“Goodbye Rick Perry”: Those Of Us Out In Fake America Will Miss You
Farewell, Rick Perry! We’ll miss you, those of us out in fake America, unless Texas is fake America, because of the whole Republic thing, in which case you will be missed in all the various Americas. Because once you are done as governor of your massive, slightly ridiculous oil-soaked state, you will pretty much be done.
Perry is not going to seek a fourth term as governor of Texas, a high-status, low-authority gig that he has worked at longer than anyone else in history. The next governor will likely be Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (Stu Rothenberg is keeping the position listed as “Safe Republican”).
Perry isn’t just going to go away, or at least he doesn’t intend to. He is not going to put on a stupid hat and retire to a ranch that was until very recently named something unspeakably awful. He is going to run for president. Because once a sufficient number of people have convinced an egomaniac that he would be a very good president, it’s hard for that egomaniac to let go of that dream, even after a bunch of voters do everything they can to discourage it.
In 2011, we in the rest of America were told to look out for Perry, that he was savvy, a brilliant politician, and that he’d be totally irresistible to the electorate once he made his inevitable decision to run for president. He turned out to be a dunce, completely incompetent at basic tasks like “debating” and “public speaking.” Maybe it was pain meds (but then, who decides it’s a good idea to jump into a national race while you’re on pain meds?), but either way the last presidential campaign was a disaster for the Perry brand. No one in 2016 will be particularly frightened of him, and he also probably won’t have the luxury of running against a field made up entirely of clowns and a front-runner no one in the party actually liked.
He’s amiable, decent-looking, and right-wing enough to suit the modern Republican Party, but he is also a bit of an idiot and nothing about him appeals to anyone outside his state. Republicans aren’t interested in him anymore, even in Texas. Public Policy Polling (a liberal shop, but still) has Hillary Clinton beating Perry 50 to 42 in a potential presidential contest. A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll showed Texas Republicans preferring Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul over their finally outgoing governor. And if they don’t want him there’s no reason to suggest Republicans anywhere else will want him. “Vote for your dumb right-wing dad” won’t work any better in 2016 than it did in 2012.
Still, Perry’s decision to join Texas Republicans in provoking a big fight over abortion access does make a bit of sense in this light: He I guess wants to be 2016′s Rick Santorum, the choice of the fundamentalist set who don’t necessarily like the recent rhetorical ascendency of pseudo-moderation and pseudo-libertarianism in the GOP. Rick Santorum still might want to be the Rick Santorum of 2016, of course, but he also might be too busy making Christian movies. (Though none of the major 2016 Republican front-runners, with the possible exception of Jeb Bush, are remotely “moderate” on abortion access, it should be pointed out.)
It is always a happy day when the political careers of mediocre right-wing hacks like Rick Perry come to an end, even if it is by choice and not a forced resignation following a humiliating scandal or exposure of criminal activity. Texas will probably be better off without Rick Perry, even if the next guy is an asshole (and he is probably going to be an asshole), and Rick Perry will get to see his dream end in tears once more in 2016, at which point his only hope to remain in elected office will be a Congressional seat or something. Though obviously he will also make a great deal of money “consulting” for some awful rich person or another, so it’s not all good news.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, July 9, 2013
“The Moment Of Conception For Texas”: Rick Perry Announces He Will Not Seek A Fourth Term As Governor
In a campaign-like event, Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) has announced that he will not seek another term as governor of Texas.
“The time has come to pass on the mantle of leadership,” he said, speaking at San Antonio’s Holt Cat Caterpillar dealership.
The governor was introduced by his wife Anita, who reminisced about how the native son of Paint Creek, Texas “wore her down” into marriage.
Perry’s speech focused on summarizing the success of Texas’ economy — which he said leads the nation in job creation, even though it technically doesn’t — and congratulating himself for defending the “freedom” from the federal government that he insists made it possible. He took office in 2001 after George W. Bush was elected president, and then won his own terms in 2002, 2006 and 2010.
