Rick Perry: The Tea Party Cowboy
Rick Perry,
answering questions from a crowd of about 250 New Hampshire Republicans:
Moments later, an audience member asked Perry if he thinks Congress should audit the Fed -- a pet proposal from Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a rival candidate who has long sought to dismantle the central bank.
"I got in trouble talking about the Federal Reserve yesterday. I got lectured about that yesterday," Perry said, drawing laughs before piling on more insinuation about the Fed's actions.
He would "absolutely" support an audit, to dispel "the mistrust that is there today."
"That would go a long way toward finding out whether or not there is some activities that are improper, or that they've been handling themselves quite well," he said. "But until they do that, there will continue to be questions about what their activity and what their true goal is for the United States."
This kind of talk is red meat for tea party Republicans, and for all the consternation coming from establishment GOPers, I bet it ends up helping Perry. He'd certainly rather be talking about his criticism of Ben Bernanke or auditing the Fed than about past positions on which he is vulnerable from the right, including the fact that he was Texas co-chair of Al Gore's presidential campaign.
In fact, the candidate who appears to be most concerned about the fallout from Rick Perry's comments isn't Rick Perry, it's Mitt Romney, who is suddenly proclaiming his solidarity with the tea party after spending the whole campaign trying to steer clear of the teahadi.