Rick Perry (or if Obama was a white guy from Texas)

Governor Rick Perry just entered the Republican primary race.  I guess we expect an initial bump in his polling and the hype surrounding him but his balloon can't deflate fast enough for me.

I'm honestly surprised that he's got the following he has, considering the BUSH = TEXAS logic many on the left have.  Why would we want to run Bush's gubernatorial successor as the Republican candidate to attempt to dethrone (correct word) Obama in 2012? 

I have specific qualms with Bush, particularly some key initiatives and decisions in his second term (although a few spending vetoes would've been nice from the start).  Overall I think he was a strong leader, socially conservative and not afraid to be unpopular especially abroad.  Obama is so afraid to appear unlikable globally that he confuses celebrity with true respect.  Still, the way the media creates controversies and (often imaginary or trivial) albatrosses to hang around a politician's neck, I am concerned about Rick Perry "making it to the next round".

Perry doesn't have the extreme leftist POV shared by Obama and his czars but he does exhibit the same "politics as usual" mindset.  Michelle Malkin collects some facts surrounding Perry's time in office that give us a glimpse of what he believes and how he governs.

One crowning jewel was Perry's executive order mandating the Gardisil 3-shot regimen for all 6th grade girls in his state.  Talk about the mother of all reasons to want to be held back!

In February 2007, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a shocking executive order forcing every sixth-grade girl to submit to a three-jab regimen of the Gardasil vaccine. He also forced state health officials to make the vaccine available “free” to girls ages 9 to 18. The drug, promoted by manufacturer Merck as an effective shield against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) and genital warts, as well as cervical cancer, had only been approved by the Food and Drug Administration eight months prior to Perry’s edict.

This is the definition of Nanny-state policies and overreaching (at best) by the executive branch.  He was motivated, he claimed, by the cervical cancer survivors he used as human shields in the debate over the drug also designed to fight off sexually transmitted diseases such as genital warts.  I guess the money Merck gave Perry in 2007 for his re-election campaign had nothing to do with his order, which was swiftly overturned by both houses.

Perry also injected (pun intended) more power into the executive branch, so he could create committees like the Texas Enterprise Fund to award taxpayer-collected funds (translation into liberal-speak: "government revenues") to corporations.  Unfortunately, his big government, cookie jar-raiding scheme didn't always work.

The Austin paper documents the unsavory case of $80,000 Perry donor David Nance winning a $4.5 million grant from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund. A regional board had denied the grant to Nance’s Convergen LifeSciences, but Perry intervened and ushered the grant through.

 Perry intervened and ushered the grant through.

Add these power grabs to his record on illegal immigration (despite his recent attempts at re-branding his positions), and his vetoing of a bill designed to protect property rights of landowners, post Kelo-decision, and Rick Perry looks about as conservative as Barack Obama.

One note on Perry's war against property rights.  This is Texas we're talking about.  The first things that used to come to mind were freedom, guns, and land.

I dislike Mitt Romney as a candidate because of his old-school politics as usual pedigree and Romneycare.  Rick Perry has even more black marks against him in terms of policies.

If Republicans don't wake up to these facts and start putting principles before party, sure we may still win the Presidency in 2012, but we'll lose the country under similar leadership.
It's not the "R" or "D" we should be focused on.  It's the candidates records, their words, and their ideologies.  If any candidate is willing to increase the power of government, or their own position for that matter, they clearly have lost their focus as a civil servant.