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What’s Rick Gotta Do?
A few moments ago, Rick Perry finished giving perhaps the best announcement speech of any Republican candidate who’s jumped into the presidential field. Were this his first time angling for the Oval Office, he’d be sending shock waves through the field. But “were this his first time” is probably a phrase we’re going to have to get used to where Perry is concerned.
Now, the former Texas governor still has a pretty decent fan base at Ricochet. When we asked our members to choose between potential presidential candidates in May, Perry came in third (with 9%), although nowhere close to the top two, Scott Walker (39%) and Marco Rubio (21%). He also finished a respectable fourth when members were asked about their second-choice candidate. That’s far better than he’s faring in national polls, where the RealClearPolitics average has him tenth, behind — God help us — Donald Trump. Those numbers will almost certainly change now that he’s taking on a higher profile, but he’s still got a ways to go before he cracks the top tier (assuming that the concept of “top tier” even applies in a field that is itself larger than the Iowa or New Hampshire electorates).
My sense for a while now has been that there aren’t a whole lot of conservatives, especially here at Ricochet, who are dead set against Perry as a presidential candidate. In fact, many seem like they would really like to support him. But, let’s face it: once bitten, twice shy. He had all the same things going for him last time — executive experience, a military background, the Texas track record, the look of a lost member of the Brolin family — and he still managed to roll the car into the ditch.
So, here’s the question for those of you who have misgivings based on the 2012 experience (although I’d love to hear from any of you): What would Rick Perry have to do to convince you to support him again in 2016?
Published in Politics
As for Perry’s Texan accent, whether it is a benefit or a detraction will depend on how he wears it.
Americans have a soft spot for local flair and for pride in one’s home state. If Perry takes the attitude of “I love every state in America, but Texas will always be my home” I imagine the accent could work in his favor, on net.
However, if he touts Texas superiority or starts to show Texas swagger, he’s probably toast in any general election. Nobody likes a president who thinks his state is better than yours (one more reason red staters hate Obama).
And in many ways, GWB poisoned that well even more. To my ears and eyes, his Texas flair didn’t seem that genuine, but rather partly an air he put on to distance himself from his blue-blooded half. But to much of the public, it came off as someone overdoing the Texas swagger and chauvinism to compensate for other insecurities. Not a good precedent.
Casey, it’s sometimes hard to tell if you’re being serious or not, but I get the sense that you seriously don’t take Perry seriously. Is that correct? If so, what’s your beef with him? His resume is as strong as any other candidate’s out there.
-E
For me, Perry has to run a good campaign, avoid any serious gaffes, then do well in the debates. His 2012 foul-ups were embarrassing, and made him appear not ready. If he shows that those problems are in the past, he will be a very formidable candidate.
Perry is currently 3rd on my personal list of favorites, after Walker and Rubio, and it remains very early.
For Perry to get my support, he first has to convince Scott Walker to drop out of the race.
I don’t recall Obama saying anything about Illinois being the best state, but I could see him doing so. It isn’t like everything else he says isn’t either wrong or a flat-out lie, after all.
The really irritating thing about it, were it to happen, is that Illinois wouldn’t be great on its own merits, it’d be great because of its connection with Obama.
True. It’s not so much that Obama has touted the merits of his home state(s), as that he often makes his disdain of the rest of “flyover country” very clear. Such sentiments of superiority are off-putting no matter which candidate is talking about which region of the US.
I live in the Northeast. Folks up here are openly bigoted against southerners, and especially Texans.
Of course folks up here don’t vote Republican, so who really cares what they think?
A three-term conservative governor of a major state deserves to be taken seriously, and I’m prepared to take Perry seriously. I was prepared to do so in 2012 — with reservations. I have the same reservations still this time around, but I’ll listen.
To win my vote? That’s too far away to tell. I suppose, if I were to evaluate Perry, I’d put him on my personal 2nd tier: below Walker and Rubio, above Pataki and Paul.
Be on fire in the debates. So much emphasis is put on the debates and his performance last time left a lot to be desired. In the general election, he is going to have to go up against whoever the Democrats nominate. And the Republican, whether Perry or anyone else, is going to have to be a superstar. Someone, at long last, to make the case for our side.
I’m actually am being serious here. Perry has driven a stake into the ground and said “this is who I am and this is what I believe.” And we love that because that is what we believe too. But Ricochet has less than 10,000 members. (Or so I hear.) In a campaign, one has to be nimble and pick up the votes of people 20 feet to the left of the stake and 20 feet to the right.
Put him on stage in the San Dimas auditorium and he’ll whip the crowd into a frenzy. But he can’t win at Bonita with “San Dimas HS football rules!” and he can’t switch to “Bonita HS football rules!” So how can Rick Perry remain Rick Perry and win over Bonita? I don’t see how he can. It’s just not what he does.
I think this is true.
In 2012, Perry struck me as a political leader who knew his state superbly — who “got” Texas at a deep level and was able to dominate its politics, but was utterly unable to translate that ability into national appeal. I wondered once if Walker would have a similar limitation — and clearly he does not. Whether there is still an opening for Perry I do not know.
Incidentally, Walker also seems to know how to play to that “soft spot” for local attachment. Maybe playing up Wisconsin simply comes naturally (that is a governor’s job, after all), but I suspect he knows exactly what he is doing.
I think A.J. Liebling said it best in his opening sentences of The Earl of Louisiana:
The converse is also true, Christie’s bulbous bellicosity and Trump’s narcissistic doofusity are best served on the banks of the Hudson River.
Perry is the only presidential candidate I’d wager on to beat Putin in a fist fight. With the world going to hell the way it is, a candidate who can sell himself as having a backbone will have a distinct advantage among moderates and the right. Outside of liberal enclaves, people are sick of pajama boy men.