The governor also nodded several times to the ongoing crisis surrounding Republican efforts to impose more abortion restrictions in the state. He vowed that he would call for another special session if the current one designed to enact a 20-week ban on abortions and new restrictions on clinics that offer abortions does not succeed.
Perry has waged a war on family planning and Planned Parenthood in Texas, which has created a dire situation for poor women seeking basic health care.
State senator Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), the woman whose filibuster led to the special session, has expressed an interest in seeking statewide office. A recent poll showed Perry leading her by double digits.
The Texas Tribune reports that Attorney General Greg Abbott is the “instant favorite” to replace Perry.
The governor made no announcements about what he would do after his term ends, but he did leave the door open to another presidential run, saying his decision on that would come in “due time.”
Perry’s “oops” moment in a 2011 debate, when for nearly a minute he couldn’t name the third cabinet-level department he would eliminate, will go down in history as one of the greatest flubs by a major-party candidate ever.
Perry said he was leaving his office with a “deep sense of humility and appreciation.”
By: Jason Sattler, The National Review, July 8, 2013
“A Tale Of Two Parties In Texas”: Republicans Are Tied In Knots, Democrats Seeing A Resurgence In Grassroots Enthusiasm
The fight over reproductive rights in Texas has reinvigorated progressive voices in the Lone Star State in ways unseen in many years, as evidenced by yesterday’s large, mid-day rally in Austin. The effort to turn back the Republican effort has also drawn the interest of Democrats at the national level — during state Sen. Wendy Davis’ (D) filibuster last week, none other than the president of the United States weighed in to offer his support.
But as David Nather reported, there’s a bit of a mismatch: while national Democrats are eager to use Texas as a rallying cry for activism, even for those nowhere near the state, national Republicans have sat on their hands.
The liberal side of the Texas abortion showdown has the two most powerful Democrats in Washington squarely in its corner: Barack Obama and Harry Reid — not to mention a Dixie Chick.
On the right: Rick Perry’s holding down the fort without much obvious help from national Republicans.
The DNC is involved in Texas; the RNC is not. Democratic congressional leaders have weighed in; Republican congressional leaders have not. And as Politico‘s report added, a key party official in Texas “acknowledged there’s no behind-the-scenes help coming.”
Some of this is simply a matter of need, or in this case, the lack thereof — Republican policymakers in the state hold the reins of power, including majorities in both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office. Davis and her allies took advantage of procedural tactics to win a temporary reprieve, but GOP officials believe it’s only a matter of time before they approve the sweeping new restrictions that Gov. Rick Perry (R) wants.
But that’s not the only reason Republicans in D.C. are letting this story go by without comment. After all, it’s a national story and there’s nothing stopping prominent GOP leaders and/or the Republican National Committee from, at a minimum, offering Perry words of support and encouragement.
And yet, the party is biting its tongue, probably because it sees this as a political loser for Republicans at the national level.
The mismatch makes sense: Even abortion bills that poll well, like the one in Texas does, open the door to the kinds of comments that have hurt national Republicans repeatedly — from Rep. Trent Franks’s comments last month on the “very low” number of rape-related pregnancies to Todd Akin blowing his shot at a Senate seat over his “legitimate rape” remarks in 2012.
I understand the political calculus, but the GOP is playing a losing game. For one thing, it’s unlikely engaged voters are going to make much of a distinction — it’s not like Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are going to be shielded from criticism because their allies in Austin are pushing extreme measures on reproductive rights.
Indeed, it seems every time Republicans at the national level make a conscious effort to move away from the party’s “war on women,” efforts like this one in Texas remind the public of the GOP’s agenda all over again.
And then there’s the unfortunate flip side: by remaining silent, national Republican officials are angering the party’s far-right base, which expects them to speak up.
“You either fight and ask your leaders to fight on an issue that cuts your way or you just fold up and go home, which is what the national party wants to do,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. “It really is fear. It really is simply, ‘We’re not going to go there.'”
“Now, you’ve got an issue that’s in your platform, that cuts your way with big margins. To be silent is a mistake,” Dannenfelser said.
