The only person who can stop Rick Perry is Rick Perry
John Ellis, who among many other things is a Republican political analyst, a blogger and a cousin to former President George W. Bush, nails the state of the GOP presidential race in a Business Insider column:
The Republican “establishment,” such as it is, is quickly coming to the realization that the 2012 GOP presidential nomination is Texas Governor Rick Perry’s to lose.
That establishment would prefer someone more electable, someone more like, say, Mitt Romney. But as Ellis points out, Romney is the guy that most Republican voters will choose only if they have no other viable choice:
“Romney’s problem is four-fold: he’s politically “fungible” (to put it politely), he’s from the wrong region of the country (New England), he’s of the wrong religion (Mormonism) and he’s too closely identified with Wall Street (Bain Capital). The Republican base would prefer to nominate a strong conservative, evangelical Christian from the Sunbelt who, at the least, shares their disdain for Wall Street’s reckless stewardship of the nation’s financial system.”
Know anybody like that?
Ellis predicts that after Labor Day, the GOP establishment will launch “a sustained negative campaign to destroy Perry with the party’s base.” We’ve already seen hints of that from Karl Rove, among others. Absent some major revelation, however, that effort isn’t likely to work. Perry’s persona and background align so closely with the desires of the GOP base that it will be very difficult to drive a wedge between them. If Perry can prove that he can perform on the national stage, the nomination is all but his and there’s nothing Romney can do about it.
And as Ellis points out, Perry will get that opportunity very quickly.
“Once Labor Day has passed, there will be five debates, in quick succession, on the GOP presidential candidates’ calendars. These will be important tests for Perry. If at the end of two or three, it’s clear that he’s every bit the equal of Mitt Romney on matters of policy and politics, then the Perry juggernaut becomes all but unstoppable. Romney’s “I’m the only electable one” argument will vanish and the party’s base will nominate one of their own. If Perry stumbles badly in the debates, Romney’s campaign gets a second wind.”
I agree wholeheartedly. The only person who can snatch the nomination out of Rick Perry’s hands is Rick Perry himself.
– Jay Bookman
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1,022 comments Add your comment
USinUK
August 31st, 2011
6:51 am
Normal – 6:50 – know what gators like?? CAKE! or at least cookies …
(at the very least, it helps get people off your back)
Normal
August 31st, 2011
6:59 am
Interesting…From MSNBC’s Republican…
Breaking from Newsmax.com
Scarborough: US Must Cut War Costs
Although the United States may have achieved some important successes in Mideast wars over the past 10 years, the government has to curb spending on these conflicts, says Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The ouster of tyrants such as Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein “do not come without great cost,” the former Florida Republican congressman writes on Politico. “As America’s war machine drones into a new decade, it is time Washington begins focusing more on the costs, rather than merely the benefits of these wars.”
He questions spending $2 billion a week to keep the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan.
“What started as an anti-terror campaign against al-Qaida has devolved into an anti-insurgency campaign against a religious sect that does not want to blow up buildings in New York or Washington,” Scarborough writes.
“A decade after Sept. 11, most Americans probably agree with me that keeping the Taliban out of power over the next decade is not worth an additional $1 trillion and countless American lives.”
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Bumpers are for Stickers
August 31st, 2011
7:14 am
WAR! Never been so much Fun!
The Dept of War Commerce thanks you for your business.
stands for decibels
August 31st, 2011
7:14 am
THANK GOD !! this is why we have a judiciary – to insert SANITY into the process.
Sanity would be that such filthy bills never get out of committee, and their authors institutionalized.
USinUK
August 31st, 2011
7:18 am
dB – 7:14 – well, there is that.
USinUK
August 31st, 2011
7:25 am
Bumpers – I thought you were going to post this (which is what I thought of reading about Scarborough’s comments)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
stands for decibels
August 31st, 2011
7:27 am
But where are my manners? mornin’, all.
A bit late with this, but really loved Amanda’s piece; it articulates more or less everything that goes through my mind and then some whenever I hear some “progressive” tell me that Ron Paul’s really got some good ideas and golly, at least he stands for something.
I hate giving attention to Ron Paul, who is a familiar type in Texas: equal parts racist old crank that obsesses over conspiracy theories that have their historical roots in anti-Semiticism and vicious misogynist who thinks women’s sexual liberation is the worst thing that’s ever happened in history. Unfortunately, Paul has managed to snag the affections of a collection of white men who imagine themselves to be “liberal”, because they hear he supports legalizing marijuana, though they hide behind his opposition to the war because even they know that it’s ####ing disgusting to believe it’s more important for dudes to have legal rights to joints than women to have legal rights to abortion. Paulbots are literally the most annoying people on Earth, because there is literally nothing their hero can do that they won’t vociferously defend, sometimes even while claiming not to support his point of view. After all, they aren’t prepared yet to follow their hero’s prescribed lifestyle of marrying a church lady and giving up on the hope of interesting sex for the rest of their lives, but they know that keeping their already dim hopes of sex with live, consenting women alive means at least pretending like they are also repulsed by statements like, “order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks,” and “the federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS”. Being Paulbots, they actually claim that these prior statements by Paul are fine, because they claim to believe his transparent lie that someone else wrote them for a newsletter and he just happened to sign his name to them without knowing what was in them. This, even though in many of the offensive statements, he took great pains to make it clear that he was the one writing them.
[...]
I wasn’t surprised to have angry Paulbots defend their hero on Twitter when I posted a link to Ron Paul suggesting that the Galveston hurricane of 1900 was the gold standard in how our country should respond to hurricanes, and that we shouldn’t have FEMA coordinating rescue efforts that would prevent horrors like that hurricane, which killed three times as many people as the attacks on 9/11. (Galveston is in his district, too, so Paul isn’t ####ing around when he idealizes the drowning deaths of thousands of people.) Paul helpfully added that drowned bodies are good for our national character, adding, “FEMA creates many of our problems because they sell the insurance because you can’t buy it from a private company, which means there’s a lot of danger, so we pay people to build on beaches, and then we have to go and rescue them.”
Paul’s function in the conservative movement is to pull it to the right. He comes out and says something outlandish like claiming that we don’t need FEMA or that desegregation actually worsened race relations (the insinuation being that white people can only deal with black people if they have formal legal superiority over them), and that helps make crazy wingnuttery that falls just short that sound more moderate. He runs out and denounces efforts to keep people alive and idealizes a situation where 8,000 people died. That gives other conservatives space to demand a defunding of FEMA and National Weather Services, because hey, at least they aren’t opening praising a situation where thousands drown to death. Also, by focusing attention on 1900, Paul can distract from people comparing the excellent government response to Irene with the piss-poor government response to Katrina.
As I noted yesterday, Democrats need to loudly resist this. Not only denounce Paul’s statements, but go the next step and hang him on Republicans in general. Irene is a great occasion to show how effective government can be if being run by people who believe in government. It’s often hard to show how that works, because as noted before, when things are going well, people tend not to notice them. But one opportunity is to highlight ignorant statements like Paul’s and contrast them with our realities.
USinUK
August 31st, 2011
7:27 am
(for folks who can’t do the YouTubey thing, here’s the crux):
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
tireofit
August 31st, 2011
7:30 am
So Rick Perry supported “HillaryCare”. A man of many flip-flops, sort of like Rommey.
USinUK
August 31st, 2011
7:30 am
off to a birfday luncheon …
see you upstairs when I get back)
Granny Godzilla
August 31st, 2011
7:32 am
I like to start the morning with good news, don’t you?
WASHINGTON – New government statistics show federal health care fraud prosecutions in the first eight months of 2011 are on pace to rise 85% over last year due in large part to ramped-up enforcement efforts under the Obama administration.
Good Government – Yes we can do it.
Laurie
August 31st, 2011
7:34 am
Vote Rick Parry!
Sobelle
August 31st, 2011
7:49 am
PLEASE…please…can’t the GOP give us a viable, intelligent, educated and “in the know” candidate. I’m an independent who wouldn’t mind voting on that side if the GOP could get it right. Instead, every time, we get the same old bunch and add some nuts and it’s so hard to vote! I cannot believe people actually think the t-party is the answer. Their one goal is to unseat Obama, not to help our country get back on track. They are a rude little bunch and should be stopped!
Bumpers are for Stickers
August 31st, 2011
7:51 am
Rick Parry, he’s our man.
Rah Rah!
And remember, you will need to write in Parry’s name and check it twice in order to get past those Republican spell checkers. They’re very murkowsky about that sort of thing.
Joe the Plutocrat
August 31st, 2011
7:54 am
jm, JKL2, Thulsa, et al; re: torture and collateral damage, one final thought. I don’t think the “liberals” had issues with W’s deployment of UAVs/drones as far as collateral damage. In my opinion, it was the more “conventional” strikes (the real war stuff, as opposed to SpecOps and many of the Predator missions were run by the CIA, not the DoD) that did in fact “wipe out villages” (and “wedding parties”). see, I think we are finding that the 150,000 “boots on the ground” approach is wasteful and prone to fraud and corruption, but again, Big D is a hungry beast. and who said that “torture” is connected to Islamic doctrine or faith? well, then, we are showing our empathy or understanding and helping some folks be better Muslims (or, as the saying goes; except when we torture non-Muslims)
stands for decibels
August 31st, 2011
7:58 am
shrill, job-killing, anti-business sheets, bitches.
Nolibs
August 31st, 2011
8:47 am
Good luck with your campaign future Mr. President Perry!
Nolibs
August 31st, 2011
8:48 am
@granny, fraud prosecutions won’t amount to anything once employers start dropping health insurance to their employees and overburden the social medicine system! (Of course this assumes it won’t be repealed or found unconstitutional which I firmly believe it will)
WOODSTOCK MIKE
August 31st, 2011
8:53 am
“I like to start the morning with good news, don’t you?”
Yeah, the private sector created less jobs in August than expected. Great news Granny. And I know, it’s Bush’s fault.
WOODSTOCK MIKE
August 31st, 2011
8:56 am
2012 election is simple, if the country is in as bad or worse of a situation as it is now with regard to jobs/ecnonomy Obama will be a one term president. Americans want results, not excuses as to why you can’t get the job done. If Obama turns things around he will get another term, if the country is still performing the way it is now he won’t. All I can say is that he better hurry up because there isn’t much time left, 4 years is almost up.
Joe
August 31st, 2011
9:02 am
President Perry… Has a nice ring to it don’t Jay??? LOL… Obama is toast…
Junior Samples
September 1st, 2011
10:46 pm
me thinks that a box of hammers could do as good as obama. rominey or perry both would do great