I guess people who are looking for another blustering nincompoop and tool who thinks you can make up for profound ignorance with a Texas-sized swagger, won't have to scratch beneath the surface to look for the "real" Rick Perry. He's making quite the impression in Iowa and New Hampshire.
"I'm looking for who's the toughest and who stands with his values," said Kyle Moeller, a 21-year-old college student who met Perry at the Walcott compound that bills itself as the world's largest truck stop. "Right now, that looks like Rick Perry."
Perry talks with the passion of a preacher but the calculations of a politician. He puts his feet up on bales of hay. There's an ease about him, a comfort no matter the setting, and a larger-than-life style that commands attention.
He often speaks in sound bites that pack a punch, particularly with a tea party-infused GOP that's latching onto anti-establishment candidates.
"I will go to Washington, D.C., to make it as inconsequential to your lives as I can," he promises in every speech, a sure applause line before conservative audiences.
He knows his audience and plays to it.
...Yet for all Perry's appeal before large audiences, Thursday's brush with voters in a New Hampshire coffee shop may have revealed some rough edges in his skills as a retail politician.
Perry appeared unprepared to handle detailed questions from New Hampshire voters, who have come to expect frank discussions with presidential candidates. He largely avoided a question about his position on global warming from Tim Chrysostom, 44, of Canterbury, N.H.
"We teach the facts," Perry told him of Texas schools. "You'll have to go look in the class books."
Chrysostom, a Democrat, wasn't pleased, saying: "That was a pretty direct question and that was a pretty direct dodge."
Another voter later asked for specifics of Perry's plans to improve the economy.
"We have to get America working again," Perry responded, adding a "God bless, brother," before moving to the next voter.
In style and tone, Perry stands in contrast to his GOP rivals.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the GOP front-runner, has long struggled to connect with his audiences, and has come across as forced when he's tried.
And not just forced-- phony, insincere, weird and completely inauthentic are all terms that are effortlessly applied to Willard Romney. Even his name is fake. Republican primary voters and the party's far right activist base are perfectly happy with Rick Perry's dog whistles about every crackpot assertion they've been listening to from Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and the rest of their teachers. When he claims Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional, global warming is a conspiracy, and that creationism is just as valid as evolution, he's singing their tune. Romney, on the other hand, still wants to be accepted as a serious and mainstream politician rather than a buffoonish thug like Perry. But the right-wing base wants bufoonish thugs who
Mitt Romney expanded on his belief in evolution in an interview earlier this week, staking out a position that could put him at odds with some conservative Christians, a key voting bloc he is courting.
Mr. Romney, a devout Mormon, surprised some observers when he was not among those Republican candidates who raised their hands last week when asked at the Republican presidential debate if they did not believe in evolution. (Senator Sam Brownback, former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Representative Tom Tancredo said they did not.)
“I believe that God designed the universe and created the universe,” Mr. Romney said in an interview this week. “And I believe evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body.”
He was asked: Is that intelligent design?
“I’m not exactly sure what is meant by intelligent design,” he said. “But I believe God is intelligent and I believe he designed the creation. And I believe he used the process of evolution to create the human body.”
While governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney opposed the teaching of intelligent design in science classes.
“In my opinion, the science class is where to teach evolution, or if there are other scientific thoughts that need to be discussed,” he said. “If we’re going to talk about more philosophical matters, like why it was created, and was there an intelligent designer behind it, that’s for the religion class or philosophy class or social studies class... They teach evolution at B.Y.U."
Somehow I suspect the snakehandlers and Know Nothings who are the core constituency Rick Perry appeals to, aren't going to be comforted by Romney's once again inauthentic and barely articulate attempt to come down on both sides of every issue. I know I ran this clip from Thursday night yesterday-- in regard to how backward Rick Perry is-- but watch how effortlessly, albeit clumsily, Willard has been pushed along the same slippery slope by Fox's nasty children:
