Buy Bull Studies With Rick Perry And Willard Romney

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 think feel the same way they do. What do you think GOP primary voters would think of this 2007 New York Times article in which Romney reiterates his belief in evolution?

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:

E.J. Dionne Jr. asks if we're really less "free" because we believe in government investing in the people's needs

Willard and Mrs. Willard on the farm: No, don't bother clicking; there's no video here -- it's just a screen grab. You didn't think I wouldn ask you to watch Willard in action (such as it is), did you?

"Are we less 'free' because we spend money on public schools and student loans, Medicare and Medicaid, police and firefighters, roads and transit, national defense and environmental protection? Would we be 'freer' if government spent zero percent of the economy and just stopped doing things? . . .

"Many of us 'believe in America' because we believe its history shows that our sacred liberties are compatible with a rather substantial government that invests in efforts to expand the freedom from want, the freedom from fear, the freedom from unfair treatment and the freedom to improve ourselves."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his WaPo column today,
"Romney's flawed view of freedom"

by Ken

Let me say again that it's hard not to love E. J. Dionne Jr., that singularly humane denizen of Punditworld. In today's outing he first pays tribute to Willard's old-school approach to being a presidential candidate:

In an age of media flying circuses where you never know who is running for president and who is just trying to boost book sales and speaking fees, Romney did it the old-fashioned way. He really, really wants to be president, and he offered pretty pictures to encourage us to watch him saying so. It was the venerable liturgy of our civil religion.

Then he notes how Willard "barely got his moment in the sun because dark clouds rolled in," in the form of Princess Sarah Palin and Rudy "The Goof" Giuliani showing up in New Hampshire, "bashing him on health care," but qualifies:

Romney’s travails are about more than the man himself. They speak to the condition of a party that won’t let him embrace his actual record and constantly requires him -- and all other Republicans -- to say outlandish things.

In his maiden campaign appearance, E.J. notes, Willard ran like the wind from his "greatest political achievement, the Massachusetts health-care law" during his time as the state's governor -- "a genuinely masterful piece of politics and policy." Willard garnered "modest cheers" from the assembled Republican faithful for minimizing the program as "a state solution to our state's problem," but "received what was, by my reckoning, his loudest response when he pledged “a complete repeal of Obamacare.”

That’s where the GOP heart is, and Palin and Giuliani both got into most of the Romney announcement stories by bashing him on health care. When you’re forced to tiptoe around your accomplishments, it’s no wonder you get accused of shifting your shape.

Yet it was Romney himself who exposed contemporary conservatism’s core flaw. “Did you know,” he asked, “that government -- federal, state and local -- under President Obama, has grown to consume almost 40 percent of our economy? We’re only inches away from ceasing to be a free economy.”

To begin with, E.J. argues, the 40 percent figure is bogus. "[T]he federal government of which Obama is in charge “consumes” about a quarter of the economy — and this after a severe recession, when government’s share naturally goes up." Which sets him revving up for, well, a whirl of classic E.J.:

But even granting Romney his addition of spending by all levels of government, the notion that we are “inches away from ceasing to be a free economy” is worse than absurd. It suggests that the only way we measure whether an economy and a country are “free” is by toting up how much government spends.

Are we less “free” because we spend money on public schools and student loans, Medicare and Medicaid, police and firefighters, roads and transit, national defense and environmental protection? Would we be “freer” if government spent zero percent of the economy and just stopped doing things?

And once E.J. gets going, you don't have to do anything but buckle in and enjoy the ride.

the logic of what he said points in exactly that direction. We thus confront in 2012 nothing short of a fundamental argument over what the word “freedom” means. If freedom, as the conservatives seem to insist, comes down primarily to the quantity of government spending, then a country such as Sweden, where government spends quite a lot, would be less “free” than a right-wing dictatorship that had no welfare state and no public schools — but also didn’t allow its people to speak, pray, write or organize as they wish.

Many of us “believe in America” because we believe its history shows that our sacred liberties are compatible with a rather substantial government that invests in efforts to expand the freedom from want, the freedom from fear, the freedom from unfair treatment and the freedom to improve ourselves. That, as the politicians like to say, is what this campaign is all about.

Yes! Thank you, E.J.!


POSTSCRIPT: PRINCESS SARAH TRIES TO SHOVEL
HER WAY OUT OF THE PAUL REVERE DOODOO

I don't want to undercut E. J. Dionne Jr.'s serious column by tacking on tales of the princess's latest flight from reality, doubled down as usual with a fresh set of lies, so I'll reserve that for tomorrow night. Meanwhile, don't miss Andy Borowitz's take. And on The New Yorker's blog, Ben Greenman has taken the obvious step of reconfiguring Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" (with a plum featured role for "our first President"'s friend Abe Lincoln) to align with the dark recesses of the princess's brain.

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