A couple of weeks ago Rick Perry was the Republican/Tea Party favorite, leading all others with double digits in the polls. Suddenly he is falling back into the pack behind Romney.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/09/13/...What happened? What happened is that the Tea Party folk found out that Perry was in favor of allowing undocumented young adults to pay in state tuition. Clearly Perry in not nearly as intolerant as he needs to be, to please the Tea Party.
There are other areas that are nearly blasphemous to the true believers. Rick Perry even advocated the Biblical virtues of taxes and Keynesianism. Perry gave an interview with televangelist James Robison, in which he brought up the story of the Seven Years of Plenty and Famine from the Book of Genesis, and put it into a modern context. In the bible story Joseph was made Prime Minister of Egypt and taxed the farmers 20% so they would have enough grain for the lean times.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/rick-pe... When Perry talks about the "Texas Miracle" of creating more jobs than the rest of the nation, Perry doesn't mention that almost all of those jobs were created by big government.
"Between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2010 (the latest data available), Texas created about 75,000 jobs. That makes it one of the few states with any job creation at all over that time. But federal, state and local government hiring accounted for 115,000 new jobs in Texas, while private industry shed about 40,000 jobs." That is according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-ne...Perry isn't the only one who is perceived as too compassionate. Republicans are almost desperate to select anyone but Romney, because Romney started a health care system in Massachusetts that served as a model for Obamacare.
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-20/polit...In an atmosphere where Tea Partiers cheer the death penalty, shout Yeah! When asked if the uninsured should be left to die, and boo a brave soldier just because he is gay, being compassionate is the kiss of death. This is kind of strange since most of these folk consider themselves Christians and exemplars of morality.
Of course there are reasonable explanations for all of this behavior. As Perry said, "In Texas, we made the decision that it was in our best interests as a state, economically and otherwise, to have those young people in our institutions of higher learning and becoming educated as part of our skilled workforce,"
The question, he said, was whether undocumented immigrants would be on the "government dole" using state social welfare programs or a subsidized education program that would allow them to become productive members of society. That sounds like the type of rational thing Obama would say.
It also made economic sense for Texas to create jobs by having the government do the hiring to rebuild infrastructure.
Of course most of what Perry advocates does not make much sense, like firing firefighter when the entire state is on fire. Perry's state has the highest percentage of minimum wage workers, the highest number of uninsured, and the most pollution, so it might not be the best place to work. Texas has become the China of America. Is this a good economic model for the nation?
http://blog.cesinaction.org/2011/08/17/g...On the other hand Massachusetts had better job growth than Texas and has the least uninsured in the nation. That may be a record Romney has to run from because it seems that most Republicans/Tea Partiers want America to fail.