Visual source: Newseum
Bloomberg:
Republicans give Rick Perry frontrunner status in their party’s presidential primary race even as warning signs flash over his ability to win support in the general election.
The Texas governor is the preferred choice of 26 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in a Bloomberg National Poll conducted Sept. 9-12. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney places second at 22 percent, while all of the other Republican candidates get less than 10 percent.
In a hypothetical general election matchup, Perry trails President Barack Obama among the poll’s entire sample, 49 percent to 40 percent, about twice the deficit for Romney. Perry also confronts negative reactions from Americans disinclined to vote for a candidate expressing the skepticism he has about the viability of Social Security, evolution science and whether humans contribute to climate change.
EJ Dionne:
No, if Perry is to be defeated, he will have to do the job himself. And the week’s most important political news is that he might do just that.
His vulnerabilities were certainly on display at this week’s CNN/Tea Party Express debate. Perry still hasn’t disentangled himself from his past suggestions that Social Security is unconstitutional. He will also be hurt by his humane position on immigration. He should be praised for it, but it will only bring him scorn among GOP primary voters.
His biggest problem, however, is his executive order requiring preteen girls in Texas to be immunized against a disease that causes cervical cancer, a decision that the religious right didn’t like and that Perry now says was a mistake. The dangerous charge here is influence-peddling.
WaPo editorial:
ABOUT THE ONLY thing that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) gets right when she talks about the HPV vaccine is that she’s not a scientist or a doctor. That lack of credentials, though, can’t excuse the breathtaking ignorance that suffuses her comments about this critical health issue. Nor can it justify her demagoguery about a scientific advance that has the potential to protect thousands of women a year from contracting — and perhaps dying from — cancer.
Laura Bassett on Perry campaigning in VA, which mandates HPV:
On the one hand, Virginia Republicans have sought to repeal their own mandate, casting it (as Perry's critics have) as a government intrusion in individual medical decisions. But repeal legislation has always fallen short in the state Senate.
On the other hand, Virginia's experiment with the HPV vaccine has proven that qualified mandates, like the one Perry envisioned, are rarely as draconian as some try to suggest. (Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), for example, alarmingly referred to the vaccine as a "government injection" in Monday night's presidential debate.) Even some Virginia conservatives agree that mandating a lifesaving vaccine isn't necessarily incongruous with Republican principles.
Laura has done superb coverage on this
the last few days.
Jennifer Rubin on GOP dummy down policy:
Bachmann was not exercising skepticism about a scientific theory. She wasn’t chiding cultural elitists who look down on ordinary Americans. She was spouting anti-scientific gibberish. It was good to see that strong conservative voices denounced this behavior.
and on Perry at Liberty U:
Yes, he was trying to be self-deprecating, but it’s disturbing to see that he thinks being a rotten student and a know-nothing gives one street cred in the GOP. Is it so important to defy the MSM by flaunting affection for anti-intellectualism? Just imagine if Sarah Palin had said all that — the conservative cheerleaders who gave up on her (but are still rooting for Perry) would roll their eyes in disgust.
Yuval Levin:
The means by which Rick Perry sought to add the HPV vaccine to the list of required vaccinations in Texas was certainly peculiar, and combined with his links to a Merck lobbyist it raises some questions that he should address more seriously than he has. And while the HPV vaccine is not an absolutely obvious candidate for mandatory vaccination (HPV and its very serious associated cancer risks are not, as Miller suggests, “childhood illnesses,” though I see no persuasive reason not to warmly welcome the opportunity to protect people from them as early as possible), adding it to the list of required vaccines, especially with a broad parental opt-out, strikes me as well within the bounds of reasonable public policy. A sensible, indeed essential, reticence about sending the wrong message to young girls does not seem to me to readily translate into an unwillingness to protect women (young and formerly young) from a deadly cancer. It’s hard to imagine that the risk of cervical cancer is what keeps even one young woman in America from premarital sex today, or that a lessening of that risk would at all diminish the ranks of those who choose to wait—especially if parents can easily opt out.
Peter J. Ognibene:
At the GOP presidential candidates' debate in Tampa Monday night, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said, "I am always going to err on the side of life."
Perry was speaking about his executive order, later withdrawn, which would have required 12-year-old girls to be injected with Gardasil, a vaccine manufactured by Merck that offers some protection against the human papilloma virus.
Yet, when it came to life or death for Cameron Todd Willingham in February 2004, Perry erred irrevocably on the side of death.