Tag: Campaign 2012
The Line: Reax to Perry’s Threat to Lynch Fed Chairman
- Rick Perry on Fed Chairman Paul Bernanke: “I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas”
- James Fallows: “If Bernanke ‘prints money’ in the next 15 months, toward the end of forestalling a recession or preserving jobs, Perry would consider that ‘almost treasonous.’ This is the kind of thing you just don’t hear from national-level politicians, and for a reason. (For starters: the punishment for treason is death.) Obama looks better the more the Republican field displays its outlook and temperament. Romney looks better the more the anyone-but-Romney alternatives come into full view.”
- Former Bush operative Tony Fratto on Twitter: “Gov. Perry’s comments about Chmn. Bernanke are inappropriate and unpresidential.”
- Bushite Texan Karl Rove: “You don’t accuse the chairman of the federal reserve of being a traitor to his country. Of being guilty of treason,” Karl Rove told Fox News Tuesday. “And, suggesting that we treat him pretty ugly in Texas. You know, that is not, again a presidential statement.”
- James Galbraith, an economist and professor at the University of Texas’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs: “The fact that Rick Perry says something does not necessarily mean that he’s wrong, and that the institution has conducted itself in an impeccable way. The Fed allowed a great overstatement of its powers to become conventional wisdom. It pretended that [Quantitative Easing] QE1 and QE2 would achieve something substantial in the economy, when in fact it couldn’t.”
- Ta-Nehisi Coates: “It’s almost as if Obama has this mutant power to compel these guys into charging, full steam, into a wall of spikes.”
- Pres. Obama: “I think that everybody who runs for president, it probably takes them a little bit of time before they start realizing that this isn’t like running for governor or running for senator or running for Congress, and you’ve got to be a little more careful about what you say,” Obama said. “But I’ll cut him some slack. He’s only been at it for a few days now.”
- Andrew Sullivan: “To my mind, [this] statement disqualifies Perry from the race.”
- Neo-con Jon Podhoretz: “In the early going on Twitter, I suggested the harrumphers were knowingly making a mountain out of a molehill to bring him down a notch. I was wrong. He’s trying to be the next president, and he needs to be judged on that standard. What Perry did was make a thoughtless blunder, an unforced error; we’re now going to spend a couple of days discussing whether he was summoning violence on Ben Bernanke’s head or not, which is of absolutely no use to Perry. He is, or was, moments away from becoming the race’s frontrunner, and what is in his interest is to harness the excitement of his late entry with qualities of leadership and control that will rally the majority of Republicans unhappy with the choices facing them to his side. Rick Perry made that more difficult today; this was a serious rookie mistake on the national stage”
Romney Doesn’t Believe a Word He Says
No one doubts Romney’s intelligence or competence, but he has managed to run for president for almost five years without taking a single courageous or even remotely interesting position. The thinking person’s case for Romney, murmured by many of his backers, amounts to this: Vote for Mitt, you know he doesn’t believe a word he says.
— Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times op-ed pages.
Perry Kind of Calls Bernanke a Traitor
If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you would do with him. We would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous — or treasonous in my opinion.
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry, campaigning in Iowa, commenting on the possibility that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will increase stimulus spending before the 2012 election, Bloomberg reports.
Deep Throat: Photo of Perry and a Corndog Won’t Help with the Gay Rumors
Given that the top auto-suggestion for Google searches on Rick Perry is “is rick perry gay,” the governor of Texas — who was the subject of unsubstantiated gay rumors in 2004 and recently held a “methinks he doth protest way too much” religious conclave paid for by the American Family Association, an official anti-gay hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center — might want to be more careful about what he’s photographed stuffing into his mouth.
Back in the day, presidential candidates had minders who warned them against doing things that could prove embarrassing later on — like asserting that the Revolutionary War battles of Concord and Lexington took place in New Hampshire or that America’s slave owning Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly” to end slavery — or stuffing a footlong corndog in your mouth in front of cameras.
But I guess we can say that, now, as America sits on the brink of becoming a true idiocracy, the days when campaign operatives protected their candidate’s image are gone forever.
Rick Perry, Who Put Texas Secession on the Table in April, Now Suggests President Does Not Love America
Do neo-Confederates who advocate secession of the South from the United States (again) “love” America? Logic suggests that they do not. Back in April, Rick Perry famously suggested that the secession of Texas was at least a possibility:
REPORTER: Some have associated you with the idea of secession or sovereignty for your state…
PERRY: Oh, I think there’s a lot of different scenarios. Texas is a unique place. When we came in the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. You know, my hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that? So. But Texas is a very unique place and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.
(Perry is, of course, lying. Texas was not given an option to opt out when it was annexed into the union in 1845.)
But now we have Perry, four months after he was caught palling around with neo-Confederates, suggesting that it is the president of the United States who does not “love” America:
Why Rick Perry’s Nickname Was ‘Crotch’
I first met Rick Perry in 1985. He was a Democratic freshman state rep, straight off the ranch in Haskell, Texas. He wore his jeans so tight, and, umm, adjusted himself so often that my fellow young legislative aides and I used to call him Crotch. Even among state representatives, even among Texas Aggies (graduates of this cute remedial school we have in Texas), Perry stood out for his modest intellectual gifts. Hell, he got a C in animal breeding. I have goats who got an A in that subject. But lack of brains has never been a hindrance in politics.
– Democratic strategist Paul Begala
Prediction from Texas: American Democracy Will End in 2012 — After the Election of Perry-Palin
James Moore, co-author of Bush’s Brain, a profile of Karl Rove, has an explanation for why America has a very good chance of electing Perry-Palin in 2012. And why doing so will be the end of democracy as we know it.
He starts by revealing what “The Response,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent prayer meeting, was actually about.
The big brains gathered east of the Hudson and Potomac Rivers believe that Mitt Romney is the candidate to beat. But they are unable to hear what Rick Perry is saying. The Christian prayer rally in Houston was a very loud proclamation to fundamentalists and Teavangelicals, which said, “I am not a Mormon…”
Moore on Perry: ‘A C- and D-student who hates to govern, loves to campaign, and barely has a sixth grader’s understanding of economics, will lead our nation into oblivion.’Perry, of course, can’t come right out and print bumper stickers that say, “Rick Perry — 2012 — Not a Mormon.” But he doesn’t have to…Perry is about to remind the tea partiers and fundamentalists that Romney created a state health care plan…, believes global warming is real, and has a troubling history for conservatives on the matters of abortion and gay marriage.
So good-bye Mitt. Moore dispatches the rest of the Republican field in quicker order, and returns to the subject of Perry winning — and the depressing consequences.