The irony is, Perry and his allies are likely to win this fight in terms of legislative success, but it’s Republicans who are tied in knots and Democrats who are seeing a resurgence in grassroots enthusiasm and engagement.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 2, 2013
“To Dude Or Not To Dude?”: Rick Perry Wants YOU To Want Him To Run For President
In San Antonio on Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will share his “exciting future plans.” Not to be confused with his past plans, I guess, or his not-so-hot ones. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure these don’t involve accepting the $90 billion or so in federal money to expand Medicaid that would insure a million more Texans in a state that’s first in job creation but second in the number of children without health insurance.
When I asked a few Texans what they figured their governor would announce, though, I did get some exciting replies: Secede from the union? Change the part in his hair? Break in some new boots? And those were the Republicans, who have nothing but praise for their longest-serving governor — just as long as they’re speaking for attribution.
Perry did succeed in turning his state’s governorship from one of the weakest in the country to one of the strongest by applying a strict personal loyalty test to those he appointed to every seat on every board.
As a result, he’s always been more feared than loved. But after his bellyflop of a presidential run, some of his power to intimidate seems to have worn off. Texas House Speaker Joe Straus — a Republican, of course — publicly criticized Perry’s remarks about Wendy Davis, the state senator who successfully filibustered an anti-abortion bill, as damaging to their party.
I think Perry was actually trying to pay Davis a compliment. ““Who are we to say,” he asked, “that children born in the worst of circumstances can’t lead successful lives? Even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day was born into difficult circumstances. She’s the daughter of as single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas Senate. It’s just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential, and that every life matters.” Which I took to mean that had her single mom chosen not to have her, the world would have been deprived of her intelligence and fortitude.
I’m not surprised, however, that Texas Republicans are telling pollsters they don’t want Perry to run for president again in ’16: Just 18 percent of Republican primary voters want him to go for it, while 69 percent say they hope he doesn’t.
Even among Texans, he’s the sixth-choice Republican presidential candidate right now, after Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and Paul Ryan. And though his job approval rating in the state has improved substantially lately, more still disapprove than give him a thumbs up, and 60 percent of respondents in a recent PPP poll said they do not think he should run for a fourth term as governor, either, compared to the 30 percent who say he should.
That doesn’t mean Texas is likely to turn blue any time soon, however, because it’s still an awfully conservative state — and one that’s gotten more so in recent years, with Obama taking 44 percent of the vote in ’08 and 41 percent in ’12.
Longtime Democratic consultant Marc Campos, of Houston, who calls Perry “Governor Dude,” is less sure than some others in the state about how the governor will come down on the question of “to dude or not to dude” for a fourth term. “Oops means oops,” Campos jokes, referring not only to Perry’s inability to remember the name of the third federal agency he’d vowed to cut, but also to Perry’s presidential chances if he does run again in ’16.
Yet Campos assesses his own party’s chances of taking the governorship next year no less realistically, quoting Rocco Lampone’s line in “The Godfather Part II” that shooting Hyman Roth would be “difficult, not impossible. It would have to be a hardly-any-room-for-error type of campaign,” he says, and darn well funded.
As the Dallas Morning News’s Wayne Slater points out, Davis has doubled her name ID lately, yet is still unlikely to prevail over Perry, who won by 13 points in ’10 as the least popular Republican on the ballot. Though 38 percent of Texans are Latino, turnout continues to be a problem, with Hispanics accounting for more than a third of the population, yet only about a fifth of the vote. And the recent Supreme Court decision undermining the Voting Rights Act clears the way for a Texas voter ID law that Democrats fear will further suppress turnout.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, whose twin, Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, would have the best chance of besting Perry if he does run again, according to a recent poll, told me that “realistically, our window” for turning Texas blue “is eight to 12 years.”
Perry might actually speed that process along if he does decide to run for re-election, and the state’s Republican attorney general, Greg Abbott, opposes him in a primary. If that happens, Castro says, it will be expensive, brutal, and “a replay of what happened to the once-dominant Democratic Party” in Texas in the ’80s, with more infighting than punches thrown at the other party.
No one can say that Perry suffers from a lack of confidence, though, and it wouldn’t be like him to worry about that. Just before he was elected to his third term, Perry told me that walking away after only two would have been “like Van Gogh walking away when he’s two-thirds finished with a masterpiece.” On Monday, we’ll learn if he feels any brush work remains undone.
By: Melinda Henneberger, She The People, The Washington Post, July 3, 2013
“A Growing Inequality”: Not All Kinds Of Inequality Are Created Equal
In America, not all kinds of inequality are created equal.
For the past half-century, the de jure inequality of demographic groups has proven increasingly vulnerable to public pressure. From the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to last week’s Supreme Court decision striking down a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act, legal barriers against racial and sexual minorities as well as women have crumbled. Changes in the law have followed the same pattern: First, a handful of generally radical activists brought attention to the existence of a legal double standard; then, a mass movement grew in support of eliminating discriminatory laws and practices; only after this did government respond with legal remedies.
In each case as well, the movements’ success in diminishing their “otherness” — that is, establishing their full humanity — in the eyes of the majority of their fellow Americans has been key to ending legal discrimination. The shift in public opinion on same-sex marriage, for instance, follows decades when growing numbers of gay men and lesbians felt just secure enough to out themselves to their families, friends and co-workers, in the process normalizing what had been a concealed, and presumably shameful, status. The immigrant rights movement’s focus on the Dream Act kids — young people, many of whom are talented students, brought here as children and still forced to lurk in the shadows — put the most appealing human face on undocumented immigrants. That is at least partly responsible for what is now majority public support for enabling the undocumented to become citizens. (Whether that majority support carries any weight with xenophobic House Republicans, secure in their gerrymandered districts, is another question.)
Some forms of legal inequality persist in other guises. Another Supreme Court decision last week, striking down provisions of the Voting Rights Act that limited discriminatory practices in particular Southern states, will make it easier for black and Latino electoral participation to be limited. Just as those states once required voters to pass absurd tests or pay taxes to vote — measures almost always designed to apply only to blacks — now they will likely require voters to produce documents that the poor and students disproportionately lack (as, in fact, Texas did within hours of the high court’s ruling). Today’s vote supressionists are driven less by discrimination for its own sake than fear that their hold on power will weaken if minorities and the young vote in large numbers.
But while social and legal inequality has diminished over the past century, economic inequality has been on the rise since Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The public policies of the past 30 years — deregulating finance and encouraging the sector’s growth, failing to bolster workers’ declining bargaining power — are rightly understood to have reversed the more egalitarian economic policies of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. But the economic inegalitarianism of the past three decades also makes a mockery of Thomas Jefferson’s vision of equality, which went beyond mere equality of creation. Jefferson believed that a nation of yeoman farmers was the best defense against the inequalities of wealth and power that would threaten the republic if cities grew too populous. He also believed, of course, in the institution of slavery — the paradox that haunts his legacy and our history to this day.
The belief that diminishing economic inequality would help build a more robust economy underpinned the legislation of both the New Deal and the Great Society. Granting workers the power to bargain with their employers, the preamble to the 1935 National Labor Relations Act states, would increase their capacity to consume and give the economy a shot in the arm. So, too, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which created the national minimum wage. Social Security and Medicare, by reducing poverty among seniors, also bolstered the national economy. Repeal any one of these and the economy would crumple. Indeed, the de facto repeal of the National Labor Relations Act — as employers have learned to exploit its loopholes and deny employees bargaining power — is a major factor in the decline of wage income.
How, then, do we decrease economic inequality — the one kind of inequality that continues to expand even as other forms contract (if slowly and unevenly)? The challenge isn’t to persuade the majority to embrace a minority but, rather, to embrace itself. Americans tend to blame themselves rather than changes in economic rules and arrangements for failing to achieve financial security. But with most of the nation falling behind, the problem and the solution aren’t individual. Like Jefferson’s generation, Americans must band together to create a more egalitarian land.
By: Harol Meyerson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 2, 2013
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