Tag Archives: Rick Perry

Fact Checking The Associated Press

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Rick Perry was in New Hampshire on Saturday. He spoke at an event at the home of Chuck Stephen co-hosted by John Stephen, the former Republican gubernatorial nominee. Human Events reported on Sunday that the coverage of the event by the Associated Press left out some significant information.

This is an excerpt from the Associated Press article:

Speaking to hundreds of Granite State voters at a private reception, the Texas governor was asked whether he supported a fence along the Mexican border. “No, I don’t support a fence on the border,” he said.

“The fact is, it’s 1,200 miles from Brownsville to El Paso. Two things: How long you think it would take to build that? And then if you build a 30-foot wall from El Paso to Brownsville, the 35-foot ladder business gets real good.”

The answer produced an angry shout from at least one audience member.

Channel 7 (WHIOTV) in Ohio did a slightly better job of reporting the speech:

“No, I don’t support a fence on the border,” he said, while referring to the long border in Texas alone. “The fact is, it’s 1,200 miles from Brownsville to El Paso. Two things: How long you think it would take to build that? And then if you build a 30-foot wall from El Paso to Brownsville, the 35-foot ladder business gets real good.”

Instead, Perry said he supported “strategic fencing” and National Guard troops to prevent illegal immigration and violence from Mexican drug cartels.

The answer produced an angry shout from at least one audience member. And it exposed an ongoing rift with some conservative voters over Perry’s immigration record.

That’s a little better. However, a website called Instapundit posted a first-hand account:

A BLOG REPORT FROM RICK PERRY’S SPEECH IN NEW HAMPSHIRE: “I attended that event, stood about 15 feet from where he delivered those remarks and never heard an ‘angry shout’. Either the AP is making it up or it wasn’t much of a shout. Perhaps they can supply the audio.”

Maybe it was a reporter in the back who was doing the shouting. But after the 2004 bogus-boos incident, I encourage bloggers and others attending these events to record audio and video. You never know what’ll happen — or what people will report happened, even if it didn’t.

This election season every voter will need to be careful when gathering news and deciding on candidates. Unfortunately much of the major media is no longer objective and is reporting things that didn’t happen or not reporting important facts. There are many places on the internet (hopefully this is one of them) where a voter can go to fact check and get the whole story. Be careful what you read, and stay informed. That is the only way to preserve our freedom.



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The Politics Of Scheduling

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I haven’t mentioned the dust-up about the scheduling of the President’s speech on the economy because I really wasn’t too impressed by all the ruckus. Frankly I thought the whole discussion was dumb. However, Michael Barone, who is considerably smarter than I am, posted a very interesting article about the kerfuffle at the Washington Examiner website tonight.

It is naive (at best) to believe that President Obama was unaware that the Republican presidential candidates were having a debate on the night that he first suggested making a speech about the economy to a joint session of Congress. I think it is also a safe guess that he knew this would be Rick Perry’s first appearance as a candidate and that Rick Perry is a definite threat to President Obama’s desire to serve two terms. I also expect that President Obama also assumed that someone would actually watch his speech (or the Republican debate).

Michael Barone points out that the request to give a speech before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday showed a lack of respect for the Constitution. Congress is a separate branch of government and is not subject to Presidential dictates. Mr. Barone points out that in the past when a joint session of Congress was requested by the President, the arrangements were made privately, then announced.

The original plan of a Wednesday night debate also showed a contempt for public opinion.

The article reports:

White House press secretary Jay Carney said it was just “coincidental” that the president wanted to speak at the same time as the Reagan Library debate. It was just “one debate that’s one of many on one channel.”

Wow. The article points out that in the past President Obama has tried to upstage opposition with scheduling.

The article lists some other weaknesses of the Obama Presidency that are becoming very apparent. I strongly suggest that you follow the link above and read the entire article. This is a difficult time for the President–the economy is not doing well and his poll numbers are falling–I expect we will see him play some serious hardball in the coming months.

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Another Reason The Establishment (Republican And Democrat) Dislike Rick Perry

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Yesterday Investors.com posted an article about presidential candidate Rick Perry. Governor Perry is being attacked by a fairly wide variety of people, and it is kind of interesting to watch. Investors.com had some ideas as to why Governor Perry is seen as a threat by so many people.

The article reports:

Politico reports that “if Perry ends up as the Republican nominee for president, deep-pocketed trial lawyers intend to play a central role in the campaign to defeat him.”  Reporter Alexander Burns writes that “among litigators, there is no presidential candidate who inspires the same level of hatred — and fear — as Perry, an avowed opponent of the plaintiffs’ bar who has presided over several rounds of tort reform as governor.”

The article also points out that President Obama has publicly declared that he does not support caps on malpractice lawsuits. I’m sure it is just a coincidence that lawyers are the third largest contributors to Democrat party campaigns.

The article reminds us:

As Marc Ambinder pointed out in the Atlantic last year, “Seven of the last 11 major-party presidential candidates (Obama, Bush 43, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Bush 41, Dukakis), including all of the winners sans Ronald Reagan, have possessed an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard or Yale.”

Governor Perry is an implied threat to the grip the Ivy League has had on the White House in recent years. The article also cites examples of success in the business world by non-Ivy League businessmen such as Jack Welch of General Electric.

