Big Bloggers Fall in Line for Rick Perry
It looks as if some of the big blogs on the right have picked a candidate for 2012 and his name is Rick Perry.
Most of the core group of Red State writers laid out their case for the Texas Governor and while it’s not an official site endorsement, I’m not sure Erick Erickson would buck them to endorse someone else, though he is very much his own man. Here’s a bit of their piece.
If this website has a purpose – if any conservative website or publication has a purpose – it must begin with electing conservatives to significant public offices. We have the chance to nominate a conservative for president and win the White House in 2012. We can fumble that chance away by settling for a nominee we can’t trust to pursue conservative policies in office, or we can make a stand for the best, most conservative potential president in the field. That’s Rick Perry, and we enthusiastically endorse him to be the 45th President of the United States.
2012 is a year of enormous opportunity for conservatives. The sitting president is deeply unpopular and discredited, the economy is mired in the doldrums, and the public’s trust in Washington and its traditional ways is at an all-time low. Tea Party-backed conservative successes in 2010 show that the public is willing to embrace candidates who dissent from the bipartisan consensus – a consensus that gives us an ever-growing federal government in general and too much federal interference and favoritism in the economy in particular. President Obama’s deep unpopularity with independents, together with the growth of left-wing populist protest movements, shows that dissatisfaction with the status quo reaches far beyond the conservative base. But the failure of some Tea Party conservatives in 2010 is also a reminder that to win, we need candidates who are serious, experienced, and battle-tested. That’s Rick Perry.
Ace and his co-bloggers also endorsed Perry.
Gingrich and Romney may be smarter than Perry, and perhaps Romney would even be a more skilled technocratic administrator of government. (Gingrich seems far too disorganized and flighty to engage with this part of the job too much, apart from proposing bold, fundamental changes and then moving on to something else.)
But I don’t want someone who is so confident that he is a more capable administrator of federal power. I want someone who is skeptical of federal power no matter who wields it, no matter how skilled and able an administrator he might be, even if that administrator is he himself, and so always prefers to shunt power away from the government to to the states, and their citizens.
Those are the four things Perry seems committed too. Those are the four ideas he has.
Perhaps he’s not smart enough to have more ideas than that.
Which is fine with me. I don’t want a President with many more ideas than that.
That’s how we got here, after all.
So did Mike Flynn, editor of the Big Government site. His endorsement is not an official site endorsement either, but it will carry a great deal of weight.
Over the next few years, America will face some existential questions. Will American exceptionalism endure or will we slip into a quasi-European welfare state in permanent decline? Our present trajectory is unsustainable. Even with a Republican House and, most likely, a Republican Senate after next year, the GOP in Washington doesn’t seem quite up to the task of reclaiming that “shining city on the hill.” They can’t quite get beyond repainting a house whose foundation has cracked. We will need a President who is a strong leader with very grounded conservative convictions to navigate our way back to prosperity. One who understand that Washington has already assumed too much power and that future economic growth and personal liberty requires rolling back much of that power.
Rick Perry is that man.
So there you go. Rick Perry has some serious new media horsepower behind him. Those blogs account get hundreds of thousands,of page views among them every day and their messages will reach a lot of grassroots conservatives and Tea Party faithful. Perry will need every one of those folks to turn out as volunteers and donors to beat the GOP’s hand-picked star, Mitt Romney.
Good for him. He needs the backup. I’m not a great fan, but I wish him luck.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Rick Perry Has a Weapon, But to Use It He’ll Have to Become a Talker
- Is Rick Perry the Republican Ryan Leaf?
- The Back-Room of the GOP is Working Overtime and They Have an Ally
Category: The 2012 Horse Race
[...] Bandwagon, and here’s the punishing kick-in-the-head Brutal Headline O’ Th’ Day:Big Bloggers Fall in Line for Rick PerrySo this leaves us minor, inconsequential bloggers out in the cold. Further confirmation — as [...]
Oh yes, let’s put another useful idiot for islam in the White House who will continue to tell us that “islam is a religion of peace” even as the genocidal islamic supremacists continue to work towards our complete destruction. Great.
You should give Perry more of a chance. We all should.
His record is unparalleled in this field. He is a conservative movement warrior. He has the best energy plan, the best jobs plan, the best tax plan, and the best government overhaul plan. Perry is the most reliably and consistently conservative candidate.
He has even been the best debater of the field over the past few debates.
No, he hasn’t been the best debater, not even in the last debate. He might be the third or fourth best debater on the stage. And that is the root of my problem with him.
Perry has been declared the winner in the past few debates by almost everyone. Basically every debate since the “oops” debate (which he was actually winning up to that point), he has been named the winner or at least one of two or three standouts.
That being a good debater is the “root” of your problem with him shows how you should give him more of a look. Even if you don’t agree with the many commentators, bloggers, and pundits declaring him the winner after each of the past few debates, you have to admit he has gotten better over the past few months. You also might be interested in looking back at some of his debates against Democrats. When he’s focused in on one liberal opponent, rather than being attacked erroneously by several, he has excelled. He’s like a laser. A death star laser. He just destroys his Dem opponents. Time and time again. I’ve seen it. I live in Texas.
So in 2012, you’re likely to have, what, 3 debates, max?
As for PolitiJim, that list is nonsense. Perry is the one who made Voter ID an issue in the first place in Texas. He made it an emergency item and signed it. Total nonsense that he isn’t standing up for his own law. On sanctuary cities, he made it an emergency item and put it on the special session call. It was Senator Duncan who killed it in the end. Sanctuary cities was Perry’s issue in the first place. As for the TSA groping bill, again, he put it on the special session call, but David Dewhurst and Joe Straus killed it. Just like Perry was the lone dissenting vote in terms of installing airport-style security at the Texas Capitol, he has always stood up for freedom. He can’t force the legislature to do something, though. People like PolitiJim are why I disassociated from going to TEA Party events here in Texas, after attending at least 8 rallies and several organization meetings over the past few years.
No, really he hasn’t. He’s done better, certainly, but he’s not won them, nor has he come anywhere close.
And yes, he’s done well in Texas — a red state where he’s has a Republican majority in both houses for most of his time as Governor. How will he do against a Democratic Congress? Against Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer and Steny Hoyer and Chris van Hollen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the entire MSM? They will be far less gentle than Mitt Romney has been in these debates.
You really need to stop being truthful. You’re ruining the narrative, and you’ll never get invited to join the Kool Kidz.
And to suggest that Mr. Rightwing Christian Israel Lover Rick Perry is somehow a secret Muslim-lover is the height of ludicrous nonsense.
[...] UPDATE 0: More from Jimmie Bise. [...]
I hope to be as good, gracious and kind as you when I grow up Mr. Bise.
Redstate was transparent to me as they were peddling Perry before and during his launch while trashing EVERY other candidate without any balance.
One has to ask. Is this about money? He’s got plenty to spread around and Erickson has already admitted yanking a Tea Party endorsement of Jamie Radtke (while libeling her no less) at the behest of his bosses who are connected to George Allen.
I have a tidbit here I never posted on Perry since he was so low in the polls. There is another mutual friend/blogger who has been pushing Perry as well, ignoring ANY substantive reporting against him. But it is very curious all of these bloggers are pulling for a guy so obviously a slick politician.
Don’t get me wrong. I think he is a decent guy. But his wife had to talk him into running. Does anyone believe he has the “fire in the belly” to take on dismantling government?
The bigger ‘tell’ is with the Tea Party. Perry didn’t even bother to participate in an event with 23,000 tea party members by phone. Unsurprisingly he polled at 2%. And these same bloggers claim Gingrich is “establishment.”
You might wonder why both the Texas GOP and Tea Party members are against Perry 2 to 1 and more. Forget lying to Texans that he would not run for President if elected Governor this past go around (and why Sarah Palin won’t support him now),
There have been about 7 major Tea Party efforts Perry has either quashed or ignored. Not standing up to fight against Joe Strauss disabled us from winning the TSA battle and banning Sanctuary Cities.
He refused to listen to former Department of Justice attorney J. Christian Abrahams to protect the Voter ID law from Eric Holder which we so ferociously fought to enact and now it looks like we will not actually be able to USE Voter ID for the 2012 election. Perry also refused appeals by grassroots conservatives to veto State Board of Education redistricting which has cost us the chance to finally get 4 to 5 major school boards out of the hands of the unions. IT devastated 5 years of work from people like Donna Gardner who were recruiting tirelessly trusting Perry would keep his word. He didn’t.
It doesn’t help that Tea Party makes Israel a higher priority than any other interest group in the GOP – and Perry earns a “D” score from Netenyau’s former aide Joel Rosenberg. Personally, I’ve heard Perry in person speak emphatically on supporting Israel – but if he actually has a policy architecture – he has yet to share it with anyone
I made a deliberate decision a couple of months ago that I wouldn’t trash any of the candidates, except the one who made a ton of cash from anti-Semitism, and I’m sticking by that. I extend that to people who back other candidates than the one(s) I favor as well. It’s not been easy, but I think it’s for the best.
Also, Perry was the first major elected official to attend any TEA Parties, except maybe Jim DeMint. Everyone else was too afraid. Perry embraced them from the beginning. I was there at one of them. He was the star of the whole thing. People came wanting to not like him and left as supporters.
Also, Perry won TEA Party supporters overwhelmingly in his 2010 primary. And obviously in the general election, too. Maybe a few vocal knuckleheads oppose him, but there is a reason why the “leadership” of the TEA Party movement in Texas is now isolated from those of us who actually call ourselves TEA Party activists. The TEA Party is a starfish, not a spider. These “leaders” need to stop trying to dictate to us.
[...] if you want detailed endorsements, I’ll point you to a few. I linked three excellent endorsements of Rick Perry in this post and you can add this early endorsement by Melissa Clouthier to them. Stacy McCain, [...]