Make no mistake about it ladies and gents, Rick Perry had himself a "crazy good" time at his "teabag" parties yesterday. I'm glad he had a crazy good time; goodness knows he was in good company all day long.
There sure has been a great deal of secession talk lately hasn't there? The first time I heard it I really brushed it off. Maybe even giggled because it just seemed like such an incredibly far-fetched reality that it didn't really deserve thought. Then you had the Chuck Norris and Glenn Beck drive to create cell groups across the nation to organize against the government. Rallies dating back to the McCain/Palin days, coupled with Fox News driven organizing efforts, have brought a great deal more open talk about secession. Rick Perry, Governor of the State of Texas---you know, the 28th state in the Union, had this to say at a "crazy good" tea bag party:
In Austin earlier Wednesday, Gov. Rick Perry told an anti-tax "tea party" the federal government is "rampaging through the halls of Congress" with big-spending programs and only states' rights can stop it.
"We will not stand our pockets being picked, our children's future being mortgaged, our rights being taken away," the Republican governor told a cheering crowd of 1,000 people outside Austin City Hall.
Perry told reporters following his speech that Texans might get so frustrated with the government they would want to secede from the union.
"There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."
I thought I heard "Dixie" playing in the background when I read that article, one of my favorite tunes, but I suppose it was my imagination.
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"Who knows what might come of that," he says? Are you running for Governor of Texas or President of Texas, Rick?
Perry ignorantly dismisses unemployment recovery funds from DC as a political ploy only to sentence small business owners to a tax hike in Texas. Wasn't he attending rallies and having a "crazy good" time where people were supposed to be demonstrating against tax policy---tax policy, mind you, that was crafted under Republican leadership and a Republican president? Perry hops across the state to play politics with "teabaggers" and impress that he can take care of Texas without Washington's help, but he surrenders unemployed Texans to the caldrons of a depressed economy and shifts taxation to small business owners. This might all be a good plotline for a story if it weren't disgustingly factual. Sound like a speaker you want at your "teabag" rally?
This "base" that politicians like Perry are pandering to are angry and confrontational. The Department of Homeland Security is beginning to pay a great deal more attention to the more extreme elements of the Right out of concern for exactly what I'm talking about. From the DHS assessment:
Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.
So how long do we wait until they do begin to plan something before we begin to do something about it? The fact that politicians like Rick Perry, a governor of a state in this Union, is not only pawing at this "base" he is adopting their rhetoric and conforming to their platform too is unconscionable.
Rick Perry may say he is running for governor, but he talks like he is running for President of Texas.
