The latest ad from the Rick Perry camp nails Mitt Romney on a charge that has haunted him during his entire political career; namely, flip-flopping and being inconsistent on issues depending on who he happened to be talking to at any given moment. Take a look.
The Romney camp tries explaining the flip by changing the subject, which they have been able to do fairly successfully throughout the campaign so far. But The flip-flopper charge is probably the most damaging to Romney because it gets at the level of trust and character, and whether voters can trust him to do what he says he will do if elected president. For instance, Romney says now that he is a firm believer in the 2nd Amendment, but he has flipped on that issue in a big way. He has flipped on abortion, and even on whether Ronald Reagan was good for the country. The governor who signed RomneyCare into law now says he would issue an executive order undoing ObamaCare on his first day in office, but what is there in his record that provides any sense that he would actually follow through with that? Mainly, a record of being on more than one side of a whole lot of issues.
Perry’s “Race to the Flop” ad drops a new bucket down the well of Romney’s flip-flopping record. And that’s a very deep well.
Romney is wholly disqualified as a choice, as far as I am concerned. He is horrible. His little cronies on stage all falsely attacking Perry while leaving the true RINO Romney untouched make me sick.
Perry has good ads and an impressive record. It’s really a shame that he’s so bad at debates, and can’t seem to articulate his stances without lifting Leftist phrases like “you don’t have a heart” in regards to illegal immigration.
I agree; Romney doesn’t seem to have a basic core of principles. He’s someone who flips to the mood of the crowd’s moment..because he wants them to vote for him. That’s not a leader, that’s a powerbroker.
Perry has basic principles but so far, he can’t express those principles in debates where you have one minute to answer. He says a few words and leaves out the meat of the argument.
For example, with regard to illegals, Perry is not in favor of illegals! But he’s dealing with a bad situation created for the states by the failure of the federal govt to both secure the borders and deport illegals. This leaves the states with the illegals, but without the legal power to stop them coming in or deport them. What do they do with them? Remember, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that the States had to educate them in the public schools from K-12!
With regard to the Texas’in-state tuition’ bill — Perry didn’t initiate it but he supported it and it was passed almost unanimously by the Texas legislature (4 nays) thus rendering it immune to gubnatorial veto anyway. The agenda was to enable these graduates of the local high schools to go to college, not on bursaries, but paying the in-state tuition. At least 12 other states have the same offers.
Why couldn’t Perry just say: ‘I’m against illegal immigration, but the federal govt has put the states in a huge mess. It won’t secure the borders, it won’t deport them, it rules we have to educate them from K-12. So, to prevent an undereducated and resentful class of young people..remember, we can’t deport them..we enable them to become educated. But only if they’ve lived in-state for three years and will apply for permanent residency. We are trying to make the best of a bad situation foisted on us by the feds.’
Most people haven’t a clue what the situation is re the illegals.
With regard to the Fence. Why couldn’t he just say: ‘I’m not against a fence but in Texas and other parts, it won’t work. That’s because most of the Texas border is a river, and other parts are canyons. Instead, we want ‘boots on the ground’. We’ve supplied some but we need federal boots..and our current administration refuses to help’.
That’s all.
He’d do fine in a sit-down discussion of these issues, but the one-minute comment…that’s not something he’s good at.
Romney is far better, but, Romney has no principles. And the best of them all, the most skilled and slick with these one-line commentaries, is of course, Barack Obama. He can say anything to anyone and make it sound superb. You only realize, later, much later, that it’s all vapid empty lies.
So- what do we want? Principles and hard reasoning, or slick talk?
ETAB, you’ve nailed it.
Perry needs to master the short, sweet problem-solution-recap strategy you’ve outlined so well. He also needs to do this without sounding squishy and/or defensive.
I don’t mind his Texas drawl or his fumbles and stumbles, it makes it appear as if he’s actually thinking and hasn’t rehearsed every answer. Mitt on the other hand comes across as slick to the point of slippery. We’ve got one of those, we don’t want or need another.
Perry needs to find a way to play to his strengths and work to avoid unforced errors. The shotgun quiz-show format clearly isn’t his milieu.
ETAB – I second GDI’s comment. You’re spot-on.
I don’t like Romney attacking Perry and I don’t like Perry attacking Romney.
