The long serving Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, a former Al Gore Democrat and later convert to the Republican Party and now a fairly recently baptized tool for the free market tea party ideologues has an uncanny gift for changing costumes in the middle of an act.
A political reporter for the Houston Chronicle has shone a very bright light on the ease with which the Governor of Texas can and will change his politicking theatrical costumes, wigs and make up whenever opportunity knocks for Rick Perry.
If our governor is consistent about anything (other than good hair days) it's his penchant for changing his mind. Call it flip-flopping. Call it hypocrisy. But nobody does it better than our Perry.
It is, for me, the single most irritating thing about Texas' longest serving governor. But it's also one of his best weapons. While other candidates may be bound by silly, old-fashioned things like truth, and principle and vertebrae, Perry - the Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Tea Party Darlin' - is free to be whoever he needs to be in any given polling period.
He's an anti-government crusader who's a career politician who's collected a government paycheck for nearly 20 years.
He's a fiscal conservative who called on lawmakers to make up a budget shortfall in the tens of billions by living within our means. Yet, he's charging taxpayers $10,000 a month for a 6,386-square-foot rental mansion in the West Austin hills with seven baths and $1,000 Neiman Marcus window coverings.
Would be donors be warned. Rick Perry likes to live high on the hog while he throws teachers and state workers into the unemployment lines, thanks to his $27 budget deficit which is due to the Governor's unholy and pathological aversion to increased revenues. In order to look like a tough cowboy Rick Perry turned down extended federal unemployment benefits because he did not want to inconvenience his business donors. Rick Perry brags about bringing jobs to Texas while the Governor's track record on firing Texas workers tells us the opposite.
If the Governor were to run for POTUS Rick Perry will very likely require a countless number of John Edwards $400 hair cuts. The Governor has to look real pretty and sound down home charming so folks won't realize how mean and hurtful his policies are to children and his middle class constituents. For Rick Perry's willingness to slash school budgets thereby robbing Texas children of a future is not so very pretty. Students whose schools have weakened math and science programs will have a tougher time competing in a global market place. The higher paying jobs are in technical fields that require a high level knowledge of math and the various sciences. And by sciences I do not mean voodoo black magic nonsense such as creationism and intelligent designs.
He railed against federal stimulus funding, then took credit from a misinformed Fox news host who applauded him for not taking "any stimulus money," when, in fact, he signed a biennial budget in 2009 plugged with $12.1 billion in stimulus funding.
Texas would be a welfare state were it not for the injection of federal dollars. Our bi-polar government hating Governor lashed out at President Obama for not helping Texas combat the wild fires soon enough. I guess Rick Pretty's Texas is so damned broke we can't fight our own fires or pick up after our devastating hurricanes and tornadoes either.
During the last gubernatorial campaign, Perry made a big do-to about so-called "sanctuary cities" like Houston when, by his own standards, he's the governor of a sanctuary state. Houston officers don't ask about immigration status in the field, but neither do troopers with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The majority of the base of the Texas Tea Publican Party wanted Rick Perry and their elected officials to pass a sanctuary cities, i.e. an Arizona styled police state, show me your papers bill. But Houston grocery store magnet Charles Butt and home builder Bob Perry, sent their army of lobbyists to Austin. The lobbyists for Messrs. Perry and Butt won. The Tea Party constituents lost.
Rick Perry must have lost interest in his sanctuary cities bill because he has other bigger fish to fry than Bob Perry and Charles Butt. According to the Denver Post Rick Perry tried his best to woo the Libertarian billionaires from Kansas, the Koch brothers at a secret meeting held in Colorado several weeks ago. Lately Rick is off doing what Rick does best. He raises money for himself while his state burns.
Perry opposes the federal health care reform act, but considers it an "emergency" for government to force a woman considering an abortion to have a medically unnecessary sonogram.
While the governor is perfectly comfortable with government micromanaging women's wombs, he's appalled by such overreach in the form of, say, a bill that would have banned texting while driving. Our proudly "pro-life" governor saw nothing wrong with vetoing the anti-texting measure that would have surely saved lives.
Perry might support state rights but he sure as heck does not support women's rights. The Governor poked his long government nose into a woman's right to choose. Perry has one set of rules for himself, his Republican colleagues and major donors and another set for those who do not share his hypocritical values and beliefs.
BTW, Slick. How much are your trips out the state in order to promote yourself, your book and a run for POTUS costing Texas taxpayers?
Rick won't tell. I guess he has something to hide.
