Apparently, there was a very unpresidential moment during Rick Perry's first full day of campaigning when he said this about the Chairman of the Federal Reserve:
Mr. Perry brought the Fed directly into the campaign debate Monday night by saying it would be "almost ... treasonous" for the central bank to play politics by expanding the money supply.
"If this guy prints more money between now and the election," Mr. Perry said in Cedar Rapids Monday night, without naming Mr. Bernanke, "I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we—we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas."
This, of course, is being spun by our objective press as a threat of physical violence, as well as a serious promise by Rick Perry to put Ben Bernanke on the dock and then hang him from the nearest yardarm. Also, the president himself has gone on one of his "civility" tangents, saying Gov. Perry should be "very careful" about what he says now that he has entered the arena.
Rick Perry also says he doesn't believe in global warming.
Well.
Is there an alternate universe where criticizing the Federal Reserve for debasing the dollar is considered a "gaffe?" As a matter of fact, there is. It's the universe know as Alpha Cen-Beltway, where even "conservatives" Peter Wehner and Karl Rove will rush to the microphones to join Democrats in calling for a right-winger to be more "civil." Rove must has forgotten his experiences with left-wing civility back during the Plame-gate investigation.
The one good thing to come out of the Donald Trump boomlet was the lesson that any candidate who comes out hard against Obama, DC, the Democratic Party, and their enablers in the RNC will instantly bolt to the top of the opinion polls. Perry is simply among the first GOP politicians to apply this lesson which is so screamingly obvious that the only people who don't get are the moderate Republicans who would rather administer the welfare state, rather than work to dismantle it.
(and, as an aside, isn't it funny how when someone says he doesn't believe in global warming, they are instantly dubbed an ignoramous, or worse? But say you believe in global warming, and you are an enlightened philosopher king. Yet global warming proponents don't do much more than opponents: they simply say something like "scientists say..." But, it's not like Green politicians are any better able to discuss the "science" than non-Greens. All of them are just reading off cue cards, too.)
This isn't meant to be some great endorsement of Perry, btw. My problem with his Ben Bernanke statement was not its substance, but the way he expressed himself. Frankly, he sounded like he was trying to "sound Texan" to show us what a rough 'n' ready fella he is. Right now, Michelle Bachmann is the best among the three front runners at bringing the rhetorical rafters down around the heads of America's elites.
Also, Perry has trouble coming from his right flank where influential conservatives like Michelle Malkin and Erick Erickson are reminding us of the Perry Administration's creepy attempt to mandate that teen-aged Texans be vaccinated against HPV. It's a troubling story, both for the overweening hand of the state angle, and for the "crony capitalism" angle. (Merck was pushing the vaccinations because it wanted to make more $$ off its HPV patent). It's also one that Perry is trying to brush off with a "I made a mistake"-style excuse that may or may not work.
On the other hand, Michelle Bachmann is in Big Trouble because she mistakenly hailed the birth of Elvis Presley...on the date of his death. If she ever retools her campaign, she should fire the guy who drafts her 3x5 cards, as Bachmann makes these sort of goofy mistakes all the time. Maybe they're small-time errors, but they do speak to a certain inattentiveness (I was vaguely aware that Elvis died in August. I also know how to spell "potato"). Without them, SNL and the Left would have little with which to attack Bachmann, and would be forced to start dealing with her rock-solid substantive attacks on Obamism.
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