Rick Perry: The GOP’s new dark horse

Rick Perry has spotted a “Texas-­sized opportunity” in the Republican presidential contest, said Rich Lowry in National

Review.com. After being coy for months, the Texas governor now admits he is mulling a presidential bid, and his fiery defense of conservatism at last weekend’s Republican Leadership Conference stoked up hopes he’ll jump in the race. If he does, he would quickly replace Tim Pawlenty as the most viable alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney. As a true small-government libertarian, Perry would also “eat into Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party support.” The rugged Perry looks like a president, and his record as governor is “even more impressive,” said Bob Barr in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Over the past decade, Texas created more jobs than the other 49 states combined. “What better platform for a head-to-head with President Obama?”

But Perry’s record in office doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, said Abby Rapoport in The New Republic. Yes, he has helped create jobs by rolling back regulations and making sweetheart deals with corporations, but many of those jobs are low-paying positions filled by immigrants and people without training. About 9.5 percent of hourly workers are paid the minimum wage or less, the highest rate in the country. Perry has also ruined the state’s finances, patching up Texas’s $27 billion budget gap with “a mess of accounting tricks,” and with 20 to 30 percent cuts in public education and Medicaid. Even state Republicans admit the state’s fiscal future is a mess. Then there’s the Bush problem, said Matt Bai in The New York Times. Perry has the same “Texan talk and Texan swagger” as our still-unpopular 43rd president; like Bush, he’s beloved by evangelicals and gun owners. These “biographical and visceral similarities” to Bush will not help the GOP court independents who abandoned the party in disgust in 2008. “It would be like Democrats nominating a peanut farmer in 1988.”

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Republicans shouldn’t get their hopes up too high, said John Heilemann in New York. Perry hasn’t started fund-raising yet, and aides say the chances that he’ll run are 50/50 at best. Unlike most Republicans who “claim to be anti-Washington” but would do anything to live at its most famous address, Perry “genuinely seems to despise the place and everything it stands for.” So all this “highly pitched pining” for Perry could lead to nothing, except this inescapable conclusion: Republicans still aren’t enthused about any of the candidates who are running.