Earlier today on Meet the Press, Rick Perry gave some pretty loud hints that he's thinking about running for president in 2016.
Asked about what many saw as his “botched” run in 2012 — when he was tripped up in part by an agonizing memory lapse during a nationally televised debate — Mr. Perry chuckled and said, “I would tend to agree with them on the botched effort side of it.”
But he went on to talk about “second chances,” and added, “I think that we see more character out of an individual by how do you perform after you fail and you go forward.”
The governor said that in his travels across the country he would talk about “how do we make America more competitive” and “how you get Americans back to work” — themes that clearly extend beyond the borders of Texas.
Watch the full interview
here.
If Perry does run, he'd be going in with an awful lot of baggage. For starters, there's the West fertilizer plant explosion, which exposed Texas' inadequate regulatory scheme for all to see. Remember, it's possible to operate a fertilizer plant in Texas without any liability insurance at all, and it's possible to build a school, an apartment complex and a nursing home next door. Additionally, he is the target of a grand jury probe into whether his gutting of the state's Public Integrity Unit was politically motivated. And on, and on.
During his 2012 bid, Perry marched double-time to embrace the most extreme elements of the GOP base. He coordinated a series of prayer rallies, known as "The Response," with members of the New Apostolic Reformation, the overtly fascist offshoot of the religious right that thinks it can bring about the second coming by taking over the world. One of his prayer partners and a major organizer of these rallies, Alice Patterson, thinks Democrats are controlled by demons. When Perry briefly rose to frontrunner status in the GOP primary, The Daily Beast, NPR and CNN covered his ties to the NAR--and the more people knew about them, the less they liked him. If that wasn't enough, he publicly advocated allowing Congress to veto Supreme Court decisions.
The more I think about it, I find myself hoping Perry is foolish enough to run. If he gets the nomination, he's so far to the right that Hillary or any passable Democrat would eat him for lunch.