Tag Archives: Rick Perry

News

Newt Gingrich outstanding in Wednesday night’s Republican primary debate

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Not my favorite candidate, but he turned in the best performance.

The Washington Times reports.

Excerpt:

Mitt Romney and Rick Perry wasted little time in going straight at each other Wednesday night, sparring over whether the former’s business experience or the latter’s decade as governor of Texas is better training for boosting jobs.

“Michael Dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did, Mitt,” Mr. Perry said, referring to the former liberal Democratic governor who lost the 1988 presidential election.

“George Bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than you did, governor,” retorted Mr. Romney, a one-term Massachusetts governor who made his fortune leading a capital investment firm, as he pointed to the man whom Mr. Perry succeeded in 2000.

With the Republican presidential nomination on the line, the Republican field squared off at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in a nationally televised debate in which the candidates clawed slightly at each other, but aimed their chief darts at President Obama on issues such as the economy and his health care initiative.

“Obamacare took over one-sixth of the economy,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican. “This is the issue of 2012, together with jobs. This is our window of opportunity. If we fail to repeal Obamacare in 2012, it will be with us forever and it will be socialized medicine.”

But even that issue opened up Mr. Romney to more attacks, this time from the rest of the field, none of whom backed the individual mandate that requires everyone to purchase insurance and that lies at the heart of the health care bills that Mr. Romney signed in Massachusetts and the one Mr. Obama signed, a few years later, for the whole country.

Mr. Perry said Massachusetts’ experiment “was a great opportunity for us as a people to see what will not work, and that is an individual mandate in this country.”

For Mr. Perry, the debate was his first chance personally to mix things up with his fellow candidates, and to show Republican voters that he deserves the early adulation he’s received from many of them.

He seemed to stumble over a couple of answers when asked to square his past rhetoric with his stances as a presidential candidate, but had his strongest moments when he was defending his state’s specific record during his decade as governor.

He also didn’t back down on his criticism of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme, and said that applied despite former Vice President Dick Cheney, who earlier Wednesday had suggested such language was over the top.

“If Vice President Cheney or anyone else says that the program that we have in place today, and young people who are paying into that expect that program to be sound and for them to receive benefits when they reach retirement age, that is just a lie,” Mr. Perry said.

John Ruberry (Marathon Pundit) posted this summary:

Here’s my brief summation of tonight’s Republican presidential candidate at the Reagan Presidential Library.

Perry was the winner, mainly because he didn’t make any gaffes–no one did–and he answered some tough questions. He refused to back down from calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” However, if he wins the GOP nomination, he just wrote his own attack ad and supplied the video. Granny-scaring is what the Dems do best. The other top-tier candidate, Mitt Romney, was well-spoken and on top of the issues, as he always is.

Michele Bachmann: Held her own but didn’t gain ground. But she needed to move up tonight.

Rick Santorum: Inspired, articulate, and passionate. He won’t be going away.

Jon Huntsman: I like his jobs plan, but he muffed the global warming question.

Newt Gingrich: The best performance tonight. But I fear he has dug himself to big a hole for him to even contend for the nomination.

Ron Paul: I’m not a supporter, but he stood firm with his Libertarian beliefs.

Herman Cain: What happened? The biggest washout tonight. He came across unsure, and his 9-9-9 program sounds like he’s marketing toothpaste, but he’s selling it without confidence.

As for the questions from the moderators, NBC’s Brian Williams and Politico’s Jonathan Martin, I have this to say: Man, do I miss Tim Russert. And why do you think a question about evolution is relevant?

I was not impressed with Perry’s speaking ability, but he had command of the facts, which is good. Santorum also did well.

Erick Erickson’s summary of the debate at Red State.

Excerpt:

First, I don’t think Perry had as strong a performance tonight as he could have. He stumbled several times. Romney had a stronger performance. But then, Romney has been in this dog and pony show since 2007. Perry is just stepping up to this level. He made no major mistakes, but could have been stronger on the HPV issue and a few other issues.

Second, it is clear Perry is the front runner given the pile on from the other candidates. It was not just pushed by MBNBC and the Politico. The other candidates took willful potshots against Rick Perry. Perry, despite some stumbles and the pile on by the moderators and other participants, held his own and will only get stronger the more of these he does.

Third, Michele Bachmann’s star has faded. The recognition of this is the reporter focus on Perry v. Romney buttressed by Bachmann’s own outgoing campaign manager, Ed Rollins, that the race was a two man race between Perry and Romney.

Fourth, Newt Gingrich. What an intellect. What a mind. What a debater. What might have been.

[…]Finally, I think Mitt Romney’s “play it safe” strategy is about to come crashing down on his. In the exchange between Perry and Romney on social security and ponzi schemes, Perry gave a less than stellar answer. But Romney then tried to pile on by rejecting the idea that social security is a failure.Republicans should pay attention to this. Mitt Romney proclaimed making several generations of Americans dependent on the federal government for their retirement a success. That may play well to Washington, D.C. But it increasingly doesn’t even play well with senior citizens worried about their grandchildren’s futures.

I think Romney is just too liberal to win this primary.

News

Republican primary debate tonight features eight candidates

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From Humans Events.

Excerpt:

Eight Republican presidential candidates will debate on September 7 at the famed Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is currently at the front in many national polls, will join Mitt Romney​, Newt Gingrich​, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and Ron Paul​ on stage.

