By Kevin Drum
Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Before I get to that, though, I have a mealymouthed caveat or three. First, if the economy is bad enough, anyone can win. And right now, the odds of the economy being bad enough are a little too close for comfort. Second, in recent years you could lose a lot of money continually underestimating the lemming-like power of the Republican Party to dive off ever-higher cliffs. Third, it's absolutely true that you can make a pretty good case that none of the current GOP candidates can possibly win the nomination. And yet, someone will.
And there's more. Perry is unquestionably a very good, very shrewd politician. He has access to lots of money. And he can deliver a pretty good speech. My beloved wife just finished listening to his announcement speech and told me, "He's my favorite Republican right now." When I grimaced, she just gave me a scary look. Scary because it's the look that means she sees something that's invisible to a committed partisan like me.
But enough of that. I've covered my ass enough. Here are the top 10 reasons why, despite all this, I think Perry is a weaker candidate than he's being made out to be:
- Everyone looks good before they get into the race. Remember how great Tim Pawlenty was supposed to be? But just wait a few months for Perry to get beat up by his opponents, for the oppo research to kick in, for all the big profiles to start appearing, and for a gaffe or two to get some play. He'll start to look distinctly more human then.
- He's too Texan. Sorry. Maybe that's fair, maybe it's not. But even in the Republican Party, not everyone is from the South and not everyone is bowled over by a Texas drawl. Perry is, by a fair amount, more Texan than George W. Bush, and an awful lot of people are still suffering from Bush fatigue.
- He's too mean. He'll have a hard time pretending he's any kind of compassionate conservative, and outside of Texas you still need a bit of that. Aside from being politically ruthless and famous for holding grudges, Perry's the kind of guy who almost certainly executed an innocent man, never pretended to care about it, and brazenly disbanded a commission investigating it. This famously produced the following quote in a 2010 focus group: "It takes balls to execute an innocent man." In Texas, maybe that works. In the rest of the country, not so much.
- He's too dumb. Go ahead, call me an elitist. I'm keenly aware that Americans don't vote for presidents based on their SAT scores, but everything I've read about Perry suggests that he's a genuinely dim kind of guy. Not just incurious or too sure about his gut feelings, like George W. Bush, but simply not bright enough to handle the demands of the Oval Office. Americans might not care if their presidents are geniuses, but there's a limit to how doltish they can be too.
- He's too smarmy. He might be fine one-on-one, but on a national stage Perry looks like a tent revival preacher or a used car salesman. Again: This might play okay in Texas and a few other places, but it will wear thin quickly in most of the country.
- He's too overtly religious. Even Bush soft pedaled his religious side for the masses during his first campaign and did most of his outreach to the evangelical community quietly. Outside the Bible Belt, Perry's fire-and-brimstone act is going to be hard to take.
- Policywise, he's too radical, even for Republicans. "Social Security is a Ponzi scheme" goes over well with a certain segment of the tea party, but not with most of the country. Nor does most of the country want to get rid of Medicare and turn it over to the states. Nor do they think global warming is a hoax, and they don't really think all that kindly of people who muse publicly about seceding from the union. Bush was able to soften his hard Texas edge with a genuine passion for education. I'm not sure Perry can do that.
- Despite conventional wisdom, about half of the GOP rank-and-file aren't tea party sympathizers (see Question 3G here). Of the half who are, Perry is going to have to compete with Michele Bachmann and possibly with Sarah Palin. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has the noncrazy half of the party almost to himself. Huntsman isn't going to provide him with any serious competition there, and Pawlenty is rapidly becoming a non-factor too. I think this is an extremely underappreciated dynamic right now. Yes, Republican primary voters tend to be more conservative than the party as a whole, but there are still going to be a lot of non-tea-partiers who vote, and they don't have a lot of good choices other than Romney. What's more, a fair number of tea partiers like Romney too (see Question 19 here). This is a pretty good base to work from.
- Perry's campaign is going to be heavily based on the "Texas miracle." But this looks a lot less miraculous once you put it under a microscope—and pretty soon it won't just be churlish lefties pointing this out. You can be sure that the rest of the Republican field will be hauling out their own microscopes before long.
