frappin’ genius. And he can cook, too. I asked him to marry me last week.
Delia
So I’m trying to imagine: what would be the metaphorical equivalent of a national colonoscopy? That might get rid of him.
KCinDC
@gbear, that block of northern states will extend down through DC, so the White House could be surrounded by foreign territory.
Yutsano
@Josie: Ugh. Trucking is the worst job in the world especially for tax reasons. None of those schools teaches about how to make estimated tax payments. The number of cases I get from truckers because of that is ridiculous.
Josie
@Yutsano: My son wouldn’t have a problem with that since he is really good with math and such. Unfortunately, he had to start out working for a company on salary, so his taxes are taken out for him. The catch is that they are paid per diem and the diem is often much longer than it should be for no extra money. I understand this is not unusual where there are no unions to speak up for the workers.
4tehlulz
@gbear: What would happen if every state except Texas secedes?
Spaghetti Lee
Maybe I’m not familiar enough with his record, but I’m kinda worried about a Perry candidacy. Like people have said, he unites all the various conservative factions who tear each other apart over people like Romney and Paul, and the media seems willing and able to fluff him, so he can probably pick up a few independents too. As for the “Texas Miracle”, as many smart people have pointed out, it starts to crumble when you look at it closely, but will people look at it closely? They’ll hear “Texas led the nation in job growth during the recession” and then they’ll stop paying attention when someone points out what shitty and unstable jobs they are, or how it had less to do with Perry than larger economic trends. He just seems like the sort of guy who has the weapons to become a threat really quickly.
Sly
@Josie:
Making people so desperate for work that they’ll take anything is the Texas Miracle. Desperation breeds a race to the bottom for scarce employment opportunities. The race to the bottom breeds lower labor costs. Lower labor costs breeds an influx of capital from elsewhere. This has been the model of Southern economic development since… well… the Jamestown Colony, when you get right down to it.
Violet
@Spaghetti Lee:
Perry’s in his honeymoon phase with the media. He’ll be treated as the Next Big Thing, but it won’t last forever. Question is, does he have a Rove-like character who can keep the media under control or will they turn on him.
I really think he’s a bit much like George W. Bush 2.0 and the media don’t want to be blamed for him becoming president. so they’ll turn on him eventually. I think they will want Romney, but they don’t see that Romney can’t win the evangelicals.
fhtagn
Rick Perry – deep-fried hair, more deeply fried brain.
Keith
Rick Perry killed a man, just to watch him die.
That should be the end of his candidacy, right there.
Won’t be, but should be.
fhtagn
@Ian:
South Carolina is a right-wing not working state, rather than a right to work state.
j
Embiggen that picture…Is that a (gasp) TELEPROMPTER!!!11!1! on that podium?
Horrors!
LevelB
Maybe some enterprising reporter should ask Perry if he begs God for mercy for the sin of having an innocent man executed.
Jenny
Great photos, where did you find it!?!
fhtagn
@j:
But is it a Satanic Muslim Communist teleprompter, hmm hmmm?
Keith G
Anne Laurie, that is a portrait of Stephen F. Austin (the Father of Texas). Like many great Texans, he was born a (Connecticut) Yankee before going to Texas in the 1820s.
joel hanes
Over at Cogitamus, Jim “Prup” Benson is conducting a short class on the “New Apostolic Reformation” strain of American religiosity to which Perry adheres.
Sarah Palin’s whackadoodle congregation is another scion off this stem; it’s the NAR affiliation that resulted in the video some of you may have seen of the famous ‘Blessing Sister Sarah’ sermon by Bishop Thomas Muthee.
Tony J
Looking at this from the outside (IANAA) a Perry candidacy should be the ideal for Democrats in 2012. He’s exactly what you – want – Obama to be running against.
Dubya 2 – Evangelical Boogaloo might dampen the panties of the Tea Party 27%, but given that 2012 is going to be a referendum on who should be in charge of fixing the American economy, does anyone really think that more than 50% of American voters will go into the Election thinking “What we need is another President like George W Bush?”
Put it this way, if Perry does get the nomination and wins in the General, you were fucked anyway and there was nothing you could have done to stop the rot. I just don’t think America is crazy enough to drink that much Kool-Aid in one go.
Shorter – Perry as GOP candidate for the Presidency cracks the ‘45% will always vote for the Republican’ CW and the Democrats win very big in 2012. So big that the GOP goes into meltdown and eats itself in an orgy of recrimination. Or he wins and the rest of the world has to start talking sotto-voice about taking America to the V.E.T. for a S.H.O.T. because, frankly, the three strikes and you’re out rule is universal.
j
@joeyess: FOX can’t do that b/c Mooselini is still on the payroll, and they MUST push her. Otherwise Hannity will have a pouty face. And Greta Van Susteren will probably slit her wrists on air.
Hypnos
I have always admired the United State of America, despite all of its flaws, especially in foreign policy. It gave the world some of the best music and movies of the 20th century. It’s open and competitive culture produced most of the scientific breakthroughs of the second half of the 20th century, and its government put a man on the Moon and created the Internet.
Now I just wish a hole would open in the ground and swallow the country before it can drag the rest of the world down with it.
The most powerful country in the world, with a stockpile of thousands of nuclear warheads and a track record of waging unnecessary wars is now seriously considering electing a man who asked his State to PRAY FOR THE RAIN.