But Romney has been better at it. Part of Perry’s problem is that he is the new kid on the block. Everybody knows that Romney has been all over the map with his positions. It’s already baked into the cake. So all of Perry’s flaws seem large in comparison.
They should both focus on the enemy of the country.
Perry can get his shots in at Romney by framing his positive attributes in terms of the characteristics that make him superior to the most dangerous politician in US history. He can emphasize his conservative consistency, that he is in concert with the people of a state that has the longest border and a long history of relations with Mexico, his record on jobs, his steadfast and determined fiscal conservatism.
Perry should also learn from the way Romney handles Romneycare. Romney emphatically states that he will issue waivers to all 50 states for Obamacare on his first day in office. When pressed, he says that Romneycare is 50 pages whereas Obamacare is 2500 pages, so they can’t possibly be the same thing. You may not believe him, and disagree with him, but his strategy usually shuts down the conversation. What Perry should do on the border is to say that he is the only governor who has used state assets to defend the border and he will absolutely shut down illegal immigration as president. When pressed on the tuition issue, he should say that he is one of the 95% of Texas legislators who voted for the tuition bill for young immigrants as the only person on the podium from a state that has to live with the federal governments failure to secure the border, and that people from every other state can get the same break by moving to Texas for shorter periods of time than the illegals. Romney doesn’t attack his critics and Perry shouldn’t either. That strategy makes it clear that he isn’t going to change his mind or pander on the issue. If Perry manages to get the nomination, even the hardest core border ideologues are going to vote for him anyway.
Poking at Romney rather than emphasizing strengths and giving crisp explanations of past policies is just further evidence of a bad campaign strategy.
Absolutely right. Excellent strategy. Perry should focus on Obama and state his own positions clearly. Not waste time and words on attacking Romney or anyone else. Just be himself, state his views. Period.
Absolutely agree. I was very dismayed when Perry started the attacks during the last debate by going after Romney in a way that was almost unrelated to the question. That is not the behavior of a man supposedly leading the pack. Like they say, don’t punch down, hit the guy at the top, which in this case is Obama.
Agreed. The insider squabbling is counterproductive. Focus on the real objective, removing Obama in 2012.
Actually, this is what primaries are for.
If Romney can’t answer Perry’s attacks now, how do you think he’ll answer Obama’s attacks later?
Primaries are like the first round of the playoffs… they serve to eliminate those that can’t play at that level.
I’ve watched more politics this year than I have in my life. I must admit I’ve only seen two of the debates, the first and this one in Orlando, but I have to say Perry must get it together on his debating skills. I have watched Romney’s record and his flip-flopping on so many issues as well as his Romneycare and I don’t like it. Perry is so much better in so many ways.
Perry has been criticized on his jobs record because so many jobs go to immigrants. I see that and it looks bad but then, we are talking about Texas. How much of the state’s population are immigrants? Mexico and Texas have a long history of friendship and intermingling of their people.
He’s criticized on his giving illegal immigrants a ticket to attend college but again, what was he supposed to do? The US Govt. won’t enforce it’s own laws, won’t let the states enforce them, won’t help prevent illegals from entering the state, at least educating them helps keep them from being a bigger burden on the state.
He has been criticized for being pro- Islam because he was seen with a couple of Muslim leaders. Does it make you pro- anything if you just want to know more about it? I don’t know exactly what he has done for these people but if he has a big enough Muslim population in the state then he should be learning about their wants and needs. The problems with the Muslims won’t just go away by ignoring it. Besides, he couldn’t be more pro-Islam than our current resident in chief.
Of the two, as far as I can see, Perry is by far the better choice. Now if only he could learn to get his message out in a hundred words or less and quit on the attack of Romney and start attacking the big O he might get somewhere. I don’t mean ignore Romney, if Romney attacks, by all means defend himself but don’t make his whole platform what Romney has done wrong but make it why he can do a better job than Obumbler. Perry has to improve his debate skills, America is watching and most of America get their political fix from what they see on tv. They get their opinion from what they see in these debates instead of researching for themselves. If Perry doesn’t improve he might as well give it up and he is too good a candidate for that.
By the way, perry1949 is just my first name and my birthdate i picked as my twitter handle, it has nothing to do with my opinion of Perry the candidate.