SALON

Thursday, Nov 12, 2009 5:40 PM UTC

Texas Gov. Perry: Obama “hell-bent” on socialism

The governor will apparently say anything to get Tea Partiers' votes in his 2010 primary

By

Topics: 2010 Elections, War Room, Healthcare Reform, Immigration, Tea Parties, Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., Rick Perry, Texas,

For a conservative Texas politician locked in a major primary battle, throwing some punches at President Obama is a pretty obvious tactic. But, though it might win him some Republican votes, Gov. Rick Perry is pretty clearly out of his weight class when he tries to go after the president.

Perry’s making news today because of some frankly crazy comments he made in Midland, Tex. on Wednesday. The whole speech was inflammatory, but what’s grabbed the most attention is the governor’s claim that the Obama administration is “hell-bent toward taking America towards a socialist country.”

At this point, that’s really not that shocking coming from Perry. Facing a stiff challenge for renomination in 2010 from fellow Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the governor has moved steadily to the right, and worked to align himself with the Tea Party protests. Remember, this is the guy who publicly entertained the idea of seceding from the union back in April.

Beyond the headline quote about socialism, though, it’s worth noting that Perry fails to say almost anything true or accurate in the almost six minutes of video available online. Let’s do a quick rundown.

  • Perry’s claim: “This administration is interested in punishing Texas.”
  • Real world: OK, obviously this isn’t technically verifiable, but for real, Gov. Perry? Because your evidence for a preposterous piece of demagoguery like that is pretty thin. Which brings us to:
  • Perry’s claim: The Obama administration is shipping undocumented immigrants to Presidio, Tex., taking them to the border, and releasing them on the bridge over the Rio Grande. From there, they’re faced with the choice of braving the Mexican desert or walking back into lovely Presidio. Naturally, Perry is concerned that Obama is purposefully flooding the tiny, all-American town with hardened criminals.
  • Real world: You think I’m exaggerating what Perry says. And I am, but only barely. (See the video, below.) Besides the fact that none of the people deported through Presidio have been accused of any crimes, they also aren’t just released on the bridge. They’re taken over the border, where Mexican officials buy them bus tickets to their hometowns. And it’s not as if this routing was chosen to spite Texas, as Perry explicitly claims. The idea is that it breaks the smuggling cycle to deport immigrants from somewhere other than where they entered the U.S.
  • Perry’s claim: The Tea Parties scared Senate Democrats into opposing a public option. Says Perry, “You better believe they’re listening!”
  • Real world: Look, Democrats are well-known fraidy-cats. But the claim that the Tea Parties got the public option killed in committee in the Senate ignores the fact that one of the two Senate committees in charge of healthcare, in fact, passed the public option. And it’s now about to be brought to the Senate floor for debate, where it has a reasonable chance of passing and becoming law.
  • Perry’s claim: Moving on briskly to environmental policy, Perry inveighs against a cap-and-trade plan to limit emissions with typical arguments about how it would ruin the economy. He then adds something that I’d never heard before. “Even the EPA director herself said, ‘If you pass that piece of legislation, it will make zero impact on our environment.’”
  • Real world: Curious where this came from, I did a quick Google search. The first site to pop up was www.southfloridateaparty.com. The Tea Partiers quote EPA chief Lisa Jackson saying, “U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels.” They, and Perry, are making an obviously willful misinterpretation here. Jackson isn’t saying cap-and-trade will make zero impact. She’s saying the U.S. can’t stop climate change on its own. Misreading Jackson’s statement this way is like saying that, because one person can’t singlehandedly lift a couch, the damn thing is obviously impossible to move. May as well leave it there. How helpful of you, governor. 

Gabriel Winant is a graduate student in American history at Yale. More Gabriel Winant.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 55 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
353 points354 points | 114 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
61 points62 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
40 points41 points | 2 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
42 points43 points | 4 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
37 points38 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations