The Huffington Post web site noted yesterday that Rick Perry’s biggest career donor, Bob Perry, has not yet contributed to the governor’s presidential campaign. A likely reason is Rick Perry’s support for legislation that adversely impacts Latinos, such as Voter I.D. laws and sanctuary cities policies. Perry flip-flopped on his position regarding sanctuary cities, having previously said that law enforcement personnel should be chasing bad guys instead of immigrants. Bob Perry, of course, is a major home builder whose business (presumably) depends heavily on immigrant labor.

Bob Perry’s disappearance from the list of Rick Perry’s supporters lays bare the conflict in the Republican party between anti-Latino elements like the Tea Party and party leaders like Karl Rove, who see Latinos as potential Republican voters, due to their strong family ties and pro-life values. Governor Perry used to be on the right side of this issue, but he cratered when his Republican rivals began attacking him for providing the children of immigrants with tuition benefits at state universities. Rove is not pro-immigrant out of the goodness of his heart; he understands, as the Tea Party does not, that Latinos are the fastest-growing population group, and that Republicans target them at their peril. Republicans once had the black vote in this country, because they were the party of Lincoln, and they lost it by failing to support the civil rights movement. Republicans have always done pretty well with the Latino vote in Texas; Bush won upwards of 40% in 2004, and Perry has usually been able to count on at least a third of the Hispanic vote.

This past week, however, marked a canary-in-the-coal-mine event. The Houston Chronicle blog reported that Lauro Garza, who led the nation’s largest conservative Latino group, Somos Republicans, had left the Republican party, citing politicians, especially Herman Cain, he of the electrified fence, of fear-mongering over the immigration issue and “likened himself to Ronald Reagan, who left the Democratic Party when he felt like it betrayed him.”

I suspect that a debate is about to begin, inside of the ranks of the Republican party, about whether the Tea Party is the salvation of the GOP or its destruction. And Rick Perry is on the wrong side.

Tagged: bob perry, George W. Bush, illegal immigration, Lauro Garza, rick perry, tea party

I misinterpreted an e-mail that I received from Allbaugh, which I discuss below. Allbaugh was forwarding an article from Huffington Post by Howard Fineman. The headline of the article was highlighted in the e-mail: “Karl Rove created Rick Perry–Now can he stop him?”

The rest of my original post follows:

Allbaugh is one of the few Bushies who supports Perry. There was never much love lost between Allbaugh and Rove, even when they were on the same team. I remember the 1998 Texas Association of Taxpayers meeting, when Bush was running for reelection as governor. Rove was on the panel, as was I, and he blurted out, “The governor’s race is over. It’s all about 2000 now.” Well, that wasn’t the official Bush line at all. Nobody was supposed to talk about 2000. Allbaugh was furious.

It’s ancient history now, but I thought the fundamental mistake Bush made, second only to choosing Dick Cheney as his running mate, was bringing Rove inside the White House. When Bush was governor, Rove was on the outside. He came to meetings in the Capitol once a week. In the White House, Allbaugh was on the outside and Rove was on the inside as domestic policy adviser. Bush would have been much better served if he had made Allbaugh his chief of staff instead of Andy Card and sent Rove to the Republican National Committee. It’s not a good idea to put your political consultant in charge of policy.

Tagged: George W. Bush, Howard Fineman, Joe Allbaugh, karl rove, rick perry

Wayne Slater has an interesting story [this was earlier in the week] — which I am unable to link to, but it is in the Quorum Report — about Karl Rove’s displeasure with Rick Perry’s lack of gratitude toward then-Governor Bush during the 1998 primary races for governor and lieutenant governor. Perry has been distancing himself from Bush since he stumped for Rudy Giuliani in Iowa in 2008 with comments like, “George is not a fiscal conservative.”

Slater writes:

Rove was clearly steamed on Fox News this morning. He suggested Perry wouldn’t be where he is today if it weren’t for Bush: “Why he falls into this pattern of sounding like he’s being dismissive of the former president is not smart politics, either strategically or tactically.”

Rove’s version:

[Governor] Bush moved heaven and earth to get Rick Perry elected as his running mate for lieutenant governor. He raised him money outside the state, he made sure his phone banks only called people who were for both men in order to get them out to vote. In 1998, George H. W Bush, the former president, … only cut two television ads for candidates in the entire country- one for son Jeb Bush in Florida and the other for Perry.”

* * * *

It is true that Governor Bush went out of his way to get Perry elected. But Rove leaves out one little tidbit: Bush had no choice but to help Perry. If Bush ran for president (as it was clear he intended to do) and Perry lost the lieutenant governor’s race to Democrat John Sharp, Bush’s  Republican rivals could say, If Bush wins the nomination, the governor of Texas will be a Democrat. Bush is putting his own ambitions ahead of the good of the party. In other words, Bush’s aid for Perry was also aid for himself.

There is no way Perry could have won the race against Sharp without Bush’s coattails. Bush polled 2,550,821 votes for governor; Perry polled 1,858,837 votes for lieutenant governor. Bush’s coattails enabled Perry to edge Sharp by 1.75%.

Tagged: George W. Bush, John Sharp, karl rove, rick perry

I am totally dismayed to see that Governor Perry chose Donald Rumsfeld and several of his neoconservative disciples to advise him on foreign affairs. Rumsfeld was the worst secretary of defense in American history. He couldn’t even manage to put armor on humvees. How many young lives did he snuff out? The neocons have been wholly discredited. It’s not hard to see why Perry likes them. The neocons believe in utilizing America’s military might to extend American power, and Perry loves the exercise of power.

I don’t know whether, what, or how much Perry reads, but there are plenty of good books about how the Bush administration in general and Rumsfeld in particular bungled the war in Iraq and allowed the insurgency to flourish. Bush will carry the stain of the war to his grave and into the history books. Believe me, I’m no anti-war hand-wringer. When it comes to issues of war and peace, I’m a realist, not an idealist. What concerns me about Perry’s playing footsie with the neocons is that he is following his instinct to make policy based on ideology instead of acquiring knowledge about the mistakes of the past. And a failed ideology at that.

There is a wealth of great reading material on the war in Iraq: Fiasco, by Thomas E. Ricks; Cobra II, by Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor; and the “Bush at War” series by Bob Woodward. These books are rich in lessons about the arrogance of power and the propensity to overestimate the importance of military power. Perry should read them, if he hasn’t already done so. Then he should remove Rumsfeld’s number from his cell phone contact list.

[From a review of Cobra II:

The bulk of the book is taken up with a near-comprehensive blow-by-blow account of the fighting that occurred over four weeks in March and April 2003. But while these chapters shed new light on several important facets of the war, and demonstrate how realities on the ground did not match Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's  theories of military transformation, the book's beginning and ending sections are the most valuable. Here the authors explain how the administration of President George W. Bush drove the nation to war in Iraq, and how decisions made before the invasion and immediately following Mr. Hussein's ouster precipitated the vicious insurgency now wracking that country.]

Perry’s decision to embrace Rumsfeld and his disciples as his mentors in diplomatic and military affairs calls into question his judgment, his knowledge of history, and his fitness to lead American troops into harm’s way. Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.

[The article on which this post is based appeared in the Dallas Morning News, but I am unable to link to it.]

Tagged: George W. Bush

From Tom Jensen on the Public Policy Polling Web site:

Much has been written about the weakness of the 2012 Republican Presidential candidate field but what I think might be most remarkable about the leading quartet of Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich  is that they’ve all become more unpopular and by quite a good bit since we started monthly national 2012 polling in April of 2009. The fact that the more Americans are exposed to them, the less they like them certainly does not bode well for their competitiveness next year.

* In April 2009 Huckabee’s favorability was +8 at 42/34. Now it’s -7 at 35/42, for a 15 point drop over the last two years. His net drop has been 25 points with Democrats, 7 points with Republicans, and 19 points with independents.

* In April 2009 Palin’s favorability was -7 at 42/49. Now it’s -22 at 35/57, for a 15 point drop over the last two years. Her net drop has been 19 points with Democrats, 18 points with Republicans, and 19 points with independents. (more…)

Tagged: Gary Johnson, George W. Bush, haley barbour, jeb bush, jon huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, mitch daniels, mitt romney, newt gingrich, oliver stone, Rand Paul, rick perry, Rick Santorum, rob johnson, ron paul, sarah palin, tim pawlenty