Not sure I’d vote for him in the primary, but I really think that that is his appeal. More so than even his record on jobs.
So you’re basically worried that he won’t have crossover appeal to moderates? Hopefully, you’re not worried about winning over liberals – we can’t reasonably expect any conservatives to do that.
What makes you think he would do worse than other conservatives in the general? After all, they are all trying to whip the San Dimas crowd into a frenzy.
-E
Not just moderates but non-Ricoheads. Somewhere there is a bubble full of people who are bananas for Huckabee. But Huckabee has no real appeal outside the bubble. If those people were realistic they would ditch Huckabee and choose to back the one of the top three that was closest to their bubble.
I think Rick Perry is the Huckabee of our Ricobubble. I don’t see where he has appeal to non-bubble people and I would prefer that we tip the scales in favor of the Perryist non-Perry out there. Which is probably Walker or Jindal.
But Rubio is going to win.
Non-policy comment: He looks pretty hot in the glasses and suits–And my brief glimpses of him, he seems comfortable. If he could also have a few “hard physcial work” shots to complement the polished look, his looks could be a factor–which will carry some weight with lower info voters…not the well-versed crowd here, but the people who actually decide the elections : )
that’s assuming he makes it that far in the primary process
Why so much assumption that he doesn’t actually need the glasses? As a native Texan I know what it means to admit the wearing out and failure of the body. I actually see the glasses as a statement of humility and acceptance of aging.
I think there’s a bigger issue: because of the accent, the swagger, and the perceived lack of articulation/intelligence, Perry reminds everyone of George W. Bush.
It’s not fair, but politics isn’t fair. Plenty of folks here are convinced that Jeb is unelectable solely because of his last name. The Bush brand is tainted, the Democrats would paint a Bush 2016 campaign as a return to the unpopular, discredited policies of W, and Jeb wouldn’t get a fair hearing on his own merits.
Perry would suffer the same fate. No matter what he says, what policy proposals he puts forward, or his actual record as governor, the Democrats will be able to paint him as W’s 3rd term.
No, Perry is styling. This is humility:
Ditto, more or less. I suppose I’d add that the second point has to do with governance as well as campaigning. The United States Congress isn’t the Texas legislature, and announcing your desire to get rid of various government departments doesn’t necessarily tell us much about what will really happen.
As to campaigning, Perry has a red-state disadvantage. A presidential campaign is different from any other, but it is more different from Perry’s previous campaigns than it is from Walker’s, or Rubio’s, or Jeb Bush’s. They have experience speaking to the kind of voter needed to win.
This is a huge, huge knock against him. It gives one the impression that he’s simply going to tell the crowd what it wants to hear, and then hire the same kind of political consultant crowd that in reality hates our guts, not to mention the kind of cabinet picks this foretells (“And let me introduce my new Secretary of State, Jon Hunstman”).
Perry is my first choice.
Perry’s denouncement of capitalism was out of character, so I’m happy to blame it on pain killers.
I like his goal of making the government an insignificant part of people’s lives. Where are the other candidates on this?
Scott Walker lost me when he joined the Jeff Sessions School of Economics. Marco Rubio lost me when he chose middle class pander over economic growth. Ted Cruz mystifies me (though I’m not necessarily against him) and Rand Paul shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near foreign policy.
I could support Bobby Jindal, who really, truly wants to overturn Obamacare. Where are the other candidates on that?
For me, it’s Perry or Jindal.
I was a nominal Perry fan in 2012 until he flamed out. I’m happy to accept the excuse that he jumped in rashly because the field was weak, and was doped up from the back surgery. He is, however, on probation with me.
Deliver on his promises from 2012, and I’d be willing to vote for him when the primary comes around. But first he’s going to have to demonstrate that he has better chops than Walker or Jindal. He’s currently my third/fourth choice. Probably tied with Rubio. That puts him in the race, but he’s got to beat the leaders.
I knew from inside sources that he was going to run two months before, but he had a grueling legislative session to get through first.
He was going to run but the back surgery and pain pills should have come in say January.
To those who understand the significance not yet fully realized of the tight shale oil and gas revolution his Pittsburg policy speech and white paper showed how well he understood manufacturing economy, even though he understated the effect.
Perry is in my top tier. Senators who spend all their time orating and not doing their job are not in that tier.
I’m missing where Perry’s Texas experience is a match for Walker’s heroic performance inacting critical public employee union reform under conditions resembling war as national Democrats and unions flooded the capital with thugs and even occupied and vandalized the state house. Yes, handed a sound business environment and an oil industry in these days of superheated gasoline prices Perry became the employment poster boy of the desolate Obama era, but what we need to produce similar effects on the national level is gutsy reform of DC’s pay to play culture and an end to the federal war on small business. Walker is a proven gutsy reformer, able to maintain his political capital against everything the unions and nationwide Democrats could throw at him, including two failed recall attempts.
So to start, Perry needs to prove to me that he can out Walker Walker and show pay to play DC and their Wall Street cronies the door. And Walker has to leave the race.
If it is a wildly successful “3rd term”, so much the better. The next president has the chilling, thankless task of unwinding our bizarre zero interest rate climate with its endless economic malaise while bringing a spendthrift federal government to heel and dealing with the ObamaCare fiasco and picking up the pieces of Obama’s macabre foreign policies. And much, much more.
On the plus side, with a few simple reforms we can restore the American business environment, revive the small business culture that is the engine of employment and innovation in this country, and plan the next generation of American military strategy with a relatively clean slate. By the time Obama leaves office, he may have the Navy down to one really big, effective ship.