Category: Rick Perry

Perry Iowa TV Ad Attacks Newt Gingrich as ‘K Street,’ Mitt Romney as ‘Wall Street’

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Now that the debates are over and Rick Perry can’t be forced to defend his attacks, he goes negative on both Republican front-runners:

“He’ll overhaul Washington and toss out the corrupt insiders.”

Yeah, Rick Perry’s going to clean up the corruption:

Since 2001, more than a fifth of the $83 million that Mr. Perry has raised for his gubernatorial campaigns has come from people he appointed to state boards and commissions, according to a study by Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group. Just 150 individuals and couples gave him $37 million of that total, and nearly half received substantial tax breaks, business contracts or appointments from Mr. Perry, The Los Angeles Times reported.
The governor set up two state funds, intended to promote business growth, that have given tens of millions to companies that returned the favor with political contributions. An analysis by The New York Times found that more than a quarter of the companies that have received grants from the Texas Enterprise Fund in the last year, or their executives, had made contributions to Mr. Perry’s campaigns dating back to 2001 or to the Republican Governors Association since 2008, when Mr. Perry became its chairman.
The Texas Emerging Technology Fund . . . has provided $200 million in seed money to high-tech start-ups since 2005 . . .
[Perry’s] office makes the decision on which companies should receive the money, according to The Dallas Morning News, which found that more than $16 million had gone to campaign donors.

You know, I remember attending a speech Labor Day weekend where somebody talked about the problem with “crony capitalism.” Looks like there’s a sort of Solyndra thing going on in the Lone Star State.

But never mind me: I’m just a “low-information” guy, not part of the AOSHQ/Red State Rick Perry Blog Bandwagon, and here’s the punishing kick-in-the-head Brutal Headline O’ Th’ Day:

Big Bloggers Fall in Line for Rick Perry

So this leaves us minor, inconsequential bloggers out in the cold. Further confirmation — as if more confirmation were needed — that everybody hates me, which is why I’m “Not Good Enough for BlogCon.”

Gingrich Campaign ‘Imploding’ in Iowa; Ron Paul Leads; Rick Santorum Gains

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Newt Gingrich’s campaign in Iowa is “rapidly imploding,” according to the latest poll, as the former House Speaker has tumbled to third place and Ron Paul has moved into the lead in the Hawkeye State, with Mitt Romney in second place just two weeks before the crucial Jan. 3 caucuses.

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum moved into a three-way tie for fourth place with Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry in the latest Iowa survey by Public Policy Polling. It was the second consecutive gain in the PPP Iowa poll by the Pennsylvania senator, who has seen his support in the state nearly double since Dec. 3.

CANDIDATE ……… Dec. 3-5 … Dec. 11-13 … Dec. 16-18
Ron Paul ……………………… 18% ………… 21% ……….. 23%
Mitt Romney ……………….. 16% ………… 16% ……….. 20%
Newt Gingrich ………………. 27% ………… 22% ………. 14%
Michele Bachmann ……….. 13% ………… 11% ……….. 10%
Rick Santorum …………….. 6% …………… 8% ………… 10%
Rick Perry …………………… 9% …………… 9% ………… 10%
Jon Huntsman …………….. 4% …………… 5% …………. 4%
Gary Johnson ……………… 1% …………… 1% ………….. 2%

“Newt Gingrich’s Iowa support was extremely soft and has collapsed in only two weeks,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “Ron Paul has taken the lead, but it will be interesting to see if he can turn out his unique base of voters for the caucus.”

(Via Memeorandum.)


Problem Perry’s Campaign Denied in September, Confirmed in December

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Nobody seems to remember who first raised this issue:

Does Pain Explain Perry’s
Poor Debate Performances?

That was Sept. 23, the day after the Orlando debate, and I’d gotten an e-mail tip from blogger Brian Ledbetter that Rick Perry had undergone back surgery in July. The next day, a top Perry adviser denied to Jennifer Rubin that the governor’s back was causing any problem. But now, in an interview with the Des Moines Register, Perry says it was a problem:

I think part of the reason you have seen a somewhat different candidate on the debates is my health, and (I’m) both physically and mentally just back in the game. You have fusion on your back, and it takes you a while to get back on your game. . . . I would suggest to you that I was pretty fatigued.

So today — now that the story is at Memeorandum, Hot Air and PJ Tatler — I’ve got another question:

Why did Perry’s advisers deny the problem in September, if Perry evidently was willing to admit it?

It doesn’t make sense.

