Rick Perry is probably going to be the Republican nominee for President. He is able to capture the hearts and minds of religious fundamentalists AND big money conservatives in a way many other candidates are unable to. Mitt Romney can’t compete with him for charisma. Michelle Bachman can’t compete with him for the money, and there is no other candidate in the second tier who can touch him. Americans should be scared to death because he just might be the next President of the United States.
For one thing, Perry isn’t very bright. He has demonstrated an incredible lack of knowledge when it comes to American history and foreign policy. His grades at Texas A&M University were even less impressive than George W’s were at Yale. The only course in which he earned an “A” was Animal Husbandry, and he nearly failed economics.
For another, his religious affiliations are frightening. The political prayer gathering in Houston that Perry held as the kick-off of his Presidential campaign was sponsored by several Pentecostal pastors who are Dominionists, members of the New Apostolic Reformation, a political/religious movement that began under the controversial 1960’s evangelist R. J. Rushdoony, a theocrat who advocated replacing secular law with religious Old Testament law, which would call for the death penalty for homosexuality, abortion, and apostasy. A frightening expose of Dominionism can be found in the Daily Beast at this link. No one this radical in his religious/political beliefs should be allowed even in the White House tour!
Rick Perry is also a hypocrite and a liar. He actively campaigned for Al Gore in the 1988 Democratic Primary for President. He happily accepts Federal aid for many programs in Texas, even as he flirts with the idea of secession and advocates for States Rights, and he claims to have created more jobs in Texas during his administration than any other state. What he fails to mention, however, is that 3/4 of those jobs were in state government and much of the rest were at minimum wage and that Texas is near the bottom of the list in child health and education.
Many conservatives in Texas oppose him because of a big spending, big government proposal to build four thousand miles of super-super-highways across the state that would have cost billions and was supported by Perry’s friends among the highway contractors who contribute so generously to his campaigns.
Rick Perry is not the savior the Republican Party is looking for and if Barack Obama is intelligent, there is much in Perry’s record to use against him. Of course, we’re talking about Barack Obama here. Will he use it? Will he have the backbone, or will he continue to pretend that he is too good to soil his hands with mere politics and sit above the fray? If Obama continues as he has since taking office, then this nation may just elect George W. Bush on steroids, a religious radical hell-bent on repealing Social Security and Medicare, as he advocated in his 2010 book Fed Up!
Rick Perry could be the next President of the United States. God help us.
Diary of a Seventies Kid 