I wrote a post yesterday under the headline, “The bush leagues,” in which I said that one reason for Perry’s poor performance in the current campaign is that he has had it too easy in Texas during the last ten years–that he has gotten away with ducking debates and dodging the media. Shortly after I posted that article, I received an e-mail from a friend who sent along a column by a well thought of conservative blogger, who is the author of legalinsurrection.com. Legalinsurrection.com is the work of Professor William A. Jacobson at the Cornell University school of law. His post of 9/23 was extremely critical of Perry’s performance in the Florida debate. I have posted his remarks below. I have removed my friend’s comments from the post in the interest of clarity, even though his observations were trenchant.
“If you say that we should not educate children who come into our state for no other reason than that they’ve been brought their through no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry said. “We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society. I think that’s what Texans wanted to do. Out of 181 members of the Texas legislature when this issue came up [there were] only four dissenting votes. This was a state issue. Texas voted on it. And I still support it today.”
Romney correctly corrected Perry by pointing out that the issue was the discount and favoritism towards those here illegally versus Americans from other states. Perry could have defended his policy on the merits without making the “you don’t have a heart” claim. That answer was insulting and right out of the Democratic Party playbook and the type of charge we are used to hearing from Paul Krugman. (links removed) Perry’s Gardasil answer was just as bad. By now he should have a clear answer to the question, it’s come up so many times before. Yet he justified his executive order by saying he was lobbied on it by a woman with stage 4 cervical cancer. I immediately thought, hadn’t I heard someplace that he didn’t meet that woman until after the order? And sure enough, my vague memory of news reports was better than Perry’s memory on stage (via ABC News):
“I got lobbied on this issue. I got lobbied by a 31 year old young lady who had stage 4 cervical cancer,” said Perry. “I spent a lot of time with her. She came by my office She talked to me about this program. I readily admitted we should have had an opt-in but I don’t know what part of opt out most parents don’t get and the fact is I erred on the side of life and I will always err on the side of life as a governor as a president of the United States.” The woman Rick Perry mentioned in the Republican debate Thursday was Heather Burcham, a thirty one year old woman dying from cervical cancer. But what Perry left out in his answer was that he met her after he issued his executive order.
I wanted to like Rick Perry and hoped he would be the conservative we had been hoping for. But I didn’t jump on the Perry bandwagon unlike some other conservative bloggers in part because the field was not complete and in part because I didn’t know enough about him. I brought Katie Thompson on for guest posts over the summer to make the case for Perry and she did a good job. (Note: Katie now is a leader of Students for Perry) I have been waiting for the Rick Perry of Katie’s posts to show up at the debates. I’m still waiting. The Rick Perry of lore needs to show up real soon. End of post on legalinsurrection.com I apologize to readers, and to Professor Jacobson, for the confusion.
