I turned off the Fox News/Google Debate after about 40 minutes because I was in kind of a bad mood and I just couldn’t take any more lunacy. I had not noticed that Governor Rick Perry was having a particularly bad night. However, Perry seems to fade in the latter half of debates, and he apparently had a rather disastrous second hour. For me, it’s hard to tell who is doing well in Republican debates and who is not. I noticed that Michele Bachmann said that we are all entitled to 100% of the money we earn. For me, that’s so ridiculous that a giant hook should have come out and yanked her off the stage and into a paddy wagon. But for an audience that boos active-duty soldiers and cheers executions, it could have been the best line of the night. I am not a crazy asshole, so who am I to say?
However, it appears that Rick Perry’s biggest sin was to defend in-state tuition for the children of undocumented workers.
“If you say that we should not educate children who come into our state for no other reason than that they’ve been brought there through no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry said. “We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society. I think that’s what Texans wanted to do. Out of 181 members of the Texas legislature when this issue came up [there were] only four dissenting votes. This was a state issue. Texas voted on it. And I still support it today.”
The next day, Romney came out swinging:
“My friend Governor Perry said that if you don’t agree with his position on giving that in-state tuition to illegals, then you don’t have a heart,” Romney said. “I think if you’re opposed to illegal immigration, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a heart; it means that you have a heart and a brain.”
But Romney could have kept his mouth shut because practically every conservative commentator in the country panned Perry’s response and his overall performance.
That Perry’s biggest problem was his position on in-state tuition for immigrants was clear in Frank Luntz’s post-debate focus group, but he got no love for the rest of his performance either.
Famed lunatic John Podhoretz of the New York Post noted, “Just awful. After the first half hour, he seemed unable to speak a coherent sentence, even when he was carefully prepared — and he made a cringe-inducing bungle of a rehearsed soundbite about Romney’s flip-flopping. It was one of the worst moments I can remember.” Michelle Malkin said, ““any random high schooler at the CPAC conference in Washington could have done better than this.” Erick Erickson panned the whole field. “Good Lord,” Erickson wrote, “this was the worst debate I think I’ve ever watched.” Bill Kristol penned a column entitled ‘Yikes’ that begged New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to come to the rescue.
Now, if I were a conservative I wouldn’t be happy with the field of candidates either. I would be unimpressed with Rick Perry’s oratorical and debating skills, too. I’d be less excited about Mitt Romney than I am discussing wallpaper glue. I totally get this element of the criticism. But Rick Perry continues to get hammered for the very few decent things he has ever done in his life. In the last debate, he was lambasted for providing a HPV vaccine to the girls of Texas so that they won’t die of cervical cancer later on in life. Yeah, I know that his decision was probably more about lining his pockets with Merck-money than any true compassion, but he did do the right thing. The crazy Texas legislature freaked out and overruled him, so cervical cancer is safe for now, at least in the Lone Star State.
And, now, in this debate he’s getting killed for showing some basic human decency and not punishing children for the sins of their parents. According to Perry, there were only four dissenting votes when he passed the in-state tuition bill. If that’s true, what does it say about the national Republican Party that they hate Latinos immeasurably more than the Texas GOP?
We’re talking about a guy who executed an innocent man and then abused the power of his office to cover it up. And he’s too liberal and decent to be the Republican nominee for president?
Folks, this is beyond ridiculous. It’s downright scary.
For his part, Romney gets blasted for “Obamneycare,” so I guess it’s all good.
In the next debate maybe Herman Cain will get blasted because he once helped an old lady cross the street.
That’s why the post-partisan stuff will never work.
And……
It’s still 2011!
So the election cycle has only just started.
nalbar
I don’t know why we’re surprised. This is why I said I didn’t think he would go anywhere from the get-go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_9WxAEGY8c
Watch this video. What the fuck is he even talking about?
This is why I said Michele Bachmann would win, but with Rick Perry he splits her voters, allowing Romney to win. But Romney is not going to win. I think if anything, this gives Huntsman or Ron Paul an opening.
Another brilliant set of seabe predictions. You have a true gift for coming up with the most inaccurate possible conclusions from any given data set.
Bachmann, Paul and Huntsman? Why don’t you just start predicting the surprise, late-addition candidacy of Scrappy Doo?
Inaccurate? Everything I’ve said about this primary thus far has come to pass. W/e, Joe.
What the what now?
You could be a Republican with that kind of cognitive dissonance.
If you go back to my original prediction, there was a huge caveat:
“However, if Rick Perry jumps in, all bets are off.” Exact words I used.
Here are the predictions I’ve made thus far:
1.) Bachmann will win, unless Perry jumps in.
2.) I don’t think Perry will win the nomination because he has something missing; it’s hard to pinpoint, but let’s just say he doesn’t have “it.”
3.) Pawlenty will get less votes than Jon Huntsman.
That’s all I’ve said prediction wise. Now, I don’t think with Perry floundering, and Huntsman’s appeal to “beating Obama” and being “anyone but Mitt Romney,” he has an opening. That doesn’t mean anything will come of it, but it’s definitely there. I didn’t think Paul would go anywhere and I still don’t, but again, he also has an opening because I think he could do well enough in NH.
Grr. “Now, I THINK with Perry floundering”
Interestingly, the party of no has now produced candidates who simply cannot move any given topic beyond NO; there is no ability to be able to articulate the Party’s platform core beliefs and marry them to actions going forward. Instead they simply mouth talking points or prepared gotchas that are barely laugh lines.
Talk about all hat no horse cowboys! This is what happens when Luntz gets to design a party on bumper stickers.
Interestingly, the party of no has now produced candidates who simply cannot move any given topic beyond NO; there is no ability to be able to articulate the Party’s platform core beliefs and marry them to actions going forward. Instead they simply mouth talking points or prepared gotchas that are barely laugh lines.
Talk about all hat no horse cowboys! This is what happens when Luntz gets to design a party on bumper stickers.
rats
The Repukeliscum are today a genuinely evil bunch. It’s beyond callous and into cruel and evil.
But that’s not the point.
Here’s the point! (From a previous comment on the post GOP Debate Thread):
I repeat…the fear that Ron Paul might actually get a shot at winning the whole enchilada is what is presently driving this political system. That and the fear that Perry himself might not be controllable either. In Paul’s case his uncontrollability is due to him being too smart instead of the case with Perry, who appears to actually be stupider than G. W. Butch. (A miracle in itself.)
I said yesterday that Perry would be gone in a month? I was too pessimistic. On the evidence of the present hypnomedia stupidstorm, I think he’s already gone. Now they’ll continue to try to ignore Ron Paul into Ralph Nader/Ross Perot-like obscurity and hope for the best.
Their best.
A controllable preznit.
Bet on it.
This whole thread is about “good” and “bad” candidates. How far do we have to go into No man’s Land politics to realize that we are already well on the other side of the political mirror in the U.S., that it’s not about “good” or “bad” candidates anymore, it’s simply about which candidate will be (
s)elected by the corporate PermaGov as the frontman likely to be most effective in promoting their own aims. The media are their (s)election tool. The field gets winnowed down in media boxing matches until the really important part, which is what the PermaGov pundits have to say about those matches.Finally there is a supposed championship match. The two candidates who have been selected by the crooked matchmakers are thrown into the ring mano a mano and…since there are no real knockouts in this particular fight sport…the decision is always in the hands of the judges. Since the fix is already in and the judges themselves are totally crooked, the “right” candidate is always (
s)elected.This system has been in effect at least since the Watergate coup, which was the first evidence that the PermaGov truly understood how to use the power of the media to control politics. Before that it was hit and miss with a little wetwork thrown in just in case a misstep occurred. After Watergate? Why shoot pepole when you can media them to (political) death instead? It is so much cleaner that way.
And yet the leftiness, centriness and rightiness blogs remain full of the misconception that there is actually a system that elects “the best man.” (or woman as the case may be.)
I suppose that’s true, but only if by “best” one means the best choice for Corporate America.
Wake the fuck up.
You been had.
For almost 40 years.
You been had.
From the rear most often.
Big time.
You been had and you don’t even know it.
Bet on it.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
They gave Sarah Palin more breaks than they are giving Rick Perry.
What’s scary is that you have a measurable percentage of Democrats who don’t find these jokers or the Republican party scary enough.