This past weekend, as the victors of the Ames Straw Poll were being determined inIowa,Texasgovernor Rick Perry declared his candidacy for the presidency.\u00a0 The talking heads of \u201cconservative\u201d talk radio and elsewhere were giddy with excitement.\u00a0 For more than one reason, I, for one, do not share their enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
Already, comparisons between Perry and former President George W. Bush are being drawn in venues that are friendly to both our national parties.\u00a0 Admittedly, some commentators have noted the differences between the two, but these are largely stylistic and tangential.\u00a0 Their likenesses, though, are too obvious to be glossed over: both claim to be \u201cconservative\u201d; both are Texans; and both have served as governors of the lone star state.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These similarities alone are sufficient to engender no inconsiderable degree of concern in numerous voters.\u00a0 George W. Bush\u2019s approval rating was abysmal when he left office, and it hasn\u2019t risen appreciably since.\u00a0 The prospect of but another governor from Texasin the White House simply is not<\/em> palatable to millions and millions of Americans.\u00a0 That this apparently doesn\u2019t register with establishment Republicans goes to show how thoroughly blinded they are by ideology.\u00a0 It also signals that for all of their protestations to the contrary, these Republicans really haven\u2019t learned the lessons that they claimed to have learned from the electoral defeats they suffered in 2006 and 2008.<\/p>\n In politics, imagery not infrequently trumps substance.\u00a0 If ever proof was needed for this proposition, Barack Obama\u2019s election to the presidency is it.\u00a0 And the very image of anotherTexasgovernor as a Republican president doesn\u2019t promise to go any distance in helping Americans overcome the weariness over Bush from which, in varying degrees, they continue to suffer.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fiscal conservatives and libertarian-minded folks have always known that if there were any differences at all between Bush\u2019s governance as president and that of any given leftist, they were negligible.\u00a0 In other words, they have known that Bush is not \u201cthe conservative\u201d who he claimed to be.\u00a0 And with no thanks to his cheerleaders in the so-called \u201calternative\u201d or \u201cconservative\u201d media, more traditional-minded conservatives are, <\/em>thankfully, beginning to realize this.<\/p>\n Bush contributed to the further expansion of the federal government via Middle Eastern wars; a prescription drug benefit that served to strengthen Medicaid; No Child Left Behind, a program that, far from weakening the influence of the Department of Education over the states, consolidated its power; Faith-based Initiatives which rendered private religious and charitable organizations subservient to the federal government; his Home Owner Society that required the federal government to bring pressure to bear upon private-sector lending institutions to make sub-prime loans to unqualified applicants; and a whole lot more.<\/p>\n Perry has repudiated none of this agenda.<\/p>\n Yet in addition to all of this, Bush also made several attempts to grant a de facto amnesty to the millions of illegal immigrants residing within our country.\u00a0 Thankfully, such efforts proved unsuccessful.<\/p>\n This is relevant, though, because Perry gives no indications of being very much different from his predecessor on this issue.\u00a0TexasbordersMexicoand has for decades had all manner of problems with illegal immigration.\u00a0 Yet Perry has steadfastly refused to so much as lend support to the construction of a border fence, much less adopt the sorts of sensible measures in response to those problems to whichArizonahas had to resort.\u00a0 NumbersUSA has given Perry a D- on immigration related matters.<\/p>\n There is another consideration that should cool the enthusiasm that has greeted Perry\u2019s announcement on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perry didn\u2019t become a Republican until 1989.\u00a0 He was actually part of Al Gore\u2019s campaign for the Democratic Party\u2019s presidential nomination just the year before. Shortly after Gore lost to Dukakis, Karl Rove recruited Perry.\u00a0<\/p>\n This in and of itself doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that Perry isn\u2019t a conservative now, but that he spent his formative years, including much of his adult life, ingesting and defending the ideas of the Democratic Party and only became a Republican after GOP fixer Karl Rove came knocking at his door suggests that his \u201cconservatism,\u201d like that of Bush\u2019s, isn\u2019t authentic.\u00a0 That is, it suggests that, at the very least, it is more reasonable than not for voters to suspect that Perry will govern as president similarly to the manner in which Bush governed.<\/p>\n Charity and humility combine to caution us against rendering unduly harsh verdicts upon Perry this prematurely.\u00a0 But wisdom counsels us to avoid another four years of George W. Bush.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This past weekend, as the victors of the Ames Straw Poll were being determined inIowa,Texasgovernor Rick Perry declared his candidacy for the presidency.\u00a0 The talking heads of \u201cconservative\u201d talk radio and elsewhere were giddy with excitement.\u00a0 For more than one reason, I, for one, do not share their enthusiasm. Already, comparisons between Perry and former…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n