Rick Perry: Tea Party Governor, Neocon Candidate Posted by Jacob Stokes

With his announcement on Sunday, Rick Perry rode into the 2012 presidential race. Relatively little is known about his foreign policy stances—a few first cracks have been taken by Josh Keating, Josh Rogin, and James Lindsay. Eli Lake also devoted a bit to Perry is his recent piece on the 2012 GOP field.

What are the takeaways? Seems to me that, broadly, while Perry was the archetypal Tea Party governor, his writings and advisors on foreign policy will place him squarely in the neocon camp when it comes to his positions as a candidate for president.

The fault lines in those two positions become manifest in this quote from Perry: “I'll work every day to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.” For domestic policy, that works for all stripes of conservative (at least rhetorically). For foreign policy, it creates a fissure as big as… well, Texas. As former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley tweets, “When @GovernorPerry says he wants #Washington to be ‘inconsequential,’ does he understand the global reach of the job he is now pursuing?” This is especially true for neocons, who have no interest in Washington becoming inconsequential in the world. 

Tea Party governor

First, Perry’s foreign policy actions as governor. The thing that demonstrates most clearly how Perry’s tendencies as governor reject neoconservative thinking are his actions to win business from Venezuela and China. Neocons would isolate those regimes, especially if the nature of said business carries national security concerns, as oil from Venezuela and communications technologies from China do. As Eli Lake notes (excuse the lengthy block quote; the piece is behind the wall):

On these issues, there is the intriguing possibility that Texas Governor Rick Perry, should he get into the race, could introduce yet another worldview into the already-complex GOP foreign policy mix. As governor of Texas, Perry has been identified with a sort of business-first approach to foreign affairs. This philosophy, too, could in its own way represent a new challenge to the neocon establishment. 

In 2004, Perry enticed Citgo—owned by the Venezuelan government, no friend of the United States—to expand refineries in Corpus Christi and move its corporate headquarters to Houston by putting together a grant and low-interest loan package worth $35 million. Perry also sought to persuade the Chinese telecom giant Huawei to expand its North American headquarters in Texas. Last year, the intelligence community quietly pressed Sprint not to use Huawei components in building a national 4G network, fearing the company’s close ties to the People’s Liberation Army would effectively give the Chinese government a listening post in every cell tower of the new wireless network. On August 18, eight Republican senators sent a letter to Obama administration officials warning that the deal could undermine national security. Sprint eventually complied. But, on October 1 of last year, Perry attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the company’s new headquarters in Plano, Texas. “Huawei has a strong, worldwide reputation as an innovator of quality telecommunications technology, with facilities spread across the globe,” Perry proclaimed. 

More on that story from the Washington Post this weekend here. 

Even more famously, Rick Perry has suggested that Texas secede from the Union—hardly a ringing endorsement of the American greatness and exceptionalism narrative that’s the lifeblood of neocon thinking. Why would one want to leave the greatest nation in the world? Via Steve Benen: 

Specifically, in April ‘09, he denounced the United States government as “oppressive,” arguing that it was “time to draw the line in the sand and tell Washington that no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas.” Soon after, he said he doesn’t want to “dissolve” the union of the United States, “But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”

Finally, Perry also defied—dare I say abandoned!—our ally Mexico, as well as the requests of George W. Bush, the Obama administration and the International Criminal Court, when he executed a Mexican citizen. Of course, neocons have no love for the  ICC, but what about our allies and former Republican presidents? Perry’s state-level record up until recently won him great admiration and support among the Tea Partiers. 

“Hawk Internationalist” 

Now that he’s running for president, Perry’s has turned to former Bush administration officials and prominent neocons to serve as his advisors, most prominently Donald Rumsfeld, Doug Feith and Dan Blumenthal. For them, it’s Tea Party be damned, especially when it comes to foreign policy. As Rogin’s story quotes an advisor saying, “He has no sympathy for the neo-isolationist impulses emanating from some quarters of the Republican Party." That advisor also issued the term “hawk internationalist.” Those comments are directly aimed at the Tea Party wing of the party, led by Ron Paul, who have argued consistently for a decreased American involvement in the world. 

To be fair, Perry first explained his thinking in his book (although his actions haven’t followed this thinking; it’s also conservative pabulum.) Via Keating: 

We are now confronted with the rise of new economic and military powerhouses in China and India, as well as a Russia that is increasingly aggressive and troublesome to its neighbors and former satellite nations that are struggling to maintain their relatively newfound independence. There is no reason to believe that armed conflict with any major power is imminent, but the world is rapidly changing, and the United States must be prepared for the ramifications of shifting balances of power.

North Korea and Iran, in contrast, are utterly unpredictable an do present an imminent threat with their nuclear ambitions. [...] Leftists in Latin America and threatening democracy, and Hugo Chavez is harboring communist rebels in Venezuela. All of these issues require our attention and investment in defense capabilities.

On foreign policy, Perry’s writings and his advisors don’t square with Perry’s actions as governor and the positions of his Tea Party backers. If advisors and campaign biographies are destiny, the Tea Party will have some real problems with Perry when as he begins to develop and explain his positions on foreign policy.

Photo: NY Daily News

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Could it possibly be that as a Governor, Perry is concerned with businesses already within his state and not foreign policy?

I mean, the first quote shows that the businesses already existed within Texas and Perry was trying to either get them to expand or expand and relocate.

How you act toward a foreign power, as President of the US, and how you act toward a foreign business, as governor of a state, should be two different things.

Why does anyone expect anything different?

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Perry is a favorite of the Bilderberg group. If you don't understand what this means you have to do serious research to find out. The MSM is no help on this because there is a major blackout on this topic. However, many books have been written and there is info on the web. Basically Perry will be the perfect candidate for them because he will continue the status quo in terms of foreign policy and monetary policy. The only reason he is talking about the Fed is because he is trying to get votes. He was never concerned about this before and has stolen the idea from others.

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I don't know why so many conservatives are being fooled by this phony, tax-and-spend liberal masquerading as a conservative.
#1 Rick Perry is a “big government” politician. When Rick Perry became the governor of Texas in 2000, the total spending by the Texas state government was approximately $49 billion. Ten years later it was approximately $90 billion. That is not exactly reducing the size of government.
o #2 The debt of the state of Texas is out of control. According to usdebtclock.org, the debt to GDP ratio in Texas is 22.9% and the debt per citizen is $10,645. In California (a total financial basket case), the debt to GDP ratio is just 18.7% and the debt per citizen is only $9932. If Rick Perry runs for president these are numbers he will want to keep well hidden.
o #3 The total debt of the Texas government has more than doubled since Rick Perry became governor. So what would the U.S. national debt look like after four (or eight) years of Rick Perry?
o #4 Rick Perry has spearheaded the effort to lease roads in Texas to foreign companies, to turn roads that are already free to drive on into toll roads, and to develop the Trans-Texas Corridor which would be part of the planned NAFTA superhighway system. If you really do deep research on this whole Trans-Texas Corridor nonsense you will see why no American should ever cast a single vote for Rick Perry.
o #5 Rick Perry claims that he has a “track record” of not raising taxes. That is a false claim. Rick Perry has repeatedly raised taxes and fees while he has been governor. Today, Texans are faced with significantly higher taxes and fees than they were before Rick Perry was elected.
o #6 Even with the oil boom in Texas, 23 states have a lower unemployment rate than Texas does.
o #7 Back in 1988, Rick Perry supported Al Gore for president. In fact, Rick Perry actually served as Al Gore’s campaign chairman in the state of Texas that year.
o #8 Between December 2007 and April 2011, weekly wages in the U.S. increased by about 5 percent. In the state of Texas they increased by just 0.6% over that same time period.
o #9 Texas now has one of the worst education systems in the nation. The following is from an opinion piece that was actually authored by Barbara Bush earlier this year….

• Ranks 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates. An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma.

• Ranks 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.

• Ranks 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.
o #10 Rick Perry attended the Bilderberg Group meetings in 2007. Associating himself with that organization should be a red flag for all American voters.
o #11 Texas has the highest percentage of workers making minimum wage out of all 50 states.
o #12 Rick Perry often gives speeches about illegal immigration, but when you look at the facts, he has been incredibly soft on the issue. If Rick Perry does not plan to secure the border, then he should not be president because illegal immigration is absolutely devastating many areas of the southwest United States.
o #13 In 2007, 221,000 residents of Texas were making minimum wage or less. By 2010, that number had risen to 550,000.
o #14 Rick Perry actually issued an executive order in 2007 that would have forced almost every single girl in the state of Texas to receive the Gardasil vaccine before entering the sixth grade. Perry would have put parents in a position where they would have had to fill out an application and beg the government not to inject their child with an untested and unproven vaccine. Since then, very serious safety issues regarding this vaccine have come to light. Fortunately, lawmakers in Texas blocked what Perry was trying to do. According to Wikipedia, many were troubled when “apparent financial connections between Merck and Perry were reported by news outlets, such as a $6,000 campaign contribution and Merck’s hiring of former Perry Chief of Staff Mike Toomey to handle its Texas lobbying work.”

Rick Perry has a record that should make all Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Independents cringe.

He is not the “conservative Republican” that he is trying to claim that he is. He is simply another in a long line of “RINOs” (Republicans in name only).

If Rick Perry becomes president, he will probably be very similar to George W. Bush. He will explode the size of the U.S. government and U.S. government debt, he will find sneaky ways to raise taxes, he will do nothing about the Federal Reserve or corruption in our financial system and he will push the agenda of the globalists at every turn.

Lastly, Perry is a darling of Chris Matthews... which should be enough to alert any conservatives' radar.

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