It’s Time to Buy Rick Perry Stock
Mitt Romney’s debate “win” won’t erase his evil socialistic Massachusetts history or make him any more likable—and by November 2012, Rick Perry just might not be too extreme or too Texas, says Michael Tomasky. The conventional wisdom is dumping hard on Rick Perry. Politico blared Friday, in the wake of his fumbling debate performance, that he might already be “Texas toast.” This tells me now is exactly the time to buy Perry stock. The reasons are simple. First, the likelihood that Perry will iron out the wrinkles and become a better debater and candidate over time is greater, and maybe far greater, than the likelihood that Mitt Romney will become more acceptable to conservatives. Second—well, let me save No. 2 for later.
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The conventional counterargument, of course, is that the establishment will circle the wagons around Romney. This might happen. Even Washington conventional wisdom ends up being correct every once in a while. But I can mount a highly plausible counter-counterargument for why it may not. Nothing has happened in these past two and a half years to suggest that this Republican establishment will buck or stand up to the hard right in any way. All we’ve seen these past two years is establishment Republicans accepting one extreme demand after another.
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Lastly, my case hinges—and here’s the second reason I’m buying Perry stock today—on the plainly observable fact that Mitt Romney is a really uninteresting and unappealing human being. Now, here, I’m really departing from the CW, because it is usually said by pundits that Romney has more crossover appeal than Perry, and polls tend to support this, although the differences so far are fairly marginal in most polls I see. Perry is said to be too extreme and too Texas. All that might be right.
On the other hand, Perry strikes me as more likely to pass—among Republicans—the old “do I want this man in my living room for the next four years?” test than Romney is. Who can possibly really like Romney? He’s like your boss, or the regional supervisor who comes by the office a few times a year. You tolerate him and suck up to him, but the experience is completely phony and awkward. I don’t know him and might have him wrong, but I’d just bet you a dollar that he doesn’t have many real friends. He has partners and associates and a swarm of acolytes who suck up to him because he’s rich. But he comes across as wooden, insincere (in a harmless rather than malevolent way), and totally emotionally unavailable. Perry? Well, I find him repugnant, of course, but I’m an East Coast liberal. I’m trying to look at this through others’ eyes. And I think he’s the kind of person Southerners in particular but conservatives everywhere, except maybe in the Northeast, can take a shine to. At least he seems to have some shards of personality.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/23/romney-unacceptable-to-conservatives-time-to-buy-rick-perry-stock.htmlI always think of that photo as Perry's "strutting rooster" pic.