Texas Gov. Rick Perry has blasted President Obama's health care reform law as borderline "socialism," and criticized presidential rival Mitt Romney for implementing a similar plan when he was governor of Massachusetts. But now, The Daily Caller has unearthed a letter Perry wrote to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1993 — at the time, Perry was Texas' agriculture commissioner — praising Clinton's "commendable" (and ultimately failed) efforts to reform the health care system. Will this damage his bid for the Republican presidential nomination?
Yes. This will make conservatives nervous: Perry is new to the national political stage, says Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress, and right-wing activists are still learning about his record. They're not happy with Romney for mandating insurance coverage in Massachusetts, nor with Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman for "flirting with similar proposals." Now, this letter gives them "new reason to worry about the Texas governor's purity" on this make-or-break issue.
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