(For those of you that have no idea who Rick Perry is, nor his record,  Peter Morrison has written a very fair post, I think, to get you up to speed on the Texas Governor.  Visit him directly at petermorrisonreport.com .  W2)
Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, is widely believed to be considering a run for the GOP presidential nomination.  If he does
choose to run, many political observers predict he will become one of the frontrunners of the contest, as the current crop of candidates, with a couple of exceptions, is less than overwhelming.
More than a few say that once Rick Perry officially declares his candidacy for the Republican nomination, the race will
immediately boil down to a contest between him and Mitt Romney.
For millions of potential Republican voters, this is the first time they’ve even heard of Perry, and now he’s being touted as a possible serious contender for the GOP nomination.  So who is Rick Perry, and what does he stand for?  Is he a true conservative who deserves your vote?
Rick Perry certainly brings some strong conservative credentials to the table.  As the longest serving governor in the history of Texas, he has fairly consistently come down on the side of traditional moral values.  He has never wavered in his outspoken opposition to abortion, and is currently on the hit lists of the National Organization for Women and the National Abortion Rights Action League for signing a “sonogram” bill into law.  This legislation, which Perry personally pushed legislators to pass,
requires an abortionist to tell a pregnant woman how big her unborn baby is, provide her with a sonogram image of the baby, and make her wait 24 hours before getting an abortion.
He is not ashamed to talk about God, or ask for His help and guidance, no matter what the ACLU thinks.  Leftists were apoplectic
this past spring when Governor Perry declared April 22-24 Days of Prayer for Rain to end the long Texas drought.  They’re also
enraged that he has declared August 6, 2011 a Day of Prayer and Fasting to seek God’s guidance and wisdom for our nation’s future.
Liberals also hate him because he makes no bones about believing that marriage is between one man and one woman.  One of Rick Perry’s best qualities is that he refuses to ignore his Christian faith when it comes to making decisions.  He has also been a consistent fiscal conservative his entire career, even back in the 1980s when he was still a Democrat.  His staunch opposition to a state income tax and efforts to keep other taxes as low as possible have made Texas the envy of the rest of the country when it comes to job creation.  During his decade as
governor, Texas has created more jobs than the other 49 states combined, which is quite remarkable.  His leadership on tort reform
has made Texas a magnet for companies seeking to avoid frivolous lawsuits.  When Barack Obama was printing money like there’s no tomorrow, Rick Perry stood on principle and refused to accept over half a billion dollars in stimulus money.  He further enrages liberals and leftists by refusing to stop talking about the importance of the 10th Amendment, which was specifically written to give individual states a lot of authority, and strictly limit the scope and power of the federal government.
Perry has also demonstrated that he is not afraid to call a spade a spade, even at the risk of angering the GOP establishment.  He has
caught a ton of flak for stating that George W. Bush was never a fiscal conservative.  Note that President Bush gave us the infamous prescription drug bill, which will wind up costing American taxpayers trillions of dollars in the long run.  Bush also partnered with the late Ted Kennedy on the No Child Left Behind Act, which has already cost the nation tens of billions of dollars, has led to widespread cheating and other abuses, has forced perfectly good schools to shut their doors, and has done absolutely nothing to close the achievement gap, which was supposedly the main purpose of the bill.
Governor Perry called NCLB “a monstrous intrusion into our affairs”, and he’s absolutely right.  He said Bush and his GOP
controlled Congress were fiscally irresponsible, “spending too much money, frankly, on programs that we can’t afford and don’t need.” Again, Rick Perry was absolutely right, and millions of Americans
agreed; their disgust at George Bush’s profligate spending played no small part in Obama’s 2008 victory.  Some members of the GOP establishment have never forgiven Perry for criticizing President Bush, but he has stuck by his guns and has refused to retract a single word.
With this kind of record, it’s easy to see why a Rick Perry candidacy would appeal to millions of conservative voters.  However, this is just one side of Governor Perry’s record, so it’s an incomplete portrait.  It’s important to look at all aspects of a politician’s record to get a truly accurate picture of what kind of president he would make.  How many times have we gotten fooled in the past because we refused to take off our rose colored glasses
concerning a particular politician, preferring to see only what we wanted to see?  Like all politicians, Rick Perry has some negatives, and it’s vitally important that we’re aware of them.  We need to see the big picture before voting on the next person to occupy the White House.
The first thing to discuss is the fact that in 2007 Governor Perry endorsed the “moderate” Rudy Giuliani for president in the run-up to the 2008 primaries.  As we all know, any GOP politician labeled a “moderate” by the mainstream media is actually a far left liberal, and Giuliani was no exception, favoring gun control and opposing efforts to ban abortion, to just name two of his positions. There was widespread speculation that Giuliani had promised  Perry the VP slot, or that it was at least on the table, in exchange for the endorsement.  No matter the reason behind it, this was not Rick Perry’s finest hour.
Nor was his treatment of Texas Supreme Court Justice Steven Wayne Smith.  Smith should be a hero to conservatives everywhere, as he was the lead attorney in Hopwood vs. Texas, which led to a landmark ruling against affirmative action and racial preferences in 1996.  Several years later Smith ran for the Texas Supreme Court against Xavier Rodriguez. Rodriguez, who also called himself a moderate, had been appointed to the court by Governor Perry, no doubt as part of an effort to reach out to minorities.  After Smith defeated Rodriguez in 2002, Rick Perry gave Smith the cold shoulder.  In 2004 he personally recruited Paul Green to oppose Smith in the GOP primary, and lent his voice to tens of thousands of automated “robo calls” denouncing Smith.  Unfortunately, his efforts paid off, and Steven Wayne Smith, one of the most conservative judges in Texas history, lost his seat on the Supreme Court.   This sorry episode of petty vindictiveness revealed an ugly side of Rick Perry that few Texans had suspected.
