As Texas Gov. Rick Perry introduced himself to voters in this early primary state, a sharp divide emerged between the newest Republican presidential contender and front-runner Mitt Romney on the issue of climate change. While Romney believes that the world is getting warmer and that humans are contributing to that pattern, Perry called global warming "a scientific theory that has not been proven."
Taking questions Wednesday morning at the storied Politics and Eggs breakfast, Perry was asked about a passage in his book "Fed Up!" in which he writes that there have been "doctored data" behind the science on global warming and accuses former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his call to action on climate change, of being a "false prophet of a secular carbon cult."
"They know that we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists, and that draconian policies with dire economic effects based on so-called science may not stand the test of time," Perry writes.
Perry responded: "I do think global warming has been politicized. ... We are seeing almost weekly or even daily scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing our climate to change. Yes, our climate has changed. It has been changing ever since the Earth was formed. But I do not buy into a group of scientists who have, in some cases, been found to be manipulating data."
Until Gov. Perry started running for president, he portrayed himself as a principled believer in the need for local decisionmaking, argued that the power to vote with one's feet on values issues was a cornerstone of a free republic, and avowed that he had a powerful aversion to getting the federal government involved in anything new. He wrote at length about all these issues in his book, Fed Up.
But his behavior when he started to pursue higher office contradicts the positions and values he asserted so starkly that there is no reason for anyone to trust his states' rights bonifides, as I argue at great length in a piece on his sudden insistence that we should amend the constitution so that the federal government can impose on the states a national marriage policy.
Tim Carney is a conservative journalist who covers the cozy relationship between big government and big business, and how the corporatist policies that result come at the expense of consumers, small businesses, and upstart entrepreneurs. He dedicated a recent column to the Texas Enterprise Fund, a pool of taxpayer money that Perry used to subsidize select businesses.
As it turned out, beneficiaries of the largess would often return the favor by lavishing Perry with political donations. "His policies -- from backroom drug company giveaways to green energy subsidies -- eerily mirror the unseemly big business-big government collusion that has characterized President Obama's presidency," Carney writes. "After four years of bailouts, drug-lobby-crafted health care 'reform,' corporate handouts in the name of 'stimulus' and 'green jobs,' and cash-for-clunkers boondoggles, does Perry really think what we need is more corporatism?
Mark Krikorian, the resident anti-illegal immigration writer at National Review, reports that Numbers USA, an anti-immigration advocacy group, "has added Texas Gov. Rick Perry to its grid of presidential candidates, giving him an initial grade of D minus. He can bring this grade up significantly, because there are a number of areas about which he's never taken a position, but his stated positions are mediocre -- he's opposed to sanctuary cities, which is good, and talks a good game in support of border security, but is apparently opposed to E-Verify and has supported (before the recession) increased importation of foreign workers." Perry also supported a Texas version of The Dream Act, which allowed some illegal immigrants to pay in state tuition at state universities.
Perry can satisfy Second Amendment advocates. He'd likely consider the same sorts of judges as George W. Bush, which is to say, anti-abortion Federalist Society types like John Roberts and Sam Alito (and perhaps political cronies like Alberto Gonzalez and Harriet Miers). And on foreign policy, Perry has an opportunity to define where he stands, having said very little on the subject, and nothing out of which he couldn't wriggle, save his decision to do business with Venezuela's state run oil company, despite tension between Hugo Chavez and the U.S. government.
Conventional wisdom holds that Perry will be a hawk whose views are acceptable to neo-cons and the Inside-the-Beltway defense establishment. He is surely the dream candidate of defense contractors. On the other hand, he has shown the capacity to reverse himself on a subject even after claiming to be deeply convicted about it. If Ron Paul does better than expected, and throwing some red meat to anti-war voters seems like it would help Perry to beat Mitt Romney, does anyone doubt he'd do it? Finally, corporations that intend on making political contributions can count on Perry -- if his record in Texas tells us anything, it tells us that.
On substance, it makes no sense that Perry would be a tea party champion, if their small government, anti-corporate handout, federalist rhetoric is to be taken seriously. But as Will Wilkinson illustrates wonderfully, Perry is a talented retail politician, and the cultural cues he exudes are pitched perfectly to the tea party demographic. Look for Perry to leverage being attacked by the media to gain Tea Party support, even as Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, GOP candidates with small government credentials far better than Perry, are mostly ignored. Admittedly, Paul and Johnson may be unelectable. They also show that the tea party will trade consistency and principle for electability.
