Mon Sep. 19, 2011 3:00 AM PDT
In January 2008, former US senator Phil Gramm took the podium at a confab hosted by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation to introduce the keynote speaker—and his political protégé. "I feel confident in saying that Rick Perry, in terms of hard achievement, is the greatest governor of my lifetime," he gushed.
A short time later, stepping up to the mike and grinning broadly, Gov. Perry returned the compliment: "I love Phil Gramm!"
The pair share a lengthy history stretching from Perry's days as an undergraduate at Texas A&M, where he was one of Gramm's economics students, to the state Capitol, where the Texas governor's policies have been significantly influenced by the man he's called "a mentor to me in Texas politics."
Most Americans remember Gramm as the grumpy co-chair of John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, who resigned over his controversial remark that America was "a nation of whiners" and claim that the country's economic woes were merely the product of a "mental recession." It was the very same Gramm, who, just hours before Congress recessed for the Christmas holiday in December 2000, slipped a measure into an 11,000-page bill that deregulated the commodity markets and helped transform Wall Street into a casino. The legacy of "Foreclosure Phil" helped lay the groundwork for the financial tsunami that torpedoed the American economy.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/rick-perry-phil-gramm-texas
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