Blood and irony
Does anybody else find it ironic that Perry is faltering because of the rare good deeds that he has done, such as the Dream Act and the HPV mandate? The guy spends ten years being a total hardline conservative with a couple of exceptions, and suddenly his own party is turning against him. I find it especially ironic that Perry is accusing his rivals of not having a heart when he has assented to booting who-knows-how-many-hundreds-of-thousands of families off CHIP and Medicaid (in the latter case, by requiring them to re-up every six months, knowing that some would fail to do it and fall off the rolls for half a year). He brags about securing the border, lavishes hundreds of millions of dollars in homeland security funding on border sheriffs in return for their political support, has put up border cameras all over the place in South Texas, may even have some drones flying around down there, but because he scoffs at the effectiveness of a wall, Republicans think he wants to invite every Mexican north of Mexico City to emigrate. The tea party is mad that he won’t call a special session to pass a sanctuary cities bill; let’s hope they don’t find out that the DPS doesn’t enforce immigration laws, nor should it. Even his controversial HPV executive order was a good deed, if somewhat dubiously motivated. It was the wackos in his party that opposed it.
I didn’t think that Perry’s conservative-Democratic past and Al Gore flirtation would be a problem for him, but somehow, the old conservative Democrat in him keeps bubbling up to the surface. The more he sounds like a Democrat, accusing people of having no heart, the more that real conservatives are going to wonder about him. Now he is being squeezed between his intention to court Latino votes in swing states and the extreme nativist views of the tea party: yet more irony, because it was Perry who drove the Texas Republican party farther and farther to the right over the past decade, until it ended up in the arms of the tea party. (At one rally, he said something along the lines of, “They call you right wing extremists, and if you are, then I’m for you. “)
Perry needs to stop trying to be a good guy. He’s at his best when he’s mean and heartless.
Tagged: HPV, immigration, rick perry
JD says:
You could call the HPV order a good deed if it didn’t appear to be motivated by cronyism and campaign dollars.
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paulburka Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 9:48 am
It’s still a good deed. Motivation shouldn’t trump substance. It can diminish goodness.
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Prince Royal Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
Ends justify the means.
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Red says:
I think it says more about the modern Republican party than it does about Rick Perry.
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ProofPlease says:
I haven’t heard one “Tea Party” member complain that Perry won’t call a Special Session for sanctuary cities….
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paulburka Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 11:29 pm
Want proof? Here’s your proof:
paulburka says:
A commenter posted that he had not heard one tea party member demanding a special session on sancturary cities and sought proof from me that someone had done so. Here is that proof, from the Startlegram of 9/19.
AUSTIN — Texas Tea Party leaders, challenging Gov. Rick Perry to dispel doubts about his stance on illegal immigration, demanded Monday that he call lawmakers back to work to enact a controversial “sanctuary cities” bill and other major immigration measures.
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/09/19/3380499/tea-party-wants-rick-perry-to.html#ixzz1Z4b9Y8Vz
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James Otis, Jr. says:
On the Texas Dream Act: Michelle Bachmann had it right when she called in-state tuition for illegal immigrants a ‘magnet’. This is just one of many magnets. There was a time in our nation’s history when the only ‘magnet’ for immigrants was freedom. Now the magnets seem to be social services. Freedom as a magnet led to economically robust and integrated immigrant communities. The social welfare magnet leads to immigrant communities that are more burdensome on local economies and more isolated from the larger society.
On the HPV vaccine mandate:
1. Unless sex ed has added a lab option in our public schools, there is no valid public health reason for the vaccine to be mandated as a condition of public school enrollment.
2. The benefit of a mandated vaccine is to the vaccine maker. With the mandate, Merck could no longer be sued for adverse effects. This fact makes the mandate a cronyism issue, considering Perry’s personal, professional and financial relationship with certain Merck lobbyists.
3. Finally, a mandated vaccine should have been vetted with the people, either directly or through their elected representatives. For a state with a purposefully weak governor to acquiesce to an executive order is against our political nature.
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Cow Droppings Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 12:51 pm
On number one, your point assumes female promiscuity, and implies they get what they deserve. Well for starters, there are women who get HPV even though they wait for marriage because their partner didn’t wait. Second, if we had a vaccine to prevent lung cancer, would you withhold it from smokers? Perry acted to protect life regardless of the motives you or others may ascribe to him.
