On August 13, 2011 Texas Governor Rick Perry announced his candidacy for the job of President of the United States. He immediately jumped into contention as one of the leading contenders despite a controversial record.
Connections to the Religious Right
Rick Perry professes his deep Christian faith and has courted born-again Christians with his social conservative messaging. He is strongly opposed to gay rights and abortion.
He is also connected to the controversial New Apostolic Reformation.
This group is described by Forrest Wilder in the Texas Observer (August 3, 2011). He writes that, “Believers fashion themselves modern-day prophets and apostles. They have taken Pentecostalism, with its emphasis on ecstatic worship and the supernatural, and given it an adrenaline shot.”
He says followers believe that when people ignore biblical prophecies bad things happen, such as the 9/11 attacks, the Japanese earthquake, and the economic meltdown.
Also, Perry has connections to the American Family Association (AFA) that has been called a hate group by the Southern Poverty and Law Center. Jeff Sharlet is a writer who has examined the connection between politics and fundamentalism in the United States. In the CBC Radio show the Current (August 15, 2011) Sharlet reported that the AFA “said the Holocaust was a gay conspiracy. This is extreme stuff. He reached out them and that could haunt him.”
Proponent of State’s Rights
For years Governor Perry has been a strong critic of Washington and its role in governing the country.
Associated Press reported (April 15, 2009) on a speech Perry gave to a Tea Party gathering in Austin, Texas claiming, “that officials in Washington have abandoned the country’s founding principles of limited government. He said the federal government is strangling Americans with taxation, spending, and debt.”
Later, he told reporters that Texans might get so fed up they would want to secede from the union and some of the crowd he addressed chanted “Secede.”
He told CNN in November 2010 that states ought to have the right to opt out of federal programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
Texas State Deficit
As with all conservative Republicans, Rick Perry claims to be a prudent manager of the public purse.
But, here’s Paul Krugman stating in the New York Times (January 6, 2011) that Texas was supposed to be doing well while the rest of the country was in the financial doldrums. Then, Krugman asks: “Didn’t its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that ‘we have billions in surplus?’ Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.”
The result has been slashing funding to schools, child support programs, and other social services.
But, the governor dodged responsibility for the effects of those cuts. An editorial in the Forth Worth Star-Telegram comments that, “It was a classic Perry bomb: Officials in Austin aren’t to blame if public school teachers lose their jobs amid state budget cuts, Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday, "If you want to blame someone, blame local school boards."
Yes, he actually said that. Out loud. Television cameras rolling.
Tough on Crime
Appealing to his conservative base Governor Perry does not want to be seen as soft on criminals, even if they may be innocent.
In 2004, Gov. Perry refused to stop the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man found guilty of setting fire to his house in which his three children died. The Innocence Project notes that in the days leading up to Willingham’s execution Governor Perry was given “a report from Gerald Hurst, a nationally recognized arson expert, saying that Willingham’s conviction was based on erroneous forensic analysis.”
Perry refused to act and Willingham went to the death chamber always protesting his innocence.
Journalist David Grann investigated the case and produced a 16,000-word article that was published in the New Yorker (September 7, 2009). The Innocence Project notes that Grann’s investigation “shows that all of the evidence used against Willingham was invalid, including the forensic analysis, [an] informant’s testimony, other witness testimony, and additional circumstantial evidence.”
Is Rick Perry too Extreme?
The final word goes to Karl Rove the man who crafted George W. Bush’s two successful presidential campaigns. Without naming Rick Perry specifically he told Fox News (August 15, 2011): “You don’t want these candidates moving so Right in the Republican primary that it becomes impossible for them to win the general election, because it will become a self-defeating message in the primary.”
Rupert Taylor - Rupert Taylor is the editor of a magazine that provides background to current events.
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