As predictable as an apocalyptic tear running down Glen Beck’s face sometime during his show, all the Tea Partiers in Texas are suddenly pleading for federal assistance in the wake of the fire storms that devastated the state last week. The most hypocritical (i.e., conservative) supplicant is the impeccably mediocre governor himself, Rick “The Secessionist” Perry, who has in the past constantly drawled his disapproval of “other states” [read liberal New England ] that take federal dollars.
Perry, you may recall, bragged about using a laser-sighted pistol to randomly kill coyotes he happened upon while jogging. Nobody believed the exercise part, but his personality did suggest an eagerness to shoot living things, which in Texas won him the election. Like most Tea Party types, his inability to understanding basic tax and accounting principles quickly left Texas teetering on bankruptcy. The fire storms, which ran wild due to drought and a lack of taxes to fund effective firefighting efforts, gave the Lone Star state the push Perry failed to muster.
Lacking funds to deal with the disaster (Texas has the second largest deficit in the Union Perry wants to secede from), and having poisoned the well of political discourse with his anti-tax and anti-gummit bravado, Perry was left with the choice of asking for federal help or condemning it. He did both. In what was perhaps the most graceless act of political gaucherie since Nixon kept the puppy, Perry asked for federal assistance with the churlish complaint: “Why are you taking care of Alabama?”
The “you” here is Obama, who in Perry’s federalist demonology, is punishing him for being a conservative secessionist Tea Party patriot or something. His conservative memes on full autopilot, his request included a condemnation of the ever-menacing “faceless bureaucrat,” who was obviously making life hard for him. So it wasn’t all Obama’s fault – a big compromise for a Republican these days.
An unbiased observer (or even a sentient parakeet) might conclude Perry seems unable to understanding the difference between property damage and loss of life (the latter being tragically enormous in Alabama). This pretty much sums up the inner irresponsibility of his hag-ridden party, as does this entire sordid incident. It should be noted that to shore up his Religious Right street cred, he did first try a higher authority – dedicating three days of prayer for rain to stop the fires. But that didn’t work, and now Texas has turned its lonely eyes to “you.” With an evil eye thrown in.
And so even a request for federal tax dollars has become, in Perry’s steady conservative hands, a polemic against federal tax dollars, and the system saving his sorry Texas ass. It’s what they do.
For his extraordinary efforts in promoting conservative hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance, Perry is this week's recipient of the Left-Wing Noise Machine's Flying Monkey Award.