Second, the so-called mandate always had an opt out, preserving parental rights. These are facts. You can continue to argue on the grounds of fear and distortion.
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Robert Morrow Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
If that HPV vaccine was such a wonder drug, parents would be knocking down the doors of their doctors to have it administered to their girls.
I hear that it has killed people and is quite ineffective to many strains of HPV, including the quite common genital warts.
Perry’s slimy argument on HPV is to conflate it with the “pro-life” issue as if that were somehow relevant. Perry says he always errs on the side of protecting life – that is his dog whistle signal to the religious whackjobs.
Well, Rick Perry sure did NOT err on the side of “life” in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham when he refused to grant a stay of execution to look at the high quality evidence from the nation’s fire experts questioning the quality of the arson evidence used to convict Willingham.
Nope, Rick said no need to “err on the side of life” and look at this arson evidence for about a month; instead let’s get the needle out and kill/murder this man.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/02/cameron-todd-willingham-execution-rick-perry_n_946654.html
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paulburka says:
I agree with #3, and blogged at the time that it was wrong to issue an executive order when the Legislature was in session. Perry did it because he wanted the credit.
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Robert Morrow Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Wrong! Perry issued an executive order because he knew he could NEVER get it through the legislature. The HPV mandate was opposed across the board from progressives appalled at the crony capitalism, to the religious right to libertarians like me.
I remember testifying at that hearing where proponents tried to make it a pity party for Heather Burcham, dying of cancer.
When it came time to speak, I told the House committee “I don’t really think the state of Texas should be getting into the business of preventative health care for teenage sluts.”
Beautiful. You should have heard the ooohs, ahhs, and howls of outrage on that one. But it scored a direct hit and was like a balloon popping in that room. Of course there were 30 other people testifying against King Perry’s power move.
Perry was motivated by dollar bills, Mike Toomey … NOT pitiful little Heather Burcham.
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Prince Royal Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Perry has not worried about buy-in and process for more than six years. His only proactive initiatives since then are executive, top-down. He does not spend political capital with the legislature.
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retrocon says:
Perry’s HPV order a good deed? Since when has Perry issued good-health executive orders for the sake of good health?
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paulburka says:
It was a good deed, but a bad motivation.
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Bill Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 10:00 am
“It was a good deed, but a bad motivation.”
Paul, this makes no sense. It is only a good deed because you personally think the vaccination was a good idea.
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paulburka says:
Has anybody noticed, as I have, that the Perry shills have disappeared from this blog? They haven’t posted anything for weeks.
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Anonymous Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 10:04 am
Looks like Perry is about to disappear as well.
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anonymous Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 10:38 am
All of his social media staff has been transferred to the Presidential campaign and are all monitoring national media now.
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Robert Morrow Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
This is an important blog. Why do you think I spend so much time smacking Perry here? A lot of folks read this blog even if they don’t publicly post. Karl Rove reads it. (I think Ive seen his posts before – anonymously.) The Perry folk read it. Michael Barone, Howard Fineman and national journalists read it.
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Robert Morrow Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Let’s say you were a passenger in a stunt plane, and your clown pilot was busy smashing your plane into the grandstands at an air show. Would YOU have time/inclination to be posting on Paul Burka’s blog?
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anita Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
CD is back.
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anon Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Maybe they’re just fair weather shills.
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Hmm Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 7:25 pm
I think they have moved to the larger blogs.
I have also noticed that all of his appointees are really really well behaved right now.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
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Anonymous says:
The lesson for Perry and all others like him: Be careful about feeding red meat to the wolves, you might lose a hand…or an arm and a leg.
At least with Perry, it couldn’t be any better example of karma. A guy who’s always and only about himself (and to be fair, I’m not even sure he is self-aware enough to know it) and obviously goes back and forth with his allegience between his big-money donors and the lowest common denominators in the electorate depending on which he needs most in the moment. (And, of course, his big money donors are forgiving because they know the latter is a necessary evil that serves their own grander purposes in the end.)