And I am supposed to be afraid of Iran? Fuck, if I was American and it came down to a race between Ahmadinejad and Perry I would vote Ahmadinejad.
I am Italian and you’re making me think Berlusconi is not so bad after all.
Ben Cisco
@Tony J:
I am SO stealing that!
The Republic of Stupidity
Mark my words…
That hair is gonna turn out to be a toupee…
wrb
@Tony J:
toodeloo
On the day when I was born daddy sat down and cried.
Halfstep, mississippi uptown toodeloo hello, baby, I’m gone, good-bye. Half a cup of rock and rye. farewell to you old southern skies
Im on my way, on my way.
pt 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eC6c_zfUW4
pt 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFtAwxNxLrQ&feature=related
Chris
@Sly:
Is it unfair to say the South’s a third world country tacked onto a first world economy?
I mean, its heyday was in the first half of the nineteenth century when it basically had a Saudi-style economy, based on the export of one product, cultivated not by locals but by an imported workforce with no rights. After the Civil War, it sank into poverty, only started getting better when the New Deal started funneling Yankee money down… and many (most?) of its states have been on the federal dole ever since. It’s been able to draw corporate investment in recent decades, but mostly, it seems, by offering cheap and poorly protected labor compared to the Northeast and Midwest.
The whole thing reads like the resume of a Latin American country.
Gex
And if they publicized what some of those groups at the big prayer rally constantly say about gays it would be appalling to most Americans, even those opposed to SSM. There are some real nutbags out there masking their insanity as religious belief.
Kewalo
Here is the funniest TX blog ever!
http://juanitajean.com/
Today’s post is titled,”Rick Perry: The Dollar Store Version of George Bush”
A Conservative Teacher
So are you trying to imply that he is good friends with George Bush or something with that picture? Seriously, do a little bit of research before you put together your posts and gain basic information on the guy- him and Bush hate each other and have been fighting politically for years.
Just because they are both from Texas doesn’t mean that are the same. I know you are sexist and racist, but don’t stereotype people based on their states too.
redheadedfemme
@JGabriel: Someone should ask him which God he was praying to. It may not be the supernatural being he thinks it was.
Chris
@redheadedfemme:
“They called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. “O Baal, answer us!” they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”
– 1 Kings, 18:26 and 27
Sly
@Chris:
The third world label is inapplicable, but only because the label itself has problems.
By way of an anecdote, Swedish statistician Hans Rosling told a story about a friend of his who, because he was a wine expert, knew hundreds of varieties of wine, but Rosling only knew two kinds: red and white. But that same friend knew only two kinds of countries, industrial and developing, while Rosling, who’s field is studying international statistics, knew over one hundred and fifty kinds of countries.
First world, second world, and third world were geopolitical distinctions of the Cold War largely adopted from the perspective of the first world, or the West (second world was the Soviet Bloc, third world was everyone else). Now its been morphed into the industrialized/developing model, which is equally flawed because there are infinite gradations between a country like Brazil and a country like Zimbabwe.
It’s kind of like the problem with the word planet. Jupiter is a planet. Mercury is a planet. Yet Jupiter and Mercury are virtually nothing alike in terms of their astronomical features. The more we learn about the individual planets, in our solar system and beyond, the more meaningless a category planet becomes.
With that out of the way: The South, or Texas, on its own, would not be on the same point as the Northeast on various spectra we use to determine social, political and economic development. If, for instance, the former confederate states attempted to secede again and were successful, the remainder of the United States would jump up in several OECD indices of development: health, median household income, education level, etc. But the newly seceded state wouldn’t be Zimbabwe. It’d be more like Brazil.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Net tax contributions are a function of urbanization; the more urbanized a state is, the more money it sends to the Federal government. This may seem counter-intuitive, but born out by reality. Texas has a fairly large urban population relative to the size of its total population (not as much as New York or New Jersey, but significant), and as such is a net contributor. States that are predominantly rural, like Mississippi and West Virginia, are the biggest net beneficiaries of Federal taxes.
But you are correct: most states in the Southeast are net beneficiaries. The only (relatively minor) contributors are Arkansas and Georgia. Florida would probably be the biggest net contributor in the region due to it being the most urbanized, but it has certain demographic-related issues that prevent this from happening. Like, for instance, residents in the state receiving over 8% of all Medicare spending in the country.
John Weiss
@Hunter Gathers: The scary part isn’t Perry’s ignorance, it’s his political skill combined with his deep cynicism. You and I see him as a caricature of a serious politician but many voters don’t. Hopefully, his Texas style bullshit won’t fly with most voters.
Don’t count the asshole out. Americans have elected bad actors before. Like Ronnie.
John Weiss
@General Stuck: Perry isn’t a religious person. He’s a power-loving asshole. The worst sort of cynic. Molly Ivins had it right: “…Governor Good-Hair”.
John Weiss
@Violet: Not the same cowboy. Different hat. Better politician for one point. Tea-bager-suckup for another.
Yutsano
Oh Jeez AL. It took me long enough to see what you did there. I must be slipping. :)
bob h
Presumably the Romney machine is going to be pointing a lot of this out, to the extent that any of it is even disqualifying among today’s GOP base.
Kathleen
Alex is just figuring out there’s something wrong with all of us?
Lex
@General Stuck: Perry might be Old Testament, but he apparently skipped the Book of Amos:
And …