Rick Perry and Jobs claim

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/26/rick-perry-touts-jobs-record-in-first-paid-ad/

Rick Perry has used his first paid Television advertisement to make a promise.  The ad claims “Rick Perry will create 2.5 million new jobs”.  As Kevin Bohn’s article entitled, Rick Perry touts jobs record in first paid ad on CNN’s website notes, Perry is using jobs promises in order to boost his campaign.  Perry obviously feels like he can back up this claim with his past history of the DREAM act and his job creation success as governor in Texas.  Perry said, “’I know something about’ job creation. […] In Texas we’ve created over one million new jobs while the rest of the nation lost over two million.’” (Bohn).  Perry did have some success in Texas and has that prior success to draw upon.  I think it’s clear that Perry is targeting job creation in order to combat Mitt Romney, as Romney, who is currently a leading candidate, is tackling the issue as well.   In fact, Romney’s communications director, Gail Gitcho said in a statement, as noted by Bohn, “Today’s campaign ad doesn’t tell the whole story, failing to mention that unemployment in Texas has doubled on Perry’s watch and more than a million workers in his state are out of a job.  Mitt Romney is a conservative businessman who is focused on getting Americans back to work and reviving this economy.” (Bohn).   Perry seems to hope that Americans will not look into these currents statistics, but rather just go off of Perry’s positive history in job creation.  Perry clearly sees his competition in Romney and is trying to compete with him on the topic of job creating and economic reform.  Perry is making a bold effort to do so as we see in his claims in his Television ad.  I am a little worried for Perry as he tries to win over voters on this topic because it seems as if Romney has a foothold on the issues of our economy.  Perry may need to focus more on catering to the religious groups that support him in order to find more success in his campaign.  

Perry Foreign Policy

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/13/MNB31LUCD8.DTL

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/what-we-learned-at-the-foreign-policy-debate/248386/

In his article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Richard Dunham speaks of Perry’s background on Foreign Policy saying, “While Perry has little experience on foreign policy- he boasted that he was the ‘commander in chief’ of more than 20,000 Texas National Guard troops- has made several major policy pronouncements that set him apart from the pack.” (Dunham).  Furthermore, Perry did call for sanctions against Iran’s central bank and advocated dismantling the foreign aid programs that the US is currently participating in, believing that each nation should have to explain their needs for foreign aid before receiving such grants.  On this topic, as Molly Ball describes in her article in The Atlantic, that if there isn’t an exception for Israel, this might not go well with the rest of the GOP that seems to be pro-Israel.  When specifically asked about Israel, Perry said, “Obviously, Israel is a special ally, and my bet is we would be funding them at some substantial level, but it makes sense for everyone to come in at zero and make their case.” (Ball).  This idea that Israel will be treated like any other nation is a hot topic among the GOP.  The main criticism for Perry on the topic of foreign policy seems to be that he doesn’t have much experience with the issues.  As Ball describes, Perry responds to this by calling on “his experience as commander-in-chief of a state with an international border and his zeal for enhanced interrogation techniques.” (Ball).  On the topic of foreign policy, foreign aid seems to be what catches most of Perry’s interest and rightfully so.  I think his stance on this issue is easy to agree with because many question the reasons for the amount of foreign aid that the US participates in.  However, he will have to figure out how to appease the rest of the GOP on the subject of Israel.  Perry has done well with the topic considering his lack of experience as many have noted.  

Perry on Gay Marriage and Abortion

http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/288816/repeal-gay-marriage-perry-says?CSAuthResp=1320604983%3Atifr4hbu1blbglsgbsch2euv23%3ACSUserId%7CCSGroupId%3Aapproved%3A1089F65399EFB6A67939B30D9FCFA7C4&CSUserId=94&CSGroupId=1

When it comes to certain moral issues such as gay marriage and abortion, not everyone in the United States agrees with Rick Perry.  Tricia Nadolny’s article titled, Repeal Gary Marriage, Perry Says, in the Concord Monitor, describes Rick Perry’s stances on such issues.  Rick Perry is quoted in the article as saying, “As conservatives we believe in the sanctity of life.  We believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage.  And I applaud those legislators in New Hampshire who are working to defend marriage as an institution between one man and one woman, realizing that children need to be raised in a loving home by a mother and father.”

(Nadolny).  Perry goes on to say that the issue of life is often a slogan of campaigns as candidates hope to win votes, but to him, his stance on the issue is based on his authentic beliefs.  The article goes on to note that, “as governor of Texas he supported the requirement of parental consent of minors seeking abortions, helped man third-trimester abortions and signed a budget that pulled funding from Texas Planned Parenthood.” (Nadolny).  Needless to say, Rick Perry is Pro-Life and believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.  This is where it is really difficult to make the distinction between religion and politics and having the ability to separate the two.  For instance, on these issues, Rick Perry’s religious background in Protestant Christianity is shaping his beliefs.  When discussing the sanctity of life and marriage, he speaks as a conservative, but these conservative views are shaped by his religion.  Protestant Christians simply don’t believe in abortion or gay marriage.  When speaking of gay marriage, Perry seems to argue that marriage is simply supposed to be between a man and a woman and that children are supposed to be raised by a parents of different sexes.  In other words, Perry believes that is what God intended for humans.  These are issues that are very important to voters and might sway some individuals away from Perry.  However, Perry’s strong remarks on the issues seem to suggest that he believes there are enough voters that share his stances and therefore will vote for him.  

Perry and Latinos

A couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas there was a Latino Decisions poll that asked 600 Hispanic registered voters from more than 20 states what their impressions were of the GOP candidates.  As a whole, the Latino community was not favorable of the GOP candidates.  As for rick Perry, the poll showed that 39% of these voters had an unfavorable impression of him while only 22% had a favorable impression of him. 

We can get a better understanding of this from a Guest column in The Texas Tribune entitled Why Rick Perry is Bad for Hispanics, written by state representative, Rafael Anchia.  In the article, Anchia writes about the poor reception that Perry received at an Annual Conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.  Although Perry was said to have been in a “jovial mood”, his jokes were not taken in a laughing matter.  Rick Perry speaks of Hispanics in a positive way pretending like they should be favorable of him because of some of his particular stances.  However, his record on such issues has let down many Latinos and they seem to have not forgotten about these.  As is well known, Latinos are concerned on educational access.  Latinos look at educational for their children as the opportunity that will allow for success in their community.  In Texas, there are 4.9 million children enrolled in public school, of which more than 50% are Hispanic.  However, in this past year Perry pushed for a cuts-only budget that took away $5 billion from public schools that