Short Answer: Rick Perry has an arguably positive jobs record to run on because the Dallas Branch of the Federal Reserve has reported that Texas created more than one third of all new jobs created in the USA during the past two years, a new Texas Miracle (the previous Texas Miracle having been W's highly touted ejikation refarms that he ran on in 2000).
If you are not concerned about Perry running on the Texas job creation numbers that the Dallas Fed officially reported, look below the squiggly thing and consider the remarks in a speech to a local Dallas trade group by Richard W. Fischer, President of the Dallas Fed, in which he squarely credits Texas job growth to Perry's insane, laissez faire Republican agenda of no taxes, no services and no regulation and corporate supremacy in all things.
A look within the United States makes clear the overriding influence of fiscal and regulatory policy. Monetary policy is uniform across the 50 states; the base rate of interest paid on a business or consumer loan or a mortgage in Michigan, California, Ohio or New York is the same as that paid in Texas. Yet there is a reason that Michigan and California each lost more than 600,000 jobs over the past decade while Texas added more than 700,000 over the same period. There is a reason that the population of Ohio grew by only 183,000 residents over the past 10 years, while Texas grows by that number every five and a half months. There is a reason that with each passing census, the state of New York has been losing congressional seats and Texas has been adding them; a reason that, in the recent census, California failed to gain any while Texas gained four. There is a reason that, as documented in the Jan. 12 issue of the Wall Street Journal, college graduates—the best and brightest of the successor generation—are leaving New York and Cleveland and Detroit and moving to Austin, Texas.[6] There is a reason no state in the union houses more Fortune 500 headquarters than Texas. There is a reason for the disparate employment growth that has taken place in the 12 Federal Reserve districts over the past two decades, data that are documented in the graph at your place setting.
That reason has nothing to do with monetary policy. It has everything to do with the taxation and fiscal and regulatory policies of the states.
The prospect of a Perry-Obama contest in 2012 hasn't received much respect at Daily Kos. Our colleague
Vyan's well received
diary suggested that in a general election Perry will have trouble with his record on the death penalty, the 16th and 17th Amendments (income tax and direct Senatorial elections), entitlements, health care, and stimulus plan hypocrisy. Issues like these, of course, are exactly what could win Perry the Republican nomination. But the general election won't focus much on most of these issues, except perhaps entitlements. Given that there won't soon be an explosion of national job creation or a precipitous fall in the unemployment rate, the main issues in 2012 will be jobs, employment and the struggling economy. But the economy isn't struggling in Texas, it seems to be objectively booming.
The idea that Perry, the longest serving governor in the country, should take credit for the boom, the idea that it really is a boom, and the idea that the boom won't be undone by state fiscal austerity due to huge budget shortfalls Texas faces in the next biannual budget, have all been debunked by such luminaries as Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman. Rubin Navarette and Jim Hightower. But the audience reached by these notables includes virtually no one who will influence the Republican nomination, and otherwise their views do little more than set-up a debate for the Presidential campaign on an issue that probably needs no set-up.
The ability of Perry to run on jobs is found nowhere else in the Republican field. Moreover, it enables Perry to run a classic Rovian campaign against President Obama, attacking the President in an area that should be one of his strengths, considering he saved the country from George Bush's Great Recession. Perry also can use the Texas jobs and other economic numbers in riposte to the President's best answer to Republican economic ideas, that we tried them and they didn't work. Perry's frighteningly simple response: You didn't try hard enough and yes they do.
It's all a lie, of course, but when has that ever impeded any Republican campaign. The problem is that Perry's side of the argument is simple. The entirely true and well founded arguments debunking the ideas that Perry or Republican regulatory and tax policies deserve credit for the apparent boom in Texas are regrettably complex, take time to explain and effort to understand. This does not bode well for a Presidential campaign in which the outcome will be determined by independent voters, not partisans.
Within the next decade, Republican policies in Texas will be demonstrable failures and will be abandoned as Democrats become resurgent. Budget austerity, drought, wildfires, continued climate degradation, pollution, toxic sites, the intolerable costs of providing no adequate social safety net, etc. will soon catch up with Texas, but not soon enough to have much effect on the 2012 election.
If you're not scared yet, consider these remarks from one of the debunkers of Perry's economic record who, as a newspaper reporter and columnist in Dallas, knows the Governor very well:
First, I should say that despite my better judgment, I like Rick Perry. I disagree with some of his politics, and I think a lot of what he says and does is just political theater designed to sell his favorite product: Rick Perry.
Yet, he is intensely likeable -- at least, one on one. On stage, in a debate, it's a different story. He becomes snarky, and his social skills go out the window. And suddenly, it's easy to dislike the man.
Up close, his secret weapon is that quality that Bill Clinton possessed -- the ability to lock in on someone and make him feel as if he is the only person in the room. It's one of the reasons that I'd like to see Perry run for president.
He's the kind of candidate to whom everyday Americans can relate. He has an abundance of political skills, which explains why this career politician has never lost an election. He is affable, charming and a great campaigner.
But none of that seems to matter much to his Republican supporters around the country. For them, Perry's major selling points are jobs, jobs and more jobs. Many of those who are pushing Perry to enter the presidential race are fiscal conservatives who think his No. 1 asset is that Texas has been on a rampage for the past 10 years creating jobs and luring companies away from states such as New York and California.
The jobs are real enough. The Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas recently estimated that, since June 2009, Texas has produced about 37% of the new jobs in the country. Perry claims the figure is closer to 48%. Either way, it's impressive.
Rick Perry is
coming. Rick Perry is a sitting Governor in a state that can be portrayed as thriving in an election focused on jobs. the economy and the validity of Republican governing philosophy. Rick Perry will storm to the Republican nomination with his jobs record, political skill and impeccable Tea Party credentials. Rick Perry is playing the ant in a Texas remake of Aesop's Fable,
The Grasshopper and the Ant, but Winter won't come until after the 2012 election. Rick Perry is very very scary.