Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Perry Takes Lead Over Romney
Looks like Texas Governor Rick Perry picked a good time to hop into the race. According to some polls, he's lapped the field and has a double digit lead on Mitt Romney. A Romney/Perry race would be wonderful---clearly, these two are well-differentiated, and it would be a difficult thing indeed to conjure up an informed voter who would have trouble choosing twixt the two. I'm hoping this puts a little fight into Mitt and he steps things up a bit in the months to come. Perry will be a great candidate, and he will be hard to defeat in the primaries. But he can be beaten. Five debates in Iowa in the next couple of months will give Perry a number of chances to sell himself to more moderate voters--if he can't, he's toast.
So far Mitt hasn't done much but handle the rubber chicken circuit and manage a campaign that doesn't say very much of everything beyond silvered platitudes.
ReplyDeleteThe Politico article "Is Rick Perry Dumb?" brings up a few good points:
ReplyDelete...He’s a power politician and a very canny one. And what seems to animate him is competition.
Whether it is winning elections, beating out other states in attracting jobs or besting them for college football recruits, Perry is ferociously single-minded.
“This is like judging [baseball star] David Ortiz as a failed athlete because he’s never scored a touchdown,” said Democratic Texas state Rep. Mike Villarreal, alluding to the Perry-is-dull charge. “He’s a focused, committed and skilled political animal. He wins elections. Do not underestimate him.”
...
Trained as an Air Force pilot right out of A&M, Perry was “taught to trust your information,” Johnson said.
And associates say the same lessons that Perry learned when he was flying C-130s apply now.
“Pilots execute flight plans,” Miller said. “They have a plan, they fly a certain pattern and that’s the way he’s always operated — he has a flight plan for what he’s trying to do and he executes.”
Mike Baselice, Perry’s longtime pollster, said his client is of the Ronald Reagan school of management: “Trust people and manage well.”
..
“The political graveyard in Texas is buried full of people who have underestimated Rick Perry,” he said. “We had a U.S. senator who did that and she didn’t even make the run-off. Sooner or later, they’re going to figure out that he’s not just lucky, he’s good.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62214_Page5.html#ixzz1WSf9OLmu
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62214_Page4.html#ixzz1WSesdYji
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62214_Page2.html#ixzz1WSeWOcWu
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62214.html