According to a McClatchy-Marist poll from Wednesday, Texas Governor Rick Perry is the Tea Party favorite to be president of the Untied States in 2012.
Perry has not made any announcement of running as of yet, but he comes in above Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and the others either announced or mulling still.
The poll shows that Perry garners 20% support with Mitt Romney coming in second at 17%. Palin comes in third at 16% while Michele Bachmann rings in at 12%.
Still, I am always suspicious about polls of “the Tea Party.” The problem is, there is no real criteria for being a Tea Partier. With Republicans and Democrats, even with Independents, we have long accepted ideas of what being “one of those” means. But we have no such criteria for “being” a Tea Partier. Further, there is no official way to decide if a person claiming to be a Tea Partier is one. At least with Dems and Repubs we have registration and history to judge claims by, but there are no ways to determine what a Tea Partier is.
As to Republicans, this poll finds their support differing from the so-called Tea Party voters. Respondents to the poll claiming to be Republicans chose Romney as the number one guy at 21%. Perry came in second at 15%, Rudy Giuliani came in at 12%, and Sarah Palin hit the 11% mark with GOPers.
All of this is bad news for Tim Pawlenty. The guy just can’t seem to get any traction at all. Not one of the poll’s categories gave Pawlenty more than a 6% rate of support.
As to Rick Perry I have one very big knock on him. In 1988 he was a heavy supporter of Al Gore for president! He even chaired Gore’s 1988 campaign in Texas. You see Perry was a Democrat until 1989. I have a problem understanding how an adult can go from supporting an extremist, nut like Al Gore one year and the next suddenly become a conservative Republican the next.
Still, he has been a very, very successful Governor and has led a state that has become number one in the country for job creation. He has a lot going for him, for sure.
June 29th, 2011 at 8:21 am
In 1988, Al Gore was a center-right Democrat. He had not yet turned in to the raving nut-case that he is today. Gov Perry made the decision to become a Republican earlier in life than did President Reagan. When Perry enters the race, he will be the most conservative electable candidate in the race. I suspect that the other conservatives in the race will eventually gracefully exit and endorse Perry. When it gets down to Perry v Romney, Perry will win and go on to beat Obama.
June 29th, 2011 at 8:23 am
Al Gore was universally considered a moderate in the 1980s. He was pro-life. He was pro-business, even authoring an important part of some tax cut legislation that went into effect under Ronald Reagan. He openly supported things like school prayer and, ironically, was an early advocate of entitlement reform that isn’t that much different at its core from what Paul Ryan recently proposed. Gore was pro-military at the time. He was a champion of 2nd Amendment rights.
Gore hadn’t gotten on his enviro-wacko kick yet. He hadn’t gone off the deep end yet. He was widely considered to be a moderate-to-conservative Democrat, even when Clinton picked him as his running mate. Little did anyone know how that would turn out. Obviously, as Perry said famously a few years back, “Al Gore has gone to hell” since that time.
As a Texas Conservative Democrat, Perry was supporting the most conservative person in the race against far left liberals Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis. Perry became a Republican the next year, but he’s always been conservative. In fact, he was more conservative as a Democrat in the Texas legislature than all but a few of our Republican state legislators today.
A lot of us conservative Texans were once Democrats. To us, the Republicans were the elitist country club Rockefeller types who thought guns were “icky.” There were more pro-life Democrats in my circle of friends than pro-life Republicans back then. It’s hard to believe now, but that’s how it was, really, until about 1994, when Texas dramatically shifted from Democrat to Republican, and the parties here became more in line with the national trends.
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds recently commented that he, too, voted for Al Gore, as a Tennesseean. Glenn was never some hippie, either. He was always very libertarian-minded, even back then. Al Gore fit that model, or so everyone thought, until he went another direction with his life in the Clinton administration and afterward.
June 29th, 2011 at 8:44 am
#2 Ole Texas Has-Been
Nice post, that pretty well covers it. IMO, Gov Perry will be inaugurated as our 45th President in 2013.
June 29th, 2011 at 9:13 am
Sorry, but talking about Reagan’s change over in comparison to Perry’s is irrelevant. Reagan changed and then spent decades learning, studying, and writing to arrive at his positions… all BEFORE he ran for office. Perry was a Democrat one year as a politician and a Republican the next. Reagan’s change was gradual and steady. Perry’s was a turn on a dime.
This does not mean I am against Perry, though. I am just cautioning people on his history.
June 29th, 2011 at 9:39 am
#5 Warner Todd Huston,
Perry has maintained a conservative philosophy from the beginning. He left the Democrat party for the GOP when it became clear that the Democrats had turned left and the GOP was becoming the party of concervatives in
Texas.
Reagan became a Republican in 1962 and ran for governor of Califonia in 1966. Perry became a Republican in 1989 and ran for the Texas State Secretary of Agriculture in 1990. Perry beat and very well-known liberal Democrat by the name of Jim Hightower.
Perry is a conservative, by most standard measurements. When he enters the race, he should be taken seriously by his opponents, as he will immediately be formidable. If he is the nominee, as I expect, he will beat Obama.
June 29th, 2011 at 9:40 am
#5 was for #4, sorry for the mis-referenced post.
June 29th, 2011 at 9:41 am
What happened to Frank and his daily updates on the Ras Tracking poll?
June 29th, 2011 at 10:12 am
I have no doubt that if Perry decides to run, and he will, that he will clobber Romney in the primaries, barring some scandal. Perry is the natural candidate to challenge and defeat Obama.
June 29th, 2011 at 10:15 am
It would have been easier for Perry to stay a Democrat for a few more years. Instead, he took the risk of taking on an extremely popular, populist Democrat Jim Hightower (now a newspaper columnist). The GOP establishment gave Perry zero support. Everyone counted him out. But he beat the odds and won as a Republican in a Democrat-dominated state. Perry and, ironically, KBH, were the first two Republican statewide elected officials that sort of presaged the 1994 wave here.
The difference in that 1990 race is that Senator Hutchison had the establishment backing in her race. She was supposed to be the future of the party, according to the establishment. Look how that turned out. She was a total RINO pork queen. Perry has been the most conservative governor we’ve maybe ever had.
June 29th, 2011 at 10:23 am
Like I said, comparing Reagan’s change to Perry’s is apples and oranges. I do agree that the establishment has never been on Perry’s side, tho.
June 29th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
YOU are the extremist nut.
Got it?
I know what a Tea Partier is.
An extremist nut.
June 29th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
… be sure and thank the day nurse in your home for allowing you on the computer today, won’t you Flo?
June 30th, 2011 at 4:13 am
#9 Perry and, ironically, KBH, were the first two Republican statewide elected officials that sort of presaged the 1994 wave here.
Respectfully – The late Senator John Tower disagrees