UPDATE: Some people on Twitter have decided this as an occasion to renew their ax-grinding against Jennifer Rubin who, as I mentioned Saturday, has been accused of being in the tank for Mitt Romney — and not without reason. But why the ax-grinding on a story that has nothing to do with Romney?

Rubin did due diligence in asking Perry’s people about this story in September, and got a denial that now appears to have been misleading. Rubin’s alleged bias aside, she did valuable work in reporting that story. It would seem that the real disservice to Perry was done by the aides who tried to cover up a problem which — had they been willing to admit it at the time — might have put Perry’s troubles in a more sympathetic light.

Iowa State University ‘Sexuality’ Professor Heckles Rick Perry at Campaign Event

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Warren Blumenfeld, associate professor of “Multicultural & International Curriculum Studies,” academic heckler:

A packed coffee house where Rick Perry spoke this afternoon turned into a bit of a ruckus that left the candidate heading out the back door and straight to his vehicle after several Iowans screamed questions about his views on gays.
“Why do you hate gay people so much,” someone in the audience screamed as Perry wrapped up a campaign stop without taking questions from the audience.
“Go back to Texas” another screamed from the back of Cafe Diem coffee shop in Ames.
Iowa State University associate professor Warren Blumenfeld was one who shouted questions to Perry, asking him why he was marginalizing and demonizing non-Christians.
“The implication is if you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered, you’re not a real American,” said Blumenfeld, who teaches studies about sexuality. “He is marginalizing people and dividing this country, and he’s demonizing proud Americans who just don’t have the social identities as he has.”

A quick glance at Blumenfeld’s c.v. indicates he isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed: He got his B.A. in sociology at San Jose State in 1969 and waited some 30 years before getting an Ed.D., which is one of those “junk” degrees that public-school bureaucrats get if they’re an assistant principal who wants to get promoted. Professor Blumenfeld’s “research interests” include:

Multicultural education, queer studies, special education, educational psychology, social identities (race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, socioeconomic class, religion, physical and mental abilities) and the ways in which they affect educational outcomes; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues in education; gender fair education; intergroup relations; school bullying; cyberbullying; Christian privilege; African American and Jewish American relations.

Professor Blumenfeld’s academic publications include such prestigious works as Butler Matters: Judith Butler’s Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies and Homophobia: How we all pay the Price.

  • Question One: In tough economic times, how does the state of Iowa justify employing such a professor of useless trivia?
  • Question Two: Doesn’t Professor Blumenfeld read the news? Rick Perry loves gays so much he hired one as his pollster.
  • Question Three: Can’t somebody persuade Professor Blumenfeld to heckle Rick Santorum? He needs the publicity more.

BOOM! Hot Gay Mess Suddenly Explodes Over Rick Perry’s Iowa Campaign Ad

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Welcome to the point in the campaign when the copy desk starts using words like “embattled” in headlines on stories that include phrases like “mired in controversy” about the “struggling” candidate:

Backlash over a TV ad by Texas Gov. Rick Perry has exploded into public accusations and recriminations, with the leader of a gay Republican group declaring that a longtime GOP pollster is secretly homosexual. . . .
There were reports that some of Perry’s campaign staff — including pollster Tony Fabrizio — opposed the ad’s message. Jimmy LaSalvia, co-founder of the gay Republican group GOProud, gave an interview to the Huffington Post and published Twitter messages in which he used a slur to identify Fabrizio as homosexual.  GOProud subsequently issued a statement declaring: “Rick Perry should be embarrassed and the people around him who are the architects of this strategy, particularly people like Tony Fabrizio, should be ashamed.” . . .

Read the rest of that story — a fine specimen of Neutral Objective Journalism — and ask yourself: What is the obvious consequence of this?

Yeah: Perry’s toast in Iowa. Because as Jazz Shaw notes, Tony Fabrizio’s secret wasn’t really much of a secret:

Tony was apparently actively involved in Outgiving, a strong supporter of LGBT causes, and also did a lot of work for the Log Cabin Republicans.

Imagine how that’s going to play in Sioux City.

On the one hand, Perry can fire Fabrizio and look like a hateful bigot. On the other hand, he can keep Fabrizio and lose the crucial “hateful bigot” vote in Iowa that this TV ad was intended to win over:

He’s trapped, with no good options, and you have to wonder whether Perry will be asked about this “mired in controversy” angle during tonight’s “pivotal” debate. If such a question is asked, of course, there’s no need to wonder what Perry will do: He’ll make a complete fool of himself again.

Ace of Spades didn’t mention the likely political fallout:

I’m tired of Stalinists and blackmailers, personally  But if GOProud’s sick of “faggots,” that’s their deal.