- Republicans want to beat Obama. They really, really want to beat Obama. Romney is still their best chance, and down deep I think they know it.
UPDATE: Why Rick Perry Can Win.
Rick Perry vs. the Tea Party
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/rick-perry-tea-party
Perry speaks at a 2009 Texas Tea Party rally. Why Texas activists think their governor is all hat and no cattle when it comes to shrinking government.
The narrative was all ready to go: Texas Governor Rick Perry's 2010 re-re-election campaign was supposed to be an old-fashioned brawl between the incumbent governor of nine years and the state's most popular politician, Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Texas Monthly put the duo on its cover with the tag line, "It's On and It's Gonna Get Ugly." Political junkies stocked up on popcorn.
But it didn't turn out that way. After starting off 30 points down, Perry went on to crush Hutchison in the primary. The senator's attacks on Perry mostly fell flat; instead, the sharpest critiques of the governor came from a third candidate: Debra Medina, a nurse and former Wharton County Republican Party chair, who, with zero name recognition or institutional support, a bare-bones budget, and a whole lot of tea party support, soared to 20-percent in the polls.
"I think Paul Burka at Texas Monthly said I'm the only person that's ever been able to get to the right of Rick Perry—which is bizarre in my view because I don't see him as a candidate of the right," Medina says now. "He sells himself on the right, he packages himself on the right, but if you look at the record he's not conservative by any stretch."
But it didn't turn out that way. After starting off 30 points down, Perry went on to crush Hutchison in the primary. The senator's attacks on Perry mostly fell flat; instead, the sharpest critiques of the governor came from a third candidate: Debra Medina, a nurse and former Wharton County Republican Party chair, who, with zero name recognition or institutional support, a bare-bones budget, and a whole lot of tea party support, soared to 20-percent in the polls.
"I think Paul Burka at Texas Monthly said I'm the only person that's ever been able to get to the right of Rick Perry—which is bizarre in my view because I don't see him as a candidate of the right," Medina says now. "He sells himself on the right, he packages himself on the right, but if you look at the record he's not conservative by any stretch."
Medina's bid ultimately fell short—owing in part to a disastrous interview on Glenn Beck's radio program. But her tea party insurgency channeled a dissatisfaction felt by many Texas conservatives. It was hardly a blip, either; 61-percent of Texans voted against Perry in 2006 (he won in a four-way race), and when the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune polled the state this spring, just 4 percent said they'd like to see their Governor run for president.
So what's got them so upset? If you ask Medina, a longtime supporter of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), it all starts with the budget. Perry has made austerity one of the centerpieces of his campaign. "In 2003, and again this year, my state faced billions of dollars in budget shortfalls," Perry said in his campaign kickoff speech on Saturday in South Carolina. "But we worked hard, we made tough decisions, we balanced our budget—not by raising taxes, but by setting priorities and cutting government spending."
But, much like former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Perry hasn't been the most disciplined conservative when it comes to cutting spending. When he faced a $27-billion budget deficit this spring—much of which was the product of a poorly crafted franchise tax he'd pushed through in the 2006 session—Perry and his allies closed the gap through a serious of budget tricks, deferring payments to future sessions and crafting deliberately rosy revenue projections. As she notes, when it comes to cutting spending, Perry's predecessor, George W. Bush, actually had a better record. And rather than axe accessories (like tax incentives for the movie industry), Perry protected friendly business interests while taking funds out of essential services like education.
"Generally speaking, when you look at what he's done, he's a big-government, micro-manage your family, micro-manage your business ideologue," says Medina, who briefly considered supporting a third-party candidate following her primary defeat. "My whole campaign could be summed up as: Governor Perry is bashing Washington, but if you look at what he's done, he's managed Texas in much the same way."
