Rick Perry is your warning that Republicans never kicked their addiction to George Bush, and the kind of politics he represented. They never got over the frat-boy rhetoric, never got over the club-for-growth mentality about fiscal matters, never got over the authoritarian ideology that kept Bush in office, even after he screwed things up so badly for the average America, and got us into a needless war.
Rick Perry is your warning that as much as short-sighted rhetoric and political activism among some may see Obama as the problem, the real problem is a Republican Party that liked the power it had under Bush, and has done everything it can to stall any change from that.
Rick Perry is your warning that the GOP is not finished offering this nation leaders whose lack of wisdom, lack of compassion, lack of intellect present a much graver threat to this country's good fortunes than a leader who some might think doesn't cheerlead liberal ideas enough. Any election matchup between Barack Obama and Rick Perry will not be a match between a lesser and a greater evil, not with this great a contrast between the two. It will simply be a fight between good and evil.
I'm quite convinced that whether by acquisition or by nature, Rick Perry is a stupid and unwise man. That being said, I don't think he's a man whose stupdity extends to his ability to compete politically. He's like the high school jock who needs to copy off somebody else's test in order to pass, but who can still get elected class President because he knows how to charm and strong-arm people.
We should also not make the mistake of considering him simply as an individual. Bush was no great light of intelligence, but he was surrounded by ambitious, sociopathically partisan people who knew that they could leverage the folksy charm and resentment towards elites to put a fellow in charge who would cater to the whims and the interests of those same elites.
Take him seriously enough, I say, to understand that it is not the merits of this man that matter most, but what he can gather to his aid. The Republican Party was changed, I feel, during the last decade by the desperate need to make Bush a two term president. Now it's focused on making Obama a one term President. Rick Perry can exploit both aspects of the modern Presidency.
Which is not to say this: that Rick Perry is the best candidate they could muster, or even a good one. If we take this seriously, if we deconstruct him, if we contrast his brainlessness with Obama's skill and competence, if we put him on the defensive and make his incompetence apparent, we'll win this thing.
Hell, we should start trying to knock him out early, if only to put Perry's electorate on the back burner, to give them less reason to show up at the polls.
We shouldn't engage this next campaign arrogantly, or fighting against ourselves. The Republicans are committed to taking the country back for themselves, regardless of the consequences. They've learned to subordinate everything else to their rise, in the belief that they can fix anything that goes wrong on account of their obstructionism when they get into power. But they can't turn off the stupidity and the simplemindedness that they encouraged in order to avoid leading voters to deal with themselves and the issues with critical thought engaged. They've let too many leaders into the place with room temperature IQs.
We need to remind people that stupidity and simplemindedness have their consequences. Remind them of the debt ceiling debacle, the attempt to shutdown the government. Remind them of Bush's second term decisions, and ask them, do you want a third Bush term? Do you want a President who takes nothing more seriously than his own political survival, who will alienate our allies, shred the constitution, and get this country into needless trouble just to suit a superficial, gung-ho foreign policy attitude?
Folks, opposing this man shouldn't be a difficult decision. This shouldn't be seen as the lesser of two evils, except by those so poisoned by Republican-engineered disappointments that they can't even tell who their real enemies are anymore, what the real threat against their values is.
This should be a clear decision. Even if Obama is not the culmination of what you want, he's the shortest distance between where we are now and a better world. We don't need any further detours down the road of Republican insanity.