Open Season, Shooting Blanks

Political Hay

Open Season

By George Neumayr

The flailing attacks on Rick Perry multiply as he pulls easily ahead of the Republican field. Journalists had rooted for an exciting figure to parachute into the lackluster race but now probably regret that hope. Perry scares them. He is, by their lights, a "terrifying" critic of the New Deal and Great Society, a "theocrat," a hater of "science," and no "compassionate" conservative.

The same media that portrayed George W. Bush as ideologically dangerous now hold him up as the measure of an acceptable Republican. Rick Perry has managed to make journalists nostalgic for the Bush years. A Perry victory, the Washington Post reports with concern, would "cement the Republican Party's shift away from Bush's approach to a more libertarian, anti-government GOP."

In other words, another "compassionate" conservative from Texas would be tolerable to the chattering class after all, but not a Tea Partier from Texas.

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