Moreover, while Perry has criticized President Obama for raising the debt ceiling, calling his approach "condescending" and suggesting that the nation was never at a risk of defaulting, the governor has quietly raised Texas's own debt limit. Under Perry, the Lone Star State has borrowed more and more—going from $13 billion in debt when he took office in 2000, to $38 billion by 2008. "Governor Perry has done exactly what the tea party is hollering at Washington, DC right now: Don't raise the debt limit," Medina says. (As PolitiFact Texas noted, though, Texas' debt total was well below the national average on a per-capita basis.)
And the governor sparked a mini-revolt within his party with his proposal for a Trans-Texas Corridor, a massive project that would, as its name suggests, build a toll road, rail lines, and telecommunication infrastructure across the length of the state. To clear the way for the project, the state would use eminent domain to confiscate land from rural Texans—playing into fears of big government and feeding conspiracy theories that the corridor was part of a looming "NAFTA Superhighway." (Ultimately, the plan fell through.)
Meanwhile, as with his recent shift on the role of religion in public life (when asked in 2002 how it affected his politics he said "I don't think it does, particularly"), Perry's states' rights crusading has also been a mostly recent development. He has talked up Texas' right to secede and signed a resolution affirming the state's sovereignty and Tenth Amendment rights.
"The Tenth Amendment was enacted by folks who remembered what it was have a very oppressive government, to be under the thumb of tyrants and an all-powerful government," he said at a press conference last spring. "Unfortunately, the protections it guarantees have melted away over the years."
But if that's the case, Perry has been part of the problem, not the solution. As evidence, Medina cites Perry's support for No Child Left Behind, the 2001 law that dramatically expanded the federal government's role in education. While Utah opted out of the law entirely, and states like Minnesota (with a big push from a young state senator named Michele Bachmann) questioned the viability of the law, Perry opted not to block its implementation. To Medina, that makes his current tack, that "it's a monstrous intrustion into our public affairs," a bit hypocritical. Likewise, while Perry had harsh words for the American Recovery Reinvestment Act in 2009, he quietly collected almost all of the stimulus funds allocated to the state.
"There's little to no evidence of the fact that he believes in state sovereignty and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments," Medina says. "There's been plenty of opportunities for him to exercise the state's authorities and he's never done that."
Not all of the tea party concerns outlined by Medina are likely to gain traction in the Republican primary. In particular, Perry's cavalier approach to the state's criminal justice system (allowing an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, to be executed) has proven to be a non-starter for his opponents. As one conservative focus group member told a Hutchison aide, "it takes balls to execute an innocent man."
But on the economic front, the field has already devolved into a civil war. Before he dropped out of the race, Pawlenty was hit hard by Bachmann for his record in St. Paul, where he balanced budgets—like Perry—through deferred costs and accounting wizardry. Perry and front-runner Mitt Romney are already sparring on whose experience best matches the "real economy." And with Bachmann making her anti-debt crusade a major part of her campaign, Perry's Texas record could make him a natural target.
Much of the conservative criticism of Perry comes down to the fact that he's a corporatist conservative less concerned about the Tenth Amendment principles than he lets on. But then again: For the rest of the party, that's kind of the appeal.
So what's got them so upset? If you ask Medina, a longtime supporter of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), it all starts with the budget. Perry has made austerity one of the centerpieces of his campaign. "In 2003, and again this year, my state faced billions of dollars in budget shortfalls," Perry said in his campaign kickoff speech on Saturday in South Carolina. "But we worked hard, we made tough decisions, we balanced our budget—not by raising taxes, but by setting priorities and cutting government spending."
But, much like former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Perry hasn't been the most disciplined conservative when it comes to cutting spending. When he faced a $27-billion budget deficit this spring—much of which was the product of a poorly crafted franchise tax he'd pushed through in the 2006 session—Perry and his allies closed the gap through a serious of budget tricks, deferring payments to future sessions and crafting deliberately rosy revenue projections. As she notes, when it comes to cutting spending, Perry's predecessor, George W. Bush, actually had a better record. And rather than axe accessories (like tax incentives for the movie industry), Perry protected friendly business interests while taking funds out of essential services like education.
