President Rick Perry: Five Reasons It Will Happen, Five Reasons It Won't
He beat a Democrat in Texas, in the Tea Party year of 2010. A stunning achievement. Still, from now on the press will breathlessly be reporting on speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire, and we'll all have to plod through the Kabuki act until he tosses his hat in the 2012 ring.
Will he succeed? Of course. And of course not.
5. Ready money
Perry knows how to milk corporate donors as well as anyone, and Texas is home to a lot of corporations willing to pay big bucks for, to paraphrase Animal House, a certain morally casual attitude in their government towards policing pollution and any other "interference" with good old American capitalism.
On the other hand:
Ask President Phil Gramm how that worked out.
4. He's a Reagan, a W, when it comes to policy wonkiness
Leave it to the nerds and let me speak platitudes, in other words. It's a time-tested formula for GOP success.
On the other hand:
Surely the national media won't let another major-party candidate get away without being able to intelligently discuss policy in a public forum. (Uh, right?) Not to mention they'll be plenty of competition in the GOP primaries when it comes to "don't bother me with details" campaigners.
3. His fervent embrace of the Tea Party guarantees him grass-roots strength
You can't hug Tea Partiers any harder than suggesting you'd like to secede from America (if the wrong guy is President). Sarah Palin ran away from her husband's involvement with a secessionist group; as long as Rush and Glenn Beck are for it, Perry's fine with that stuff.
On the other hand:
It's easy to out-rightwingnut a guy like Bill White; you try to flank a GOP primary crowd that could include Palin, Tom Tancredo and Jim DeMint, and you're going to have a very difficult task convincing the non-Tea Party America (i.e, the vast majority of America) that you deserve the White House.
2. He's a rugged Texas guy who shoots coyotes and probably clears brush
If Perry doesn't clear brush regularly, expect him to start soon. (Not to mention buying a photo-op ranch like W.) We don't know exactly why GOP Presidents like Reagan and W were such fanatic brush-clearers, but it's apparently a prerequisite.
On the other hand:
Again, at some point, America will tire of that, right? And killing a coyote on an Austin jogging path is not quite the same as gunning one down in the wild, untamed deserts of Texas.
1. Perry will be running against Barack Obama
And we all know, judging from Texas TV ads during this campaign, that Barack Obama is the single most unpopular politician to hold office since whatever socialist last lived in the White House.
On the other hand:
Yes, Perry will definitely win the states of the Old Confederacy, except maybe Florida. He may find out that in the rest of the country, Fox News and the Tea Party doesn't represent quite the Tidal Wave some echo-chamber residents would like to believe. Unless Obama is somehow Jimmy Carter redux, 2012 is not setting up to be the GOP cakewalk some seem to think it will be.
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