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anita says:
Both moves were the right thing to do. On in-state tuition, his emotional argument was weak — he needs to make the economic argument, and point out how limited it is. It’s not a magnet — it’s rewarding those who find themselves here by no fault of their own, have committed to operating within the law and desire to become productive citizens.
But on a broader theme, what happened to Perry’s ‘sixth sense’ of being able to discern where the party activists were and to tap into them? Sounds like his powers only work on this side of the Red River.
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Anonymous says:
Paul,
I think the Perry shills have left like others because of Robert Morrow’s weird postings. You should ban Morrow from this site…he brings nothing to the table other than an insanity that is common in a mental ward.
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paulburka Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 10:35 am
I have sent several recent Morrow posts to trash.
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Anonymous Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Send all of them to the trash heap. All he is doing is running people off to other sites.
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Bill Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 11:58 am
I have to concur. Morrow has some sane moments and some good thoughts, but his conspiracy theories poison his opinions and mar the reputation of this blog.
Robert Morrow Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
I would like to request that Burka ban “Anonymous” from this site. Oops, we don’t even know who you are – too chicken to stand up and be counted?
As for Bill (et alia).. are you a “fantasy theorist?” Meaning you believe stuff like JFK was killed by a solo pro-Castro Marxist with the kill shot coming from behind? Do you believe the Republicans made no deal with the Iranians in 1980?
Do you think Ross Perot – a billionaire who could self fund his campaign and who was leading the 1992 presidential polls – suddenly quit the 1992 campaign worried about his daughter’s wedding?
Do you think the CIA and the US government has *never* been involved in the drug trade?
Do you think Lyndon Johnson, the Bushes, the Clintons are decent public servants without an ounce of corruption in them?
Do you think Rick Perry is the Christian conservative he presents himself to the voters as?
Do you think the Republicans are for small government, tax cuts & fiscal responsibility?
Do you think Democrats will end the wars and protect your civil liberties, and not engage torture and renditions?
Exactly what other “fantasies” and “delusions” do you and some other folks on this blog subscribe to?
I like to tell the truth, even if it is the ugly truth. And it is fun watching the flacks & political groupies howl when I do.
Cow Droppings Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
The common theme to every wild conspiracy yarn you tell is they draw attention to you. After all, that’s what your conspiracy advocacy is about: you.
Robert Morrow Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
Well, here is a post to keep. Lt. Gov. Rick Perry attended a GAY RIGHTS BANQUET black tie event on 3/18/2000 at the Four Seasons in Austin.
I have a lesbian source, a reporter by trade, who sat at Perry’s table. And she was watching his behavior like a hawk. Rick attended solo, without Anita.
Here is how the event invitation read:
“The 2000 HRC Black Tie Dinner will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel Mar. 18. This year’s dinner honors Austin’s own Bettie Naylor for her years of service to the Gay and Lesbian community locally, statewide and nationally. There will be a host of political dignitaries friendly to our cause as honored guests. The guest speaker will be Betty DeGeneres, the mother of Ellen DeGeneres.”
While at this gay rights banquet fundraiser, put on by the Human Rights Campaign, one of the attendees, a Dr. Kimberly McElvany of San Antonio, asked Perry, “Why should I vote for you.”
Perry’s reply, “Because I am here.”
Dr. McElvany is a San Antonio anesthesist.
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Anonymous says:
Perry needs to get off the fundraising circuit and spend some quality time at debate camp.
Good guy or mean and heartless he dramatically needs to improve his shtick.
Ducking debating Bill White in 10′ may have been smart strategically, but it didn’t help with this problem. You need to practice things to be good at them.
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BackUpMembers says:
Why anyone would choose the candidate based upon oratorical proficiency escapes me. Look at what we have in the White House today — a great speechmaker and a poor chief executive.
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retrocon Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
“Oratorical proficiency” is just part of it, but we’re electing the President of the United States, after all. What escapes me is why anyone would watch Perry’s debate performances and still think that is what we’re looking for in the White House.
As I’ve stated before, I don’t want the ordinary schlub in the White House so I can “identify” with him or her — I want someone who is among the best and the brightest, a model citizen, and a capable executive. It DOES make a difference if a guy gets up there and flubs BADLY even his prepared lines.
