From Alex Pareene at Salon:
Even though they have the exact same style of speaking and propensity to execute innocent people, current Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Texas Gov. George W. Bush are very different politicians. And they don’t like each other, according to the New York Times. Or rather their staffs and “camps” don’t like each other.
Rick Perry was Bush’s lieutenant governor. Whether the two men personally like each other is totally unknown (politicians don’t like other humans anyway; that is why they go into politics), but Perry is “signaling” that he is very different from Bush because Bush was a terrible president who left office hated by everyone and Rick Perry would maybe like to be the next president (or he is at least surrounded by people who think he could be the next president).
Original comic book coverPerry is distancing himself from Bush mostly by hating immigrants and healthcare for poor people and by basically announcing that he is against the small number of things Bush did to convince people that the Republican Party had grown a heart.
The conflict is really about class (just like most other conflicts), because Bush is a Connecticut Yankee from a rich and powerful family and Rick Perry was just some guy until Karl Rove made him a Republican and Bush made him Lt. Gov. Perry (and began imitating him, I think).
…snip…
This is “important” because should Perry decide to run, the Bush people — the sort of powerful Republicans who traditionally decide the party’s presidential nominee — will fight him. Even in a year where it looks like the grass-roots crazies will have more power than they’ve had since the Goldwater nomination, you don’t want the elites aligned against you. (This is part of the reason Huckabee, who polls great, would rather just be on TV. The elites all hate him for some reason.)
So Rick Perry should stop saying mean things about “No Child Left Behind” if he wants to be president.
From The New York Times:
Mr. Perry, who aides say will make a decision within weeks, has been meeting around the country with potential fund-raisers, went to Colorado last week for a gathering of prominent conservative rainmakers held by members of the Koch family, which helped finance the Tea Party movement. An inevitable question is whether Republicans will be willing to nominate another Texas governor so closely connected to the last one.
On government spending, immigration and education, Mr. Perry’s criticisms of Mr. Bush have given him cachet with conservatives, especially with Tea Party voters who blame the former president for allowing spending and the reach of government to grow rapidly.
Those criticisms have burnished the Perry image as less prone to ideological compromise or a fuzzy “compassionate” brand of conservatism, an appealing trait to those Republican primary voters seeking purity in their nominee. And they have helped Mr. Perry escape the shadow of Mr. Bush, whose sponsorship, along with that of his chief political strategist, Karl Rove, was critical to Mr. Perry’s rise.
But it antagonized Mr. Bush’s old team, many of whom endorsed Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in her unsuccessful primary challenge to Mr. Perry last year. Some are indicating that they will oppose Mr. Perry should he join the presidential race with an anti-Bush message.
…snip…
Mr. Rove was heavily invested in Mr. Perry’s victory as lieutenant governor in 1998, and helped recruit [David] Carney to run Mr. Perry’s campaign while he ran Mr. Bush’s. The tensions first spilled out publicly in 2007, when a video wound up on YouTube capturing Mr. Perry speaking dismissively of Mr. Bush at a Republican house party in Iowa for former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York.
..snip…
Unhappy Bush aides noticed.
When [Kay Bailey] Hutchison began running for governor last year, she had the backing of Mr. Rove and other Bush-world Texans including former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, the presidential confidante Karen P. Hughes and former President George Bush and his wife, Barbara.
…snip…
Other salvos followed. After initially embracing Mr. Bush’s signature education law, No Child Left Behind, Mr. Perry became a leading critic, calling it “a monstrous intrusion into our affairs” in an interview with National Review.
…snip…
Asked if Mr. Perry had reached out to Mr. Bush for advice, Mr. Carney said: “He’s going to make a number of calls. That will be one of them.”
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
In the paragraph: Mr. Rove was heavily invested blah blah blah…
you ended up writing the same thing twice in the whole paragraph.
Your raisinette paragraph checker. 🙂
thanks don! 🙂 i though i had done that, but i was in a hurry, and i only looked for a new paragraph. it didn’t occur to me that i might have stuck it at the end. that goes to show you how carefully i proofread sometimes. 😳 thanks for catching it before everyone else saw my sloppiness.
Good thing I’m not the Donald, or you’d be fired, and would have to look for another raisinette to replace. LOL
do i get to host the game show that narrows all the candidates down to one? 😉
Hmmmm, so there may be a rift between Mutt and Jeff eh? These idiots are carbon copies of the same bad short story.
I hope Perry runs. I really do. I hope it gets really ugly in the primaries and KKKarl sicks someone on him and then Perry starts publicly bashing Chimpy. I’d get some popcorn made for that movie.
if it comes down to gov little ricky goodhair and obama, kkkarl will stick with the former. he might not be as enthusiastic as possible, but he won’t bash him.
I’m having trouble wrapping my befuddled brain around the concept of somebody who’s bragging about wanting to do worse things than Dubya did. No wonder my head hurts – and it ain’t just the killer migraine I’ve been fighting. 😀
doing worse things than their predecessors is what rethugs live for.
p.s. feel better, john.
Yeah, I agree with John E and I’m having trouble imagining people voting for someone worse than Bush. But that’s a sad reality. Our dumbass governor here in Idaho just refused to let the Division of Health apply for a federal grant just because the money comes from the Affordable Care Act. dumbasses voted for him, too.
and the dumbasses are usually the ones first in line when they hit hard times, and that’s when they wonder why the helping hand is no longer there.
Love the picture! That elephant logo is, shall we say, unforgettable.
Despite their differences, Bush and Perry share one glaring similarity: an alliance with the religious right. I can’t wait to see what messages will be promoted at Perry’s religious rally, the Response. From what I’ve read, the rally has several controversial voices from the New Apostolic Reformation. Whether this reflects Perry’s personal beliefs, or whether he’s wooing right-wing Christians with the rally remains to be seen.
i used the same comic book a while back, but when i read the story, it came to mind, so i decided to dust it off and update it a bit.
i don’t think gov. little ricky goodhair has any real convictions. he just does whatever it is that will keep him in office and the good life.
Well– as long as they are scraping the bottom of the barrel, I guess Perry fits in. The lot is beginning to look like the Island of Misfits (from the Rudolph story).
The GOP should be rated “E” for exhausting.
i don’t think it was a barrel they scraped. 😯
Yeah, more like the zookeeper’s boots.
or the zookeeper’s….never mind! too gross for even me to type.
No mercy!!!!!
Haven’t you used that cover before? If so, who was looking at Chimpy that time?
good memory, neon vincent. last time, it was chimpy and capt underpants.
They could draft Alabama’s governor…or Florida’s. I just imagined it being worse. 🙂
or wanker walker! or kasich. or snyder. any of the koch caca boys.
Perry is an arrogant dolt and currently King of Texas. The former king is ,was, and still is a dunce. Maybe they could get together and proclaim a Heavenly Kingdom like the TiaPei crusade, conquer each state one by one, etc. This is just too much for summertime when things just seem more irritating. But alas, sis found the perfect solution today. We all piled into the car, drove 30 minutes east up CA4 to Ebbits Pass and played in the snow. There’s 5 and 10 foot drifts up there and one of the alpine lakes was half covered with ice. I will never spend another summer in Texas.
snow sounds awesome just about now. it’s so muggy and hot here. it’s like walking into a furnace when you just open the door. it’s either raining, or it’s so humid that you can barely breathe.
by the way, kids. i have to go up to see the offspring tomorrow. it’s his birthday, and he requested that i come up and bring my mom with me. so, i’ll most likely be late in posting. i was going to take the day off, but i wound up making a poster so i wouldn’t disappoint you kids.
give fast helen my best regards and happy birthday to the offspring.
fast helen was thrilled with seeing the offspring on his bday and with seeing his apartment for the first time. she said that she thought i was exaggerating about how swanky his building is, but she now thinks i wasn’t effusive enough. he was very happy to see mommy and grandma on his bday. my stomach was being icky all day today, so i was dreading driving all the way up there, but i didn’t want to miss his bday, and it was worth it to see fast helen so happy.
Living in Texas, I have kept an eye on ole Rick for quite awhile, as far as my assessment of him … he has to be about the laziest slacker that I ever see as far as getting anything done. But in the Lone Star State of course, the Governor doesnt have the power that they do in many state’s, the Lt.Gov actually has more here. The idea of Rick running for President whe I first heard it sounded insane … even being a GOP voter most of my life (I am a Democrat voter these dayz … Thanx for the read
hello ranch chimp,
welcome to the raisin! 😀
welcome, too, out of the darkness. 😉 i always like it when someone from the state of the person i’m discussing here stops by with their perspective. i wish that more people realized how little a texas governor has to do, and how that makes gov. little ricky goodhair’s spending 600 thou on a rented mansion for himself during a budget shortfall all the more hypocritical and unnecessary.
hope to see you here again soon. 🙂
He really does have good hair, huh? Interesting that he is taking so long to announce/decide/whatever. I think his angle is more about reaching out to the Evangelical base. He can’t have the Bush thing to distract from that. Bachmann and Cain have the Tea Party Conservatives covered already.
grass grows thicker when it has a lot of manure under it.
botox batshit bachmann and the pizza man may have the fundie and teabagger vote right now, but neither one can win. gov. little ricky goodhair, though he has very, very little to do as governor, still has the title of governor, so rethugs think he might be able to win. they’ll happily switch over from bbb or pizzaman to perry, because they all hate romney so much.
Outstanding pic … I love it! The framed pic of Karl Rove is a nice touch. Meanwhile, the GOP circus continues. Gov Perry has no chance of getting my vote in the Ohio primary. Sadly, the list is slim. Well done Nonnie!
thanks, frank. what does it tell you about the rethugs that i could use the same comic book cover as i did last election and only had to change the possible nominee and put cowboy boots on him? it’s a revolving door of idiots.
Ever since Perry took over for Chimpy, don’t Texans call Bush “the smart one”?
scary and probably true! 😆 it seems that whenever we think we’ve seen the batshittiest or the dumbest or the greediest rethug, an even worse one crawls out from under a rock. in a few more years, deadeye dick cheney will be remembered as the compassionate, nice rethug. 😯