Ace did, however, mention that Andrew Breitbart resigned from the GOProud board. That’s going to pour a few gallons of highly flammable publicity on the sparks of what is destined to become known as the “Perry Campaign Gay Scandal,” which will almost certainly burn down what’s left of Perry’s poll numbers in Iowa.

Imagine what they’ll be saying Monday on Morning Joe. Imagine what Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow will do with this story. Imagine how the entire NY/DC liberal media establishment will hop on this story and ride it all week long. It doesn’t take too much imagination, does it? And so now we ask . . .

Cui bono?

That’s Italian. Maybe you can ask an Italian guy what it means.

Iowa or Bust: Rick Perry Campaign Compelled to Try ‘Last Ditch’ Strategy

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It’s been a while since we’ve updated you on the tragic fate of The Smilin’ Texan whom I first dubbed the “Phantom Menace” back in August, when he was running TV ads in Iowa even while planning to announce his candidacy in South Carolina. (“Howdy. Thank You, Erick.”) And now we find the former front-runner facing dire straits in the Hawkeye State:

Wednesday, Perry began airing an Iowa ad in which he promises to “end Obama’s war on religion” and “fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage.” That ad sparked controversy because Perry mentions the recent repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, saying: “You don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” Yet Perry’s spokesman blunted the potential impact of that ad by disclaiming any intention by the candidate to reinstate the policy prohibiting open homosexuality in the armed services.
Michael O’Brien of NBC News described the Perry ads as “part of an emergent strategy … a last-ditch effort to revive his campaign,” and quoted Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying “that’s probably the only path he has left, to be honest.” Sanders is the daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses during his 2008 Republican presidential campaign. . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator.
 
 

 
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Friedrich Hayek vs. Ace of Spades

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“Yeah, I know political journalists aren’t supposed to believe in ‘omens.’ Still, there’s something vaguely . . . hinky about the way Perry’s stealth campaign has been operating here in Iowa.
“Call me crazy. Attribute my forebodings of doom to irrational prejudice. Say what you will, and I don’t care, but I felt a need to put on the record my instinctive sense that there’s something fundamentally wrong about the Perry campaign. And if Jan. 20, 2013, brings the joyous inauguration of President Perry, then you can say my fears were mistaken. Yet I can’t shake my gut hunch that it won’t work out that way. Some kind of catastrophe will result, one way or another.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 9, 2011

OK, Smitty’s been doing the philosophical thing with his series about “Explaining Postmodernism,” while I’ve been trying to do news, news, news, and I’m in a mood to stretch my intellectual legs a few minutes.

Last night I nudged Ace a little bit, and today Jeff Goldstein gave Ace an intellectual body-check, and then today — riffing on a Dennis Miller rant — Ace came back with a long argument that included this:

[P]eople don’t get invested, as far as emotional and [egotistical] investment, in facts and data.
What they get emotionally and egotistically invested in is probabilities and guesses based upon underlying worldview.
It’s this — the gut, the “psychic vibe,” the horse-sense, the common-sense, the cunning, the read on people, the ability to predict the future based on incomplete information — that people really get personally invested in.
It really makes no sense. Everyone knows there is no such thing as psychic vibes, everyone knows the “gut” is a decent instinctual device but hardly something you’d want to start betting big money on, and everyone knows that predicting the future is a job for charlatans and fools, but when we start making predictions — “Sarah Palin can’t win!”; “No, Sarah Palin will dominate!“ — all of a sudden we start speaking with a level of assuredness and confidence and emotional investment that we are too smart to apply to virtually any other situation.
And this keeps happening. No matter what the topic, the less that is known about a situation, the less intellectually confident we can each be about our tentative conclusions, the more emotionally confident we will become.

Well, you can read the whole thing, but here’s my counterpoint: We know what we know and we reason outward on the basis of known facts — accumulated through education, observation and experience — to speculate on the probable nature of the unknown.

What Ace calls “gut” is therefore not always pure instinct or mere arrogant assertion of personal, subjective opinion.

There is such a thing as an informed guess. If someone is a professional pilot, and he sees a TV news report about an airline crash, what he guesses about the likely cause of the crash is not merely “gut.” Likewise, if a veteran police detective picks up a magazine and reads a story about an unsolved murder case, his suppositions about the crime are more than “gut.” Continue reading Friedrich Hayek vs. Ace of Spades →

#tcot @AceOfSpadesHQ So, You’re Still Kinda Butt-Hurt About Rick Perry, Huh?

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Look, I’ve just endured my own Disastrous Month of Pain, OK? But I seriously doubt that 78 days from now I’m gonna be grousing bitterly about Gloria Allred and Ginger White. So why — 78 days after the Tampa debate — is Ace still ax-grinding against Michele Bachmann?