"Generally speaking, when you look at what he's done, he's a big-government, micro-manage your family, micro-manage your business ideologue," says Medina, who briefly considered supporting a third-party candidate following her primary defeat. "My whole campaign could be summed up as: Governor Perry is bashing Washington, but if you look at what he's done, he's managed Texas in much the same way."
Moreover, while Perry has criticized President Obama for raising the debt ceiling, calling his approach "condescending" and suggesting that the nation was never at a risk of defaulting, the governor has quietly raised Texas's own debt limit. Under Perry, the Lone Star State has borrowed more and more—going from $13 billion in debt when he took office in 2000, to $38 billion by 2008. "Governor Perry has done exactly what the tea party is hollering at Washington, DC right now: Don't raise the debt limit," Medina says. (As PolitiFact Texas noted, though, Texas' debt total was well below the national average on a per-capita basis.)
"Generally speaking, when you look at what he's done, he's a big-government, micro-manage your family, micro-manage your business ideologue," Medina says.
But the tea party's gripe with Perry extends beyond fiscal issues, to matters of individual liberty as well. Although he's drawn cheers on the campaign trail with his pledge to make "DC as inconsequential in your life as I can," he has not applied that same approach to Austin. Perry's decision to make the HPV vaccine mandatory for adolescent girls (in an effort to reduce their risk of cervical cancer) elicited the ire of social conservative activists—and more recently, hits from right-wing bloggers like Michele Malkin.And the governor sparked a mini-revolt within his party with his proposal for a Trans-Texas Corridor, a massive project that would, as its name suggests, build a toll road, rail lines, and telecommunication infrastructure across the length of the state. To clear the way for the project, the state would use eminent domain to confiscate land from rural Texans—playing into fears of big government and feeding conspiracy theories that the corridor was part of a looming "NAFTA Superhighway." (Ultimately, the plan fell through.)
Meanwhile, as with his recent shift on the role of religion in public life (when asked in 2002 how it affected his politics he said "I don't think it does, particularly"), Perry's states' rights crusading has also been a mostly recent development. He has talked up Texas' right to secede and signed a resolution affirming the state's sovereignty and Tenth Amendment rights.
"The Tenth Amendment was enacted by folks who remembered what it was have a very oppressive government, to be under the thumb of tyrants and an all-powerful government," he said at a press conference last spring. "Unfortunately, the protections it guarantees have melted away over the years."
But if that's the case, Perry has been part of the problem, not the solution. As evidence, Medina cites Perry's support for No Child Left Behind, the 2001 law that dramatically expanded the federal government's role in education. While Utah opted out of the law entirely, and states like Minnesota (with a big push from a young state senator named Michele Bachmann) questioned the viability of the law, Perry opted not to block its implementation. To Medina, that makes his current tack, that "it's a monstrous intrustion into our public affairs," a bit hypocritical. Likewise, while Perry had harsh words for the American Recovery Reinvestment Act in 2009, he quietly collected almost all of the stimulus funds allocated to the state.
"There's little to no evidence of the fact that he believes in state sovereignty and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments," Medina says. "There's been plenty of opportunities for him to exercise the state's authorities and he's never done that."
Not all of the tea party concerns outlined by Medina are likely to gain traction in the Republican primary. In particular, Perry's cavalier approach to the state's criminal justice system (allowing an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, to be executed) has proven to be a non-starter for his opponents. As one conservative focus group member told a Hutchison aide, "it takes balls to execute an innocent man."
But on the economic front, the field has already devolved into a civil war. Before he dropped out of the race, Pawlenty was hit hard by Bachmann for his record in St. Paul, where he balanced budgets—like Perry—through deferred costs and accounting wizardry. Perry and front-runner Mitt Romney are already sparring on whose experience best matches the "real economy." And with Bachmann making her anti-debt crusade a major part of her campaign, Perry's Texas record could make him a natural target.
Much of the conservative criticism of Perry comes down to the fact that he's a corporatist conservative less concerned about the Tenth Amendment principles than he lets on. But then again: For the rest of the party, that's kind of the appeal.
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