John, this is one of those rare situations where being smart and reasonable can mislead you. You hear talk like that, naturally, your first thought is that he’s joking. Actually, that’s probably your second thought, your first thought being “WTF?”. And that is a perfectly reasonable thing to think, maybe the reasonable thing to think.
But its Texas! Allow me a gross understatement: Texas is weird. Seriously weird. Oklahoma and Arizona send people to Texas to get advanced degrees in weird. There are thousands, perhaps millions of grown, adult people who believe this happy horseshit.
Perry looks, sounds, and acts like a populist. There are many who call themselves Conservative who are looking for someone with unwavering principles. Especially the kind of prinicples that are sinking the country right now. Perry sounds like the kind of politician who would raise taxes in order to pay our bills rather than collapse in economic ruin. I’ve heard a rumor that he secretly believes in heliocentrism too. Conservatives can’t tolerate that kind of thing.
Besides the jabs at Conservatives, Perry is clearly a populist, and a lot of people are leery of another populist president from Texas.
Well sure, the winners of the civil war get to make the decisions saying that secession is not an option. But, again, while the DOI is not law of the land, its principles are what started the United States. The role of any government is to preserve man’s natural rights. When a government becomes destructive to those ends, it is the right and the duty of the people to cast off that government and set up a new one.
Neither Rick Perry, me, or anyone else is saying that the US has become this way and that we need to secede. But surely you would agree that if we were living in a 1984-style big brother society that it would be the right and duty of all free people to resist that tyranny.
Did you frown on the people of Egypt and Libya this year for not lying down and taking the abuse?
Surely. But Perry is suggesting we are actively approaching that level of tyranny, which is nuts. He said (paraphrasing because I can’t view the video again right now), “If Washington keeps doing what it’s doing, then who knows?” If Washington keeps doing what it’s doing, then we’re not getting anywhere near Big Brother.
Which of those posters were running for President? Did any of them have cameras following them around all the time to share their “jokes” with the world? Which of them were governors of large states? Are we holding major politicians to the same standards as anonymous dorks on a message board? Come on.
And I’m still not convinced he was joking when he made the remark to the group after his big Tea Party speech. He laughed lustily at the remark about right wing extremists, which shows me that he knows the expected response to a joke. That doesn’t match the way he acted when he said “there are a lot of scenarios” and “who knows what might happen”.
There is some ambiguity there. What does “keeps doing what it’s doing” mean? The status quo? Of course that doesn’t warrant secession.
What if it keeps increasing intrusion on the states? If they do in the next 100 years what they did in the last 100 years, there won’t be state governments left. What if the Bush surveillance policies keep increasing?
“Then who knows” doesn’t imply that we are “actively approaching” that level. It simply says that it is a possibility, which it is, and always should be.
Perry actually got into politics as a populist. After graduating A&M without grades good enough for Vet school, he tried the USAF for a while. Then returned to Haskell to help out on his father’s cotton farm until something better turned up. (No “job creator” he.)
Eventually he got elected to the Texas House of Representatives, running as a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Democrat community. Until things changed again:
He didn’t leave the Democrats because of political convictions–but because he wanted power & a better paying job.
(From The Boy From Haskell, part of The Texas Observer’s continuing attempt to let the country know about* this* Texas Governor with aspirations. After all, Molly warned everybody about Shrub!)
One of four. There’s also Hawaii (admittedly, some Republicans have forgotten that it is a part of the United States that is an island – I guess they just aren’t making them as smart as Dan Quayle anymore).