NBC News and POLITICO will moderate the debate, and it will be co-hosted by NBC Nighlty News anchor Brian Williams​ and POLITICO’s editor-in-chief John Harris.

The debate will be significant because it is Perry’s debut on the national debating stage. Even more so, it is first debate in which someone other than Romney will most likely be the leader in the polls.

This dynamic can impact debate strategy in a number of ways.

Will Perry be above the fray and take a page out of Romney’s playbook or will the combative Texan go straight after Romney?

Will Romney act like an underdog and make it seem as if he is punching up in a weight class to Perry?

For Ron Paul, who has been at a stable 10-15 percent in the polls, how will he break out? Can he put together a crisp debating performance that highlights the areas where Republicans have moved toward his views and not come across as too professorial and absent-minded?

Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain will come into the debate sharing a similar set of debate experiences. Both splashed onto the national scene during a debate. For Cain, it was in South Carolina. For Bachmann, it was in New Hampshire. But both candidates have not been able to maintain the initial burts of momentum they received from their respective debates due to a mixture of gaffes and staffing questions though Bachmann did win the Ames Straw Poll, which, in the end, seems to not have given her a bounce in the polls.

Newt Gingrich, fresh off his last stellar debate performance, must kick his campaign into gear. He said his campaign would be like Walmart in terms of being innovative. September seems like the time when he should be rolling out his campaign innovations.

The debate is going from 8 PM to 10 PM Eastern. I am concerned about the moderators being mainstream media. I hope they don’t ask stupid questions like John King did last time.

UPDATE: Newsbusters warns about the liberal bias of the debate moderators.

Excerpt:

Tonight Brian Williams will moderate, along with Politico’s John F. Harris, the GOP presidential candidate debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. If recent performances by the NBC Nightly News anchor are an indication, candidates (particularly those favored by the Tea Party) should recognize his hostility to their agenda and be prepared for a number of topics and questions from the left.

Ever since its emergence, Williams has undercut the Tea Party, its champions within the GOP, and its cause of fiscal conservatism. At the same time, Williams has heralded its chief opponent Barack Obama.

In the summer of 2010 Williams began mocking the Tea Partiers as unsavvy paranoids. On the August 23 Late Show With David Letterman, Williams made fun of the signs he had seen at Tea Party rallies, as he told the late night talk show host: “It makes people feel better to say ‘Take our country back.’ If you ask them, they would say from, ‘from the Trilateral Commission, from the big bankers, from the Council on Foreign Relations.’…You see a lot of signs, ‘Federal Government Out of My Social Security,’ ‘Federal Government Out of My Medicare and Medicaid,’ but for the federal government, of course, those programs would not exist.”

[…]Williams has also attacked those in the GOP who have championed the Tea Party cause, namely – Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry, former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and current Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Williams introduced Perry to his viewers, on the August 16 Nightly News, as a name-caller who came out “swinging and talking” and alerted his audience that the White House had already warned him “to watch what he says.”

“On the broadcast tonight, fighting words. Rick Perry comes out swinging and talking, and the White House tells him to watch what he says….The rest of the country is learning what Texans already know about their Governor, what he says, what he does, how he does business….Today’s debate had to do with money, name-calling, and whether or not the President of the United States loves his country.”

Uh oh. I don’t think the Republicans should let radical leftists moderate their debates. It’s just stupid. Let Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio be the moderators.

News

Rick Perry’s record on teaching the controversy is mixed

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From Evolution News.

Excerpt:

It has to be challenging to be a presidential candidate. After all, you are expected to dispense wisdom (or at least comments) on almost everything under the sun, and you never know what question is going to come up next. Still, some questions should be easier to anticipate than others. For example, it has become pretty typical for candidates (especially Republican ones) to be grilled at some point about their views on evolution. So Governor Rick Perry shouldn’t have been surprised when asked earlier today about his own views on evolution, especially given all the controversy over the topic in his home state of Texas. What was a surprise was Perry’s answer. According to the New York Times, Perry claimed: “In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools.”

That’s news to me. In fact, Texas public schools do not teach creationism, at least not anywhere in the approved curriculum. But under science standards adopted in 2009, Texas students are asked to “analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations… including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.” This sort of critical inquiry is supposed to apply to the discussion of Darwinian theory, and Texas students are also expected to “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for Darwinian claims about natural selection, mutations, cellular complexity, the fossil record, and more.

Alas, most Texas schools probably don’t engage in this sort of scientific weighing of the merits of Darwinian theory — due in large part to Perry’s own education appointees! Earlier this summer, Perry’s education commissioner recommended for use supplementary science curricula that fail to offer any critical analysis of Darwinian claims, contrary to the state’s own science standards. At the same time, Perry’s education commissioner allowed his staff to spike the one proposed curriculum that did try to follow the Texas science standards.

Perry will likely be excoriated for his comments by those on the left who think Perry is somehow a proponent of creationism. Ironically, the Texas Education Agency that Perry oversees has done its best to scuttle even a scientific discussion of the limits of Darwinian claims.

He’s not as good as Michele Bachmann on this education issue. I think that Bachmann would push control down to the state and local level, and abolish the federal Department of Education. She has had personal conflicts with the public school system – she’s hostile to them. She had conflicts with the school board, she homeschooled her own children, she started a charter school. I think she has had it with educational bureaucrats, and she would do more radical things to put control of children’s education in the hands of parents. She would be more likely to emphasize choice and competition, which is proven to lower costs and raise quality. She is more of a radical, and Perry isn’t radical enough.