Yesterday Texas Gov. Rick Perry surprisingly announced that he will not seek a fourth term as Texas governor, prompting frenzied speculation that he will again run for president in the next election in 2016. As desirable as a Perry administration might be for anarchists, radical Tea Party groups, and billionaire CEOs, it would spell unrecoverable doom for the rest of us. I happen to think that the governor’s chances at winning the nation’s highest office are slim to nonexistent. But to dispel any fears you might habor that one day you’ll wake up and find Rick Perry President of the United States, below are 10 reminders as to why he won’t even make the final cut of Republican candidates in 2016.
1. Rick Perry is a bigot.
When it comes to social issues, Rick Perry is decades behind a great majority of cultured, educated Americans — and he’s proud of it. Hell, he placed his bigotry front-and-center in the following I’m-not-ashamed-to-admit-that-I’m-a-homophobe campaign ad.
Perry is also a known misogynist. Just last month, he stunned even those in his own party when he launched into a personal assault on Senator Wendy Davis and drew unnecessary attention to her being raised by a single mother and being one herself. Even though he later insisted that his comments were paradoxically a compliment, Perry’s true attitude toward women were revealed.
And does anyone remember the name of the Perry family’s hunting camp?
2. Rick Perry is an inflexible ideologue.
For many conservative politicians, lowering the tax burden is a key objective, which is a noble endeavor — unless it’s at the expense of the poor and unemployed. In 2009, to boost his conservative cred, Rick Perry rejected $555 million in federal stimulus money that would have covered unemployment benefits in his state,?even though the money wouldn’t have had to be paid back.?This plan backfired in at least two ways:
- When Texas unemployment funds were depleted, he was forced to seek assistance from the federal government, and
- It was proved that, had Perry accepted the stimulus money, the?tax burden on businesses would have actually been?lowered. Because he rejected it, taxes had to be raised on businesses to avoid a shortfall on unemployment funds.
?3. Rick Perry supports executing the mentally retarded and the innocent.
Perry announced his hard-line brand of Republicanism early on in his governorship when he vetoed a 2001 bill that would have banned the execution of the mentally retarded. Even though his rationale was that Texas never has nor will it ever execute a mentally challenged inmate, Texas did just that last year when it put to death Marvin Wilson, whose IQ clocked in at 61.
And then there’s the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for the 1994 murder of his three children by arson. As the only person with the authority to exonerate a prisoner on death row, Perry chose to ignore the mountains of expert reports damning the sentencing on the grounds that there was no clear evidence linking Willingham to the murders, and the Texas man was executed by lethal injection in 2004.
His is a record that would make even Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen from “Back to the Future Part III” blush.
4. Rick Perry does not support buying American.
Speaking of vetoing bills, in May of this year, Perry vetoed the so-called “Buy American” bill, which passed both the Texas House and Senate with broad bipartisan support. HB 535 would have created both Texas and American jobs by setting a preference for purchasing homemade manufactured goods by the State of Texas over foreign-made goods.
Alas, Perry’s veto of the bill proves that what Rick Perry supports more than the working people of his own state and country are his billionaire handlers whose multinational corporations outsource manufacturing jobs overseas.
5. Rick Perry can’t hold his own in a debate.
Debating is more than simply flaunting your rhetorical skills — it’s about showing the world that you are quick on your feet and that you know your stuff. Perry clearly doesn’t. Even he knows this, which is why he refused in 2010 to debate Democratic contender for governor Bill White.
Of course, he couldn’t refuse to participate in the GOP presidential debates, and we all know how well that turned out.
6. Rick Perry is not only anti-intellectual but also anti-education.
Perry has been no friend to students of any age. Last year, the Texas legislature cut a staggering $5.4 billion from education funding, necessitating systemic teacher layoffs, cancelled bus services, and the elimination of music and art programs.
Additionally, Rick Perry has involved himself in a culture war against higher education, insinuating that tuition costs could be lowered if only public colleges and universities adopted an extreme set of standards proposed by right-leaning think tank the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Part of the foundation’s anti-intellectual agenda is to restructure Texas universities, such as the flagship University of Texas, so they serve more as simple job corps services rather than top-tier research institutions.
Is it any wonder then that former Senator Rick Santorum admitted to his audience at a Values Voter Summit last year that conservatives will never have the backing of “smart” people?
7. Rick Perry supports Texas’s secession from the Union.
Following the election of President Barrack Obama, Perry publicly voiced his concern that the federal government had grown too strong and speculated on the Lone Star State’s secession from the Union. Which leads to the logical question: if inflexible ideologues such as Rick Perry hate the federal government so much — to the extent that they would want to flee it — why do they want to run it? No solider who absolutely loathes the military would rise to the rank of general. No teacher who doesn’t believe in the power of education would one day become superintendent. Why should it be any different with politicians?
8. Under Perry’s governorship, Texas has become one of the worst states in which to be a child.
According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Texas is the eighth worst state in which to be a child. Between 2005 and 2011, children living in high-poverty areas rose five percentage points while the percentage of children whose parents lack reliable employment increased from 26 percent to 30 percent. Teens not working or enrolled in school also increased, as did the number of fourth-graders not proficient in reading. If Perry doesn’t care about the livelihood of children, the most vulnerable members of society, where would that leave us were he to assume the presidency?
9.This video.
Rick Perry isn’t one of those lovable drunks like W.C. Fields or Homer Simpson. No, he’s the kind of drunk whose erratic behavior makes the other drunks uncomfortable. That’s not a good trait for the commander-in-chief to have.
10.?The U.S. can’t survive another Bush.
To be clear, a Perry administration would be d?j? vu all over again, as Yogi Berra famously said. During W.’s eight years, the U.S. lost a lot respect in the eyes of the rest of the world. Rick Perry — way more extreme than Bush, not to mention less articulate and informed than the forty-third president — would preside over and usher the United States into its sunset days of former glory the likes of which the world has never seen, not even Egypt or Rome. As uncompromising and radical as Rick Perry is, he would write off such a decline as the inevitable consequences of principled conservative resolve. But for the rest of the country, a Perry administration would result in nothing less than unprecedented ruin.