The article concludes:

Non-Ivy Leaguers such as Reagan and Welch often seem to be better at recognizing problems and bringing real change for the better. Maybe that’s why our elites are showing so much fear of an Aggie like Perry.

This is going to be an interesting election campaign. The question is, “Can a man from a less-than-privileged background become President?”

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Why Texas And Rick Perry Are Being Attacked From Many Directions

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The establishment Republican party does not want Rick Perry to run against President Obama in 2012–that is illustrated by the recent buzz about Paul Ryan or whether Sarah Palin would run. The Democrat party (and the liberal media) do not want Rick Perry to run–that is illustrated by recent attacks on both Texas and Rick Perry. For example, on August 22, Paul Krugman wrote an article in the New York Times about the low wages in Texas and the fact that job growth should have been better than it was.

He stated:

First, the debate over the alleged Texas miracle is not over whether Texas is in fact a miserable failure. All the critics need to show is that Texas is not in fact the miracle Perry claims. And it isn’t.

Second, defenders of the miracle claims seem remarkably unwilling to confront the key argument. People like me point out that Texas has not, in fact, been immune to the recession. Since there’s a long-term shift of population and jobs to Texas, you’d expect job growth in Texas to be higher than in the rest of the country even in a recession, and the key question is whether that growth has been sufficiently high to keep up with population — and it hasn’t.

Well, the Texas Public Policy Foundation begs to differ. They posted a rebuttal to one of Mr. Krugman’s attacks on the Texas economy. In their rebuttal, they point out:

 It’s a better bet that almost 1.9 million people have fled New York and Massachusetts over the last decade because they couldn’t find a job in those states, and that many of them came to Texas because there were jobs here for them because of our model of gover­nance incorporating low taxes and spending, a predictable, low level of regulation, and a sound civil justice system—with minimal federal interference.

From this perspective, the Texas Miracle is that Texas’ unemployment rate is only 8.2% after a net inflow of 781,542 job seekers and their families have come here looking for work. Not to mention the demand for work created by international migration and normal population growth. While New York’s 8% unemployment rate come after 1.5 million people left the state.

The Texas Model has led to strong economic growth for our state, and it can do the same for the entire country.

What are these attacks about? Under Rick Perry, the State of Texas has instituted tort reform. The state has also recently passed a law that requires the loser in a lawsuit to pay the court costs. Needless to say, this prevents a lot of unnecessary lawsuits and makes less work for lawyers.

These are the three top groups that contributed to the Democrat party in 2010:

 Candidate Committees     $58,923,992

 Retired                               $33,819,391

 Lawyers/Law Firms          $29,914,538

Rick Perry is a threat to both the Republican establishment and the Democrat party. His election would put tort reform nationwide on the table and might even result in a more reasonable court system.

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An Interesting New Face

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Yesterday the Washington Post reported that Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has been named chairman of the Republican Governors Association.  He replaces Rick Perry, who resigned in order to focus on his presidential campaign.

Governor McDonnell has done a good job of restoring fiscal responsibility to Virginia. Wikipedia reports:

The first budget enacted under the McDonnell administration took effect on July 1, 2010.[168] Two of McDonnell’s legislative initiatives did increase the surplus for the 2009-2010 fiscal year. First, the budget bill accelerated the payment of state sales taxes resulting in a one-time shift of revenues that would otherwise have been collected in July 2010 into the old fiscal year. Second, the budget bill deferred a $620 million payment to the Virginia Retirement System to future years.[169] The end of year surplus will trigger the payment of a 3% bonus to state employees in December 2010.[170][171] Both Republicans and Democrats responded by asking McDonnell to use the surplus to reverse the Virginia Retirement System deferral.[172]     

Appointing Governor McDonnell to this position gives him more visibility.  The Washington Post reports that his approval rating in Virginia is 62 percent favorable and 26 percent unfavorable. He is one of the most popular governors in America.

I hate to be cynical, but.. prepare for the attack pieces on Governor McDonnell.  He will be on the short list for Vice-President in 2012, and if he is interested, he would be a viable presidential candidate in 2016 or 2020.

This is a man to watch.

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Rick Perry Enters The Race

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John Podhoretz at Commentary Magazine posted an article about Rick Perry’s announcement that he is running for President.  In the article, Mr. Podhoretz quotes the new candidate:

“I will work every day to make Washington, DC as inconsquential in your life as I can,”

That is an idea I really like. 

Mr. Podhoretz concludes his article by saying:

“Most people outside Texas know very little about Perry, but given his standing as a kind of amalgam of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, he may soon occupy an unprecedented position in the imagination of liberals and the Left—perhaps the most frightening specter of anti-liberalism since Ronald Reagan​ precisely because he is electable. The conservative boogeyman is back.”

In the next few days look for the media to uncover all sorts of negative things about Rick Perry.  Someone will report that when he was five he tried to give the family cat a bath or that when he was two he ate the dog’s food.  Look for it.  It began with the leaking of Governor Perry’s grades at Texas A&M.  Notice that we have yet to see President Obama’s grades or college record.  Don’t hold your breath.  Anyway, look for the attack stories, they are on their way!