In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I explained that the Republican base is fed up with Republican candidates and leaders who abandon core conservative principles for the sake of winning reelection and that we demand a principled, viable, and inspirational leader to restore our country. In this year’s election, there is one – and only one – candidate who might meet the demands of the Republican base, and that candidate is Rick Perry.
Prior to Rick Perry’s entry into the race in mid-August, Mitt Romney was the frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination, but this status was shallow and superficial. It was based upon on name recognition from his prior run in 2008, his impressive message discipline in the early GOP candidate debates, which he won by not losing, and a relatively weak field of opponents. In other words, Romney was not the frontrunner in the sense of having earned enthusiastic support from a clear plurality of Republican voters. He was merely the least objectionable candidate in a field of flawed candidates.
So, although Romney was the nominal frontrunner, the Republican base remained decidedly unenthusiastic about him. After all, what conservative could get excited about nominating a man who, as Governor of Massachusetts, had written and enacted the blueprint for ObamaCare, who continues to defend that scheme as good policy and criticizes ObamaCare only for being a federal program and not for being a monstrous usurpation by the government of our individual liberties, who buys into the disproven myth of man-made global warming, and who has flip-flopped on the ultimate issue of principle and personal conscience, abortion (having gone from being adamantly pro-choice as a politician in liberal Massachusetts to being adamantly pro-life as a candidate for the votes of the substantially more conservative national Republican electorate)? And who could be inspired by a man who has lost all but one election in his lifetime and who chose not to seek reelection in the face of a tough challenge by a leftist Democrat?
So, the fact that Mitt Romney’s was the frontrunner proved that there were no candidates in the race who met the demands of the Republican base.
Enter Rick Perry.
A CNN poll conducted from August 5-7, when Perry was merely considering entering the race but had not yet announced his intentions, showed him immediately jumping into second place just five points behind Romney. A CNN poll conducted less than three weeks later, on August 24-25, after Perry had announced his candidacy and begun his formal campaign, showed Perry with a 2:1 lead over Romney. (Perry had a nearly 3:1 lead over Michelle Bachmann despite the fact that she’d been in the race for many weeks and had won the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll on the same day that Perry announced his candidacy. All of the other candidates were far behind in the single digits, including Ron Paul, whose support diminished from 14% in early August to a mere 6% in the latter poll.) Every poll since then has shown Perry with a decisive lead over Romney and the other candidates.
So, is Rick Perry merely the latest flavor of the month, with his frontrunner status as shallow and fragile as Romney’s was, or is his support real and meaningful? I submit that his support is real and meaningful and that the nomination is already his to lose.
Until mid-August, the field of candidates consisted of a frontrunner with a history of political opportunism rather than principled conservative leadership (Romney), a challenger who does have a history of principled conservative advocacy but does not have the experience or qualifications to instill confidence that she can win the general election (Bachmann), and a number of other candidates who, for various reasons, have gained no traction.
Rick Perry catapulted to the lead immediately upon entry into the race precisely because he exhibits the qualities that Republican voters are demanding (as discussed in Part 2 of this series):
1. He is a principled conservative who espouses conservative principles with passion and conviction.
2. As the longest-serving governor in the history of Texas and the longest-serving governor currently in office in the country, he has a background of executive leadership that both qualifies him for the presidency and instills confidence that he will be effective in advancing the conservative agenda.
3. He has demonstrated by word and deed that he understands the Constitution and will follow it, and throughout his career he has advocated the wisdom of its limits on government.
4. He has demonstrated the ability to articulate conservative principles in a way that makes those ideas not only understandable but attractive to the people.
5. He recognizes that we face extraordinary problems that require the bold and confident application of conservative ideas to meet and overcome.
6. And he believes that America is a great and good country because our founding principles are correct and wise.
I am not endorsing Rick Perry – at least not yet. He is still unproven on the national stage, and I am waiting to see if he’s ready for prime time. Running a national campaign and appealing to people in all regions of the country is a far different experience and challenge than anything Perry has done within the confines of Texas. Indeed, Texas is hardly a microcosm of the nation as a whole (in the way, for example, that Virginia is).
Some of Perry’s bold and brash rhetoric and style may not play well in certain areas. There is a difference between expressing ideas confidently and expressing them arrogantly. When ideas are expressed with confidence, as Reagan did, people can be inspired. When ideas are expressed with arrogance, as Newt Gingrich often does, people can be repelled. Rick Perry has a tendency to cross the line into braggadocio, and this tone will not attract the independents and conservative Democrats that we need to win the election.
Perry also need to improve his debate performances. He was a mixed bag at his first two debates, although he did reasonably well considering that he was the prime target of the other candidates as a result of his frontrunner status. Nevertheless, there is clearly room for improvement. Good candidates learn and improve with experience; compare Romney’s uninspiring debate performances in 2008 with his much better performances in this election cycle. Perry’s challenge is to improve his debating skills quickly. If he succeeds, he will inspire confidence in his intellect and talents.
As a relative novice to national politics, gaffes can be expected by Perry early and often, especially since he is known for shooting from the hip. And we can expect the leftist establishment news media to trumpet and exaggerate each such gaffe and, indeed, to contrive gaffes where none truly existed, in their effort to discredit and destroy his candidacy before it gains more traction. Perry will be tested in the way he responds to the efforts of the leftist establishment media to destroy him – and those efforts have already begun.
All of that said, Rick Perry enters the race for the Republican nomination with a deep well of good will among Republican voters based on the reasonable perception that he meets the criteria that the Republican base has been seeking and demanding. If Perry remains the principled conservative leader that he has been as the Governor of Texas, and if he can effectively balance his well-established candor with a disciplined and well-managed campaign, then there is no other candidate in the race who will be able to beat him.
The 2012 Republican nomination is now Rick Perry’s to lose.