What’s especially interesting is that Bachmann signs up so willingly for Sacrifice Attacks. Some attacks are kind of over the top and involve a lot of blowback; they hurt the person making them as much or more than the target of the attack.
Gardasil, for example. That more or less took Bachmann out of things.
And that wasn’t entirely unforeseeable. A lot of people — including Republicans — are not so jazzed about the anti-vax swamp that a lot of the animus there seemed to be coming from. And her cloyingly emotional appeal — “Little. Girls.” — came off as shameless.
Plus, her convenient My Daughter Came Out a Retard mystery witness.

Dude. That was Sept. 12. And I was there:

TAMPA, Fla. — Rick Perry came into last night’s debate here with a target on his back, leading in the polls only a month after his late entry into the Republican presidential campaign. His fellow GOP candidates fired at the Texas governor all night, but it wasn’t until Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said the phrase “innocent little 12-year-old girls” that he suffered any serious wound. . . .

You can call that a “cloyingly emotional appeal” if you want, but it was absolutely devastating in terms of Perry’s support among conservative moms. Don’t take my word for it: Ali Akbar was in the audience in Tampa, sitting among a bunch of Tea Party women who came into the debate pro-Perry. Afterwards? Thumbs down.

Was the Gardasil issue overblown, misrepresented, misunderstood? Tell it to conservative mom Michelle Malkin. But why blame Bachmann? Because you think she’s stupid? Because she’s a woman? Because her attack on your guy Perry was effective?

And this endorsement of the C4P write-in campaign?

Rather than look for a Palin-like candidate, doesn’t it just make more sense to write in Palin?

“Hey, let’s undermine Bachmann in Iowa — just for spite!”

Ultimately, it wasn’t Michele Bachmann or any other Republican rival who destroyed Rick Perry. He surfed into the race on a tsunami wave of overconfidence, his campaign led by a bunch of cutthroat assholes who had just finished sabotaging Newt Gingrich.

They convinced a lot of people — Ace among them — to climb aboard The Smilin’ Texan Express for a one-way ride to glory.

“Phantom Menace.” Told ya so.

Perry auto-destructed and keeps bumbling onward toward greater humiliation. So why keep beating up on Bachmann? Why scapegoat her, instead of blaming the geniuses who sold you on Perry? (“Howdy. Thank you, Erick.”) Or why not own up to letting yourself get sold?

It’s been non-stop pain for me lately, Ace, so I’m not here to rub salt in your wounds, but . . . beating up on a girl? C’mon. Let it go, man.

And tell Tabitha Hale I said, “Hi.”

 

UPDATE: Linked by God’s Own Crunk — thanks!

Some in the comments are wanting to turn this into “Why Everybody Should Hate Ace,” which isn’t my intention at all. Ace loved him some Perry, which required him to do some hating on everybody else — especially anyone who attacked Perry (Bachmann and, to a lesser extent, Santorum) or appeared to prosper at Perry’s expense (Cain).

Honestly, I get it: Vengeance is fun, and hate is a habit, which is why I can’t stand me no Newt Gingrich. What Newt did to Doug Hoffman was so wrong and so stupid as to make Newt permanently unacceptable to me. When Hoffman forgave Newt, I was shocked beyond words. Dude, if I’d been screwed over that bad, I wouldn’t even have taken Newt’s call.

Ace is a good blogger, and one of the best at eviscerating liberals. His work on WeinerGate was heroic and — just in case you didn’t realize it — Ace ought to take a bow for Barney Frank’s retirement. No blogger did more than Ace to promote Sean Bielat, and it was Bielat’s 2010 challenge, combined with re-districting, that convinced Barney to hang it up.

Ace and I (and evidently many of y’all) are having a disagreement over a contested primary. It happens, and we can’t let ourselves go all Montagues and Capulets over this stuff. Because next August, if we find ourselves watching Mitt Romney give his acceptance speech in Tampa, we’re all going to have to find a way to convince our fellow Americans that this was The Greatest Acceptance Speech Ever.

Like we really mean it.

Am I looking forward to that? No, but if that’s the way the cookie crumbles, it’s what I’ll be doing, and I’ll keep pushing Romney as long as there is any real hope he can beat Obama.

Then I’ll go to the voting booth on Nov. 6, 2012, and probably vote Libertarian again, just to defy the GOP Establishment sons of bitches who keep ramming these doomstruck losers down our throats.

Anyway . . .

Don’t hate Ace. He’s a good man ewok to have on our side.

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