Many people may wonder whether the country, or the Republican Party, is ready for another Texan. Those who know Perry, however, say that he is not George W. Bush. It’s well known that there is little love between the Bush and Perry camps, but personal relationships aside, the two have approached governing in the Lone Star State with divergent styles.
“Bush by nature, in Texas, wanted to be a conciliator,” said one Texas strategist, who requested anonymity to give a candid assessment of Perry. “I think he wanted to be somewhat bipartisan. I don’t think Perry’s particularly interested in those things. I don’t think he’s afraid to be partisan. I don’t think he’s afraid to be tough and mean when he has to.”
After switching parties in the late 1980s, Perry decided to move hard to the right, doing what he could to outflank conventional Republicans almost from Day One. That conservatism, say other Texans, is real and deeply ingrained.
Perry’s conservatism is not of the compassionate kind that ushered Bush onto the national stage in the 2000 campaign. When he’s been asked the impact of Texas’s low-tax, low-service environment on the poor, he’s dismissed the question by saying that if people want a heavy hand of government, they should look to California or New York for inspiration.
His appearance at the prayer service in Houston on Saturday shows his capacity to speak authentically to religious conservatives. His anti-Washington message resonates with tea party activists. The Texas economy gives him a record to talk about that will play well with the Chamber of Commerce wing of the party.
For all that, there are still questions that surround his likely candidacy. He has the discipline, but does he have the stamina for a long campaign? He has been examined by Democrats and the Texas media but will undergo a vetting unlike anything he’s seen in the past. How will he react to the inevitable stories critical of him, his record, his policies, his exercise of power and his connections?
Perry makes a strong first impression. He knows his message and sticks to it — and sticks to it and sticks to it and sticks to it. That can be an asset or, if it appears he doesn’t have answers beyond his main message, a potential liability.
What he will be like in debates and on the Sunday shows is another question. He avoided debates in the last campaign and also declined to sit for interviews with editorial boards, saying he knew he wasn’t going to get their endorsements so it wasn’t worth bothering. If he gets into the race later this month, he’ll face three debates in September alone.
Burka and others point to another characteristic: Perry has been lucky. “If you look at Perry’s career,” he wrote, “it seems that fate is always arranging the universe so that its favorite son will be in the right place at the right time.”
Is this another time? Or by sometime this fall, will Rick Perry be remembered as some of his Texas predecessors, John Connally and Phil Gramm among them, as a candidate who came into the race with high expectations but who never found his footing or his audience? Texans say Perry has been underestimated many times. But he’s never faced what will await him if he does jump in.
Read more on PostPolitics.com
Republicans smell blood in presidential race
Can Ron Paul win it all in Iowa?
Fact Checker: Obama’s claim that the debt problem can ‘go away’
Loading...
Comments