Rick Perry Calls South Carolina GOP Activists

We received an unsolicited robo conference call tonight from Rick Perry and his South Carolina campaign organization.  Like his vaccination mandate for little girls, it was an opt-out, not an opt-in phone call.  Hosted by former state party chairman Katon Dawson, the call was apparently directed to several hundred GOP activists in South Carolina.  It seems to have been motivated by the need to answer all the questions he was incapable of answering without a script during the debate in Orlando last week.

Perry attempted to explain why Texas provides a $22,000 annual tuition discount for the children of illegal aliens; why he opposes securing the border with a wall or fence; and why he attempted to mandate that every 11 year-old girl in Texas receive a costly and controversial vaccine made by campaign contributor Merck Corp.  At the end of  rambling, incoherent explanations, he still seems to us soft on illegal immigration, someone who would continue to be fast and loose with taxpayers' dollars, and one who fails to understand why Americans are appalled by an executive fiat mandating that citizens of our Republic do anything, much less have their 11-year-old daughters vaccinated for sexually transmitted diseases. 

There was no talk about ending America's undeclared, unconstitutional wars.  He wants an amendment to the Constitution requiring Congress to balance the federal budget, but we didn't hear anything about the budget he would propose.  He's for "pushin the personal rates down, pushin the corporate rates down," but other than eliminating the U. S. Department of Education, there was no indication as to how federal spending would be reduced and the budget balanced by a Perry administration

When all was said and done, we were left wondering:

• how, after 8 years of the Reagan presidency, could this self-proclaimed "conservative" chair Al Gore's campaign in Texas? 

• how and why would the Governor of one of America's most conservative states accept an invitation to attend a Bilderberg meeting?

• how and why would a Texas governor disregard property rights and support the NAFTA superhighway project that was opposed by the Texas GOP Platform?  If, as he claims, he can't be bought for $5000, what was his price for supporting a project opposed by most Democrats and Republicans in Texas?

• why does one sponsor a major prayer jamboree days before announcing one's candidacy and yet fail to contribute anything to one's own church for several years, and give less than 1% of one's income in other years, according to 10 years of tax returns?

• how does a purported "conservative" nearly double the cost of state government and more than double its debt?

• do all those illegal aliens that manage to slip into Texas each and every day have anything to do with the fact that Texas has doubled in only 4 years the number of residents earning the minimum wage?