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paulburka says:
A commenter posted that he had not heard one tea party member demanding a special session on sancturary cities and sought proof from me that someone had done so. Here is that proof, from the Startlegram of 9/19.
AUSTIN — Texas Tea Party leaders, challenging Gov. Rick Perry to dispel doubts about his stance on illegal immigration, demanded Monday that he call lawmakers back to work to enact a controversial “sanctuary cities” bill and other major immigration measures.
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/09/19/3380499/tea-party-wants-rick-perry-to.html#ixzz1Z4b9Y8Vz
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Benevolus says:
His recent comments on giving illegals in-state tuition will prove to be deadly.
GOP Primary voters won’t stand for that while viable alternative candidates exist.
It will be remembered as his Waterloo.
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Blue Dogs Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Benevolus, which I said that Perry will be wishing he should have waited until 2016 to run for Prez-not 2012.
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farm boy says:
So, according to Mr. Otis a college education isolates immigrants from society.
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John Johnson says:
Astute voters are skeptical. They look for the motives behind an office holder’s actions or a candidate’s promises. Unfortunately, altruism is rarely the motivating factor behind either.
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patriotone says:
Perry issued the mandate during the session. Very bad timing as he should have waited until they were out of town. I don’t remember speaking to a soul who wasn’t dumbfounded at first blush. Everyone was wildly running to their computers to the SOS website to see who the Merck lobbyist was. This brings Rick Perry into clear relief. Who was pushing the buttons? This says more about Perry than anything else. Follow the money.
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Robert Morrow Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
Slick Perry says he’s insulted if you think he can be bought for $5,000. He is what is known as a “High Dollar Hottie.” $5,000 is not enough. Not even the $38,000 Merck directely gave him.
It was the $400,000 in Merck donations to the Republican Governor’s Association paid for the “trick.”
That poor little Heather Burcham who Perry only met AFTER he had satisfied yet another john, had nothing to do with the HPV mandate.
It was all about Mike Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff and well funded Merck lobbyist – same guy joined at the hip to Rick Perry for 25 years. I bet Toomey is closer to Perry than Anita is.
Hey, just a general question – does anybody on this site *miss* Ric Williamson? I don’t. I wish they would take his name off that little bitty conference room they named after him.
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Robert Morrow Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
The Republican Governor’s Association, heavily funded by Merck and a slew of other Perry crony capitalists, being the largest donor to Rick Perry in 2006 and 2010.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
Perry is a good guy, he proved it much like Raegan when he switched parties.
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John Johnson says:
An NBC-WSJ poll conducted last months shows this about registered voter breakdown:
Very Liberal 7%
Somewhat Liberal 10%
Moderate 40%
Somewhat Conservative 23%
Very Conservative 17%
Using this as a quide, I would like for someone to construct a scenario where Rick Perry, even if he was making a decent showing, would get elected.
Someone who would campaign for bringing troops home, closing overseas bases, changing the tax structure, enforcing immigration laws, cutting discretionary spending, pushing for changing the constitution to outlaw unlimited campaign giving, opening up federal land to drilling, insisting on balanced trade agreements, and regulating hedgefunders would win in a walk.
Do you see the Republican Party or the Democratic Party supporting a candidate that stood up and broadcast this message? Hell no. This message doesn’t fit either party.
This person would be political hermaphrodite, but if they had the personality to convey this message, they would be President of the United States.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
@ John
Conservatives(grownups) always out number the liberals, and when they have a good candidate they show up and vote. They will show up and vote in 2012.
Recent voter integrity bills in Texas removed over 100,000 dead voters from the rolls. The dem’s base is shrinking.
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Anonymous Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Heck, JBB, I won’t argue that point. The Republican candidate is going to win in a landslide. I’m just saying that it won’t be Perry, Palin or Michelle. The only votes they will get in the primaries are from the ultra conservatives and that won’t be enough to win.
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Calvin says:
The HPV vaccine was not a good deed. That is ludicrous, Paul. It was unnecessary gov’t regulation (and no, I’m not a right-winger). Where would it end? Mandate flu shots, too, I guess? Or does Merck make those? If Perry wanted to do a good deed on HPV vaccines, maybe Anita could have encouraged girls to do it.
Gov. Perry, mandates do not equal “strong leadership.”
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