He was built up as something big when he first came on the scene, but some of his background stuff seems to be working against him. He supported Al Gore for president in 1988, he wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton in 1993 supporting health reform and he gave in state tuition to immigrants in Texas. Aside from that and the HPV vaccine mandate has he done anything else that conservatives are strongly at odds with? Does any of this make him a potential shooting star who fades as fast as he comes onto the scene, or does he have more lasting power?
Conservatives seemed desperate for someone who they could get behind and fully support who could win the general election, but has Perry done anything else that would alienate conservative voters to the point where he just becomes another Romney (someone with name recognition, but not the kind of ideological purity and legislative consistency they are looking for)?
Nothing personally to me, but I do not speak for conservatives. If they only knew what I believed with regards to abortion, religion, etc. they’d probably send money to me instead.
As far as I can gather from conservative friends, Michelle Bachmann is the only one making a fuss over the HPV issue and I for one cannot blame her. She had to put her name back in the spotlight and turning the vaccines into a moral cause did so, at least during the last debate. It didn’t hurt that she had a vagina either.
Going by Gallup’s intensity (really just a favorable scale) polls, he’s routinely held a positive rating amongst conservative candidates (even after the HPV issue during last debate) so I’m not all that sure that any of this is really hurting him.
Strong partisans will rarely be satisfied with a major party candidate. Perry is probably at the limit of how consistently conservative you can be and still get nominated.
He supported in-state tuition for children here illegally. That’s a hot button issue for many conservatives.
I think if you add that with the issues the OP listed, it shouldn’t be too surprising that some conservatives are going :dubious:. I mean, Al Gore. Need I say anything more?
One of the commentators on NPR was joking that in Rick Perry’s first foray into politics, he managed the difficult task of loosing an election to Michael Dukakis in Texas (Perry was Gore’s Texas campaign manager and lost the Texas primary to Dukakis that year).
Of course, I mean, a *mother *told her the vaccine caused mental retardation, she had to act ! And make a complete ass of herself. What do pharmaceutical labs know that anonymous mothers don’t ? Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. :dubious:
And you know, if she actually believed a word she’s spewing, it wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, she’d still be a corndog short of a carny stand - but not despicably so. One could still feel like patting her on the head and telling her “there, there, love. Bless your heart”.
But she doesn’t. Like you say, it’s pure attention grabbing. And what’s worse, not only are you not fooled, you fucking *admire *her for it ? What the hell’s the matter with you ?!
His suggestion that Texas secede from the Union from a few years back? I understand that Texans think that yanking the other 49 States’ collective chain with this is their idea of humor, but I would imagine that a Republican might be for keeping the Union together at all costs. But what do I know, I’m not a Republican and not a conservative. I’m pretty offended at the idea of breaking up the Union.
Rick Perry is in favor of no restrictions on Hispanic immigration. This pleases the business wing of the Repubican Party, which wants cheap labor, but it angers the populists.
As far as his stance on immigration, if you’re running for statewide office in Texas you can only be so xenophobic, mainly because of the large number of Hispanic voters in the state (many of whom are pretty conservative and have been surprisingly open to voting for Republicans in the past), but also because of the businesses that utilize cheap immigrant labor.
So, yeah, he’ll spout the standard talking points about the need to secure the border and stop the flow of illegal immigrants, but when push comes to shove, he’ll be perfectly content with maintaining the status quo.