It seems with each passing day - perhaps each passing hour - more coverage of GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry's batshit craziness and extremism is flooding the media. For example, Ruth Marcus has a column in the Washington Post that's more than a bit frightening in terms of what is discloses about Perry. But so far perhaps the most pointed view of Perry has come from Dana Milbank who is usually fairly reserved. Not so in a column also in the Washington Post that rightly savages Perry and puts his far out of the mainstream extremism on full view. Equally disturbing, of course, is the fact that Perry now largely embodies what it is to be a Republican in this day and age. I'm not a Democrat, but I certainly cannot be a Republican in this day where the open embrace of ignorance, religious bigotry, and hatred of others are the principal GOP hallmarks regardless of what efforts are made to hide that reality. Here are highlights from Milbank's column:
A s my Post colleague Perry Bacon reported in detail this week, Rick Perry has jettisoned the “compassion” that sometimes leavened the conservatism of his predecessor in the Texas governor’s mansion.
If Perry’s style resembles anybody’s in George W. Bush’s White House, in fact, it is that of former vice president Dick Cheney, whose just-published memoir, “In My Time,” might as well have been titled “Right Every Time (Even Though I Was Surrounded by Idiots).” Think of Perry as Bush without the charm.
Perry is passionately anti-government, or at least anti-this-government. But the man who suddenly tops the Republican presidential polls is no libertarian. Rick Perry is a theocrat.
By his own account, he is a cultural warrior, seeking to save marriage, Christmas and the Boy Scouts from liberals, gay people and moral relativism. His latest treatise, the Tea-Party-inspired “Fed Up!,” touches only briefly on matters such as abortion and gay marriage. For an eyeful of the full Perry, crack his 2008 book, “On My Honor.” While the rest of the political world was reading Cheney’s attacks on Colin Powell, I read about Perry’s attacks on gay scoutmasters. In the book’s most talked-about passage, he likens homosexuality to alcoholism.
Perry’s politics are religious in a way not seen before in modern-day mainstream presidential candidates. . . . . Perry has no use for those who “want to recognize Jesus as a good teacher, but nothing more.”
The governor forecasts divine punishment for those who hold different political views. “Shall they stand before God and brag that they fought to scrub His glorious name from the nation’s pledge?” he asks. “Shall they seek His approval for attacking private organizations merely because these organizations proclaim His existence?”
In a series of hoary bromides, the supposedly libertarian Perry condemns the “litigious advocates of licentious behavior” (that’s the ACLU) and informs us that “Sometimes the rules must protect society at large at the expense of individual expression when that expression is deemed harmful to others and society at large.”
Among the things Perry “deems” harmful: universities (students “have been taught that corporations are evil, religion is the opiate of the masses, and morality is relative”); human rights commissions (“often nothing more than a front for attacking institutions that teach traditional values”); and evolution (he says “the weight of evidence” supports intelligent design). Perry polishes the old “war on Christmas” chestnut and finds a way to cast Mitt Romney (now his rival for the nomination) as a defender of gay scoutmasters.
Though he speaks now as a small-government conservative, Perry argues in his book: “We are close to a tipping point in American society. If you believe there is right and wrong, that there are acceptable standards of behavior . . . then you have a stake in this war. If the attackers win many more victories . . . the culture war may be lost before we know it.
Exchange the Bible for the Koran and Perry doesn't sound too different from the Taliban and those Muslims alleged to be pushing for Sharia law.
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