Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Scratch one voter

Andrew Sullivan closes the book on Rick Perry: "The reason I've been a little circumspect in judging the Perry candidacy is that it's very hard to tell if a candidate this Texan and this far right has any traction in the middle of the country. Perhaps in hard times, he does. But then you examine his actual positions - social security is unconstitutional, secession is an option - and you wonder if this is a fantasy, if the GOP isn't actually committing the kind of grotesque suicide that Obama tends to evoke in his opponents. ... What Perry is now shown to have said has a plain meaning. He'd support lynching the Fed Chairman. And he believes that Bernanke's attempts to prevent a Second Great Depression are partisan politics, and an attempt to rig the election. ... And there is no doubt what a bully means when he says someone should be treated "pretty ugly" in Texas. There you have the mindset of a man who could issue a death warrant for an innocent man and who would bring back the most brutal torture techniques he could get away with. ... These [statements], in today's polarized climate, are, to my mind, a reason for Perry to withdraw, or for his party to disown this ugly, divisive, violent rhetoric."

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