Most of the GOP establishment is uncomfortable with Rick Perry.
Few have openly attacked the Texas governor, as Karl Rove did when
Perry criticized Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. However,
the grumblings of former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, a number
of former Bush aides, and sundry other Republican luminaries have
made it clear that they would prefer to see Mitt Romney as the GOP
standard-bearer in 2012. Even inveterate RINO-basher Ann Coulter
has said “Romney could actually beat Obama” and that Perry “won’t
live up to expectations.” Coulter and the GOP establishment are
wrong. Not only is Perry the
favorite of rank-and-file Republicans, he is far better
positioned than Romney to debate the President on the two issues
that will inevitably dominate next year’s campaign — jobs and
health care.
On jobs, Perry has a story to tell that Romney can’t hope
to match. As the Wall Street Journal recently
reported, “Some 37% of all net new American jobs since the
recovery began were created in Texas.” While most states have
experienced anemic job growth since June of 2009, and eighteen
governors have watched their states endure actual declines in
growth, Governor Perry has presided over a state economy that has
added 265,300 new jobs. That makes Texas the most prolific job
generator in the nation. By contrast, Mitt Romney’s record on job
creation is lackluster at best. Job growth during his single term
as Governor of Massachusetts was less than
one percent, which “badly lagged other high-skill, high-wage,
knowledge economy states like New York (2.7%), California (4.7%)
and North Carolina (7.6%).”
Consider this in the context of the upcoming presidential
campaign: Rick Perry can contrast Obama’s truly pathetic record on
jobs with his own remarkable success. He can stand before the
country in a debate and call out the President on his failed
big-government agenda and say, as Charles Krauthammer recently
phrased it, “Smaller government, I made it work, I created
jobs.” Romney, on the other hand, simply can’t press the President
on unemployment without being reminded that the Bay State “ranked
47th in the entire country in jobs growth” during his term as
Massachusetts Governor. In other words, while Perry can go on the
offensive, Romney would be reduced to defending his own record
rather than highlighting Obama’s abysmal performance on the
economy.
Romney’s inability to press the President on job creation
would be compounded by his impotence on Obamacare. At least half of
the voters are still seething about that pernicious piece of
legislation and the political skulduggery that was used to ram it
down their throats. These voters will expect the Republican
presidential nominee to go after the President on Obamacare, and
Romney is utterly toothless on that issue. Why? The two-thousand
page monstrosity that the White House and its legions of allies in
the “news” media hilariously call the “Affordable Care Act” was
modeled after the Massachusetts “universal coverage” legislation
that Romney himself signed into law in 2006. And that ill-conceived
law, commonly known as Romneycare, has been a fiscal and medical
disaster for the Bay State.
Thus, Romney can’t criticize Obamacare’s many offensive
features without looking like a cheap political flip-flopper. He
cannot, for example, credibly denounce the egregious individual
mandate because it is modeled after a similar provision of
Romneycare. Nor will his oft-repeated point that the Massachusetts
mandate was enacted at the state level, and is therefore
constitutional, cut much ice with the voters. They will be less
interested in arcane nuances of the Commerce Clause than in the
fact that they will be forced to buy government-approved insurance
whether they want it or not. Likewise, Romney can’t hit the
President for producing a “reform” law that Obama’s own
administration
admits will increase rather than decrease medical costs. His
own health care “reform” law produced identical results.
Rick Perry suffers from none of Romney’s disabilities on
health care. First, he isn’t burdened by a failed health care
albatross that will prevent him from aggressively going after the
President on Obamacare. Unlike Romney, he can vehemently denounce
the insurance mandate as an unconstitutional attack on individual
liberty without having any similar abomination in his own record
thrown back in his face. Moreover, because his record in Texas has
emphasized the free market rather than state interference, he can
credibly denounce the President’s top-down approach to health care
reform. While Romney must live down an Obama-like inclination
toward government-imposed solutions, Perry’s record demonstrates a
clear bias in the other direction and allows him to more freely
criticize Obama’s big-government philosophy.
This, of course, begs the following question: How do the
results of Perry’s approach compare to those of Romney’s? Well, as
Avik Roy recently
put it, “If you’re most concerned about runaway government
spending, Perry is the clear winner. If the rising cost of health
insurance is your primary worry, Perry wins there too.” Among the
reasons Perry wins in these areas is tort reform. In 2003, Perry
convinced Texas voters to approve a cap on non-economic medical
malpractice damages for physicians and hospitals. This initiative
not only helped control the rise of health care costs due to
defensive medicine, it helped deliver Texas from a growing problem
that
still bedevils Massachusetts — physician shortages. In fact,
tort reform has worked so well in this regard that the New York
Times reluctantly
reported its success.
And success on the issues that concern the actual voters,
rather than the opinions of establishment retreads, is the only
foundation upon which any Republican can build a 2012 victory over
Barack Obama. Regardless of which candidate wins the GOP
presidential nomination, the President and his minions will use the
same strategy. Because they cannot run on their record, they will
promulgate a few disingenuous talking points about the real issues
and then launch a vicious campaign of personal vilification. Only a
candidate with the support of rank-and-file Republicans, including
Tea Partiers, and a clear record of success on jobs and health care
will be able to survive and overcome this strategy. Rick Perry has
what it takes and Mitt Romney doesn’t.
