Month: August 2011

Rick Perry isn't running from the George W. Bush comparison. He's embracing it:

Henry Farrell flags a brand-new paper arguing (pdf) that austerity measures by European governments make riots more likely.

"There is nothing conservative about the radical homosexual activist agenda which seeks to impose, under penalty of law, sexual anarchy," Matt Barber, Liberty Council Action.

Legally enforced anarchy is almost a Gingrichism.

Josh Rogin put out a piece last night detailing Perry's foreign policy. The gist:

"He will distinguish himself from other Republicans as a hawk internationalist, embracing American exceptionalism and the unique role we must play in confronting the many threats we face," one foreign policy advisor with knowledge of Perry's thinking told The Cable. "He has no sympathy for the neo-isolationist impulses emanating from some quarters of the Republican Party."

Predictably, neocons have been slavering over him. Commentary boss Jonathan S. Tobin:

As for the Middle East, Perry seems to be very much part of the pro-Israel consensus that embraces virtually all Republicans these days outside of libertarian extremists. He rightly blasted President Obama?’s Middle East policy speech in May as harmful to the U.S.-Israel alliance while touting his superior knowledge of the situation due to his “numerous” trips to Israel. He went even further than most in the pro-Israel community by actually calling on the Justice Department to prosecute Americans who joined the flotilla to break the blockade of Hamas-run Gaza.

So we'd be fusing our government with the Likudnik Israeli right. Good times. This is not the first time Tobin has gotten excited about Perry. National Review's Katrina Trinko:

According to the same source, Perry’s comments indicated he is a “governor who fully understands the unique and exceptional role that the U.S. plays in the world, and the need for U.S. strength and leadership and that we live in a dangerous world.” Perry does not have “the neo-isolationism that you might expect from certain people [close to] the Tea Party.”

The Weekly Standard's resident neo-fascist, Michael Goldfarb:

"He's a cowboy…You have to assume he'd shoot first and ask questions later — which would be nice after four years of a leading from behind, too little too late foreign policy."

(Photo: President George W. Bush, left, is greeted by U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, Chief of the National Guard Bureau, center, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry at the McAllen-Miller International Airport in McAllen, Texas, Aug. 3, 2006. By Sgt. Jim Greenhill.)

Newsweek provides a gallery of Bachmann pics that didn't make the cover, including the one above.

Live on radio this morning!

Apart from that gaffe, I thought Romney did rather well in this exchange. Civil and passionate. Maybe his game is getting better.

First bras, now hockey masks. Cheep, cheep!

Douthat pokes holes in the Obama campaign's plan to "destroy" Mitt Romney, arguing that the "weirdness factor" it will emphasize is actually his Mormonism:

The trouble is that winking at Romney’s faith doesn't fit into any of the broader issues  that will be front-and-center in the 2012 campaign. The Bush campaign's attempt to paint John Kerry as an effete, quasi-French flip-flopper who couldn't be trusted with the nation's defense made sense because 2004 was a wartime election, and the character issues went directly to questions about what Americans wanted in their commander-in-chief. I have a much harder time seeing how insinuations about the peculiarity of Romney's theological commitments fits into a narrative about why Americans shouldn't trust him with a lousy economy.

His Mormonism, in this sense, may turn out to be a lot like Barack Obama's connections to Bill Ayers and the Chicago left, which conservatives tried to make hay from in the waning days of the '08 election: In a different kind of race, it might be a serious liability, but in a campaign focused on jobs, debt and growth, trying to sow doubts about Romney’s faith will just make the Democrats look out of touch. They’d be much better off just accusing him of being a soulless corporate layoff artist and leaving it at that.

I'm not as sure as Ross is that the weirdness here is all about his religion (and I sure hope that wouldn't be exploited in any way). He is a little strange. I've never met anyone quite like him, both in his aw-shucks affability and a political flexibility that could win him a place in the Cirque du Soleil. There's a plasticness to him that makes him look as if he is always impersonating a human being rather than being one. Maybe it's just me. But I find him unrelatable and unlikable, and, for good or ill, that matters in a presidential candidate. If you have no compelling personality and your positions seem both cynically and strongly held, you're in trouble.

Larison maintains that the Obamaites won't need to mention his Mormonism because the Christianists will get creeped out anyway:

Concerns about Romney's religion carry more weight than weak guilt-by-association attacks.

 Among some conservative Christians, there is concern that electing a Mormon would represent a form of acceptance or an endorsement of a religion that they consider to be not only not Christian but fundamentally false and misleading. For those who insist that ours is or should be a "Christian nation," that is unacceptable. Among quite a few secular liberals and critics of "theocons," Mormonism represents the cultural conservatism they dislike, and the more alarmist arguments portray a Mormon President as a threat to the separation of church and state. Viewed this way, Romney's religion is not just a distinctive biographical detail, but something that potentially threatens the way that some conservatives and liberals understand what America is.