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Cliff Schecter

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Beware of the French Cuff Cowboy

Posted: 08/29/11 11:43 AM ET

If you find yourself wondering how it was you missed the whole 4th season of Walker, Texas Ranger, while forcing yourself to attend Lamaze classes with your significant other. If on cool, crisp days the aforementioned tragedy causes you to wistfully wonder how to fill the emptiness inside -- let me introduce you to the Rick Perry for President campaign.

Perry, who has seemingly been governor of Texas since around the time when remaining at The Alamo began to look like a questionable career move, is now ready to throw his 10-gallon hat, frothy intellect and custom-made cowboy boots into the national political ring.

Predictably, Democrats are laughing. He's just another dumb Texan. Another mentally-challenged Republican. He's Reagan. And George W. Bush. He can't win.

Does anyone else see the problem with this line of reasoning? Shhh, don't tell anyone, but Reagan and Bush the Younger served as president for roughly 50 percent of the past 30 years.

Of course Perry can win, and in fact, if the Obama team keeps thinking that "patent reform" is the new WPA and continues to show that fighting Dukakis spirit, I'd go so far as to give Perry the advantage should he secure the GOP nomination.

Should he be president of anything of more consequence than a glee club? Of course not.

He's made it clear in speeches and his recently released macho-man web advert that he'll do for America what he did for Texas -- which probably involves shooting cheetahs recreationally with hollow-tipped bullets and creating benefit-rich employment opportunities for Americans, such as scraping toilets and salting freedom fries.

That's right, the much-vaunted "Texas Miracle" is as fake as Perry, built on the premise that working three minimum wage jobs and going without healthcare (Texas leads the nation in percentage of overall residents and children without healthcare) is some kind of economic Eden, as opposed to say an economic Elba Island.

Perry, meanwhile, is a "cowboy" who wears Armani suits and French cuffs (seriously, French cuffs?). Attacks stimulus spending while taking a heaped helping of it to bail himself out. Uses taxpayer money to enrich his corporate-lobbyist friends -- and endangers the United States of America by inviting a Chinese telecom company into Texas that George W Bush's national security team warned him would pose a cyber-security threat to our military -- after talking tough on the Chinese in his children's book: Fed Up.

In other words, he's a fraud.

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09:55 AM on 08/30/2011
Perry's schtick has always been the Gary Cooper role, and if he plays it convincingly he'll have that gut-level appeal to people who are afraid enough that they want to be rescued. There may be any number of rational and political reasons for staying well away from him, but those survival-level reactions are what gave Reagan and, to a lesser extent, W their unexplainable strength with voters.
08:49 AM on 08/30/2011
One of life's basic rules - NEVER trust a man who wears cufflinks. Been proven true time and again.
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Soulmentor
"To thine own self be true...."
01:22 AM on 08/30/2011
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." - Sinclair Lewis.

In this case, it means theocratic fascism. Just keep that quote running thru your mind for the next year and a half and you will (please God) vote appropriately. Lewis' words look more prescient by the hour.”
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Bonnie Larkin
Oathkeeper AND NRA member
12:56 AM on 08/30/2011
But you wil be calling Gov Perry -- President Perry in 2012 !
I'm loving it !
foresure
Brash and Harsh
11:11 PM on 08/29/2011
Mr. Schecter:

That was an excellent short essay you wrote. It was really superior to most of the political commentary on this site.

I loved the "cowboy with French Cuffs". I check the picture of him, you were right.

Post some more!
10:50 PM on 08/29/2011
Of course he's right. I was in college during the 1980 campaign, and young and naive enough to think that no sane, rational person would EVER fall for that phony Reagan act. Then in 1984, we all sat around in a bar after one of the presidential debates--one where you could practically hear Reagan's synapses misfiring--and laughed about his impending defeat. Oops.

Never underestimate the public's desire for a strong, confident-appearing leader during difficult times--even if that leader is all style and no substance.
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demisfine
Often correct, NEVER right.
08:42 PM on 08/29/2011
The author astutely warns the democrats how to beat Perry:
"The way to do that is to tell the truth about him. That he's as fake as a three-dollar bill, all hat and no cattle, or to put it in a language Perry can understand - he's Blazing Saddles, not The Unforgiven."
The best and most damaging truth about Perry is this "Rick Perry is dangerous. He is a dominionist, meaning the Biblical Law, to him, supersedes that of the US Constitution."
Not in my country, not in OUR country. Perry has the freedom to believe anything he wants, to worship anyone he wants, to revere anything he wants.
But as President, he must follow the Constitution, not his own selected doctrine.
07:54 PM on 08/29/2011
Of course Perry is a fraud.

But frauds often get elected.

Take the warning to heart.