Equally dismaying was the HPV vaccine scandal of a few years back. In 2007, Governor Perry issued an executive order mandating that all sixth grade girls in Texas be given a vaccine (Gardasil) against a sexually transmitted disease.  The vaccine, which consisted of three different injections, had been on the market for less than a year.  Parents all over Texas were naturally outraged at this, for many reasons, but Rick Perry refused to yield,
straining to justify his actions as “pro-life”.  Then it came out that some of his associates had ties to the company that makes Gardasil.  He still refused to rescind the order.  The legislature finally voted to overturn his executive order by votes of 119-21 (House) and 30-1 (Senate).  This episode leaves Texas conservatives mystified to this day.
Less surprising is the fact that Rick Perry is often seen as being in the pocket of big business.    This came to a head a few years ago when the governor angered conservatives by pushing for the Trans Texas Corridor, a massive highway building project.  It wasn’t needed, and the price tag was nearly two hundred billion dollars, but big business wanted it, and Rick Perry went along with them.  Some have speculated that the Trans Texas Corridor, intended to be a multinational private commercial highway connecting Mexico, the US and Canada, was the linchpin of a globalist plan for a North American Union, and that Perry was willingly carrying their water for them to sell the plan to the conservative base.  Perry’s attendance and speaking at a 2007 Bilderberg group meeting in Istanbul, Turkey certainly doesn’t help his case. Rick Perry’s coziness with big business also plays a part in what is without a doubt his biggest flaw, which is his refusal to make
any serious attempts to do something about the ongoing invasion of Texas by illegal aliens.  Not only has he not tried to stop it, he has actively opposed efforts by others to do so, and even rewarded the invaders by signing a bill that lets their children pay
in-state tuition at Texas colleges and universities.  Soon after becoming Governor, he said Mexican “President Fox’s vision for an open border is a vision I embrace.” He said that Arizona’s landmark immigration law, SB 1070, “wasn’t right” for Texas.  He opposes a
fence on the border to stop illegal aliens in their tracks.  While he will occasionally throw conservatives a bone on the illegal immigration issue, by backing one minor bill or another, it’s clear his heart isn’t in it, and it just makes him look unprincipled.
So there you have it.  That’s my honest conservative appraisal of Rick Perry, and I’ve tried to be as fair as possible.  Clearly he would be an improvement over Barack Obama when it comes to fiscal and most social issues, as well as appointing judges to the federal courts.  However, on the all-important issue of whether Washington, DC will finally take action to prevent America from being turned into a Third World country via immigration, there is no reason to believe he would be any better than Obama.
If Rick Perry really wants to win the trust of conservatives, he needs to make some big changes.  First, he needs to demonstrate that he’s not a pawn of big business by occasionally taking some positions that differ from their agenda.   Second, he needs to make
it clear that he has finally grasped just what a threat illegal immigration is to our way of life, by taking some real actions to put a stop to the invasion.   A good first step would be to call the Legislature back into session and keep calling special sessions until the RINO leadership finally delivers on sanctuary cities, anti-groping legislation and mandatory E-Verify. If and when he announces for President, he should sign the NumbersUSA Immigration Enforcement Pledge.
California used to be the envy of the nation, and a conservative
stronghold, but thanks to illegal immigration the once Golden State is now a basket case, and conservative Republicans haven’t got a prayer of being elected to statewide office.  This is the fate the entire country faces if we don’t get serious about stopping illegal immigration immediately.  When Rick Perry understands that, and starts actively working to put a stop to illegal immigration, he’ll be a presidential candidate conservatives can vote for with confidence.
Conservatives should note that Tom Tancredo endorsed Mitt Romney back in 2008, and right now there’s just not a whole lot of indication that Rick Perry is any better than Romney on immigration.  The Republican primaries are not a time for blind loyalties to personalities (and I think anyone can admit that Perry is a more likable guy than Mitt Romney), but rather a time to force the candidates to compete for our votes.  We all know what’s going to happen when another Republican becomes President: they will start crawfishing back to the center to please the media.  The farther to the right we make them go in pursuit of our votes, the less flexibility they have later on to compromise on important issues.
Sources:
https://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/sep/23/rick-perry/gov-rick-perry-says-texas-has-created-more-850000-/
https://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/feb/14/rick-perry/perry-says-tea-checks-whether-undocumented-student/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/25/rick-perry-sonogram-bill-center-for-reproductive-rights-retaliates_n_866811.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/06/04/rick_perrys_gardasil_problem_110089-2.html
https://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6196406.html
https://24ahead.com/blog/archives/006987.html
https://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/07/legislature/4465325.html
https://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-houston/arizona-s-tough-immigration-enforcement-leaves-texas-looking-weak-by-comparison
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/us/politics/06perry.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
https://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20076936-503544.html
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2007/10/18/2007-10-18_texas_governor_rick_perry_endorses_rudy_.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry#Supreme_Court_Justice_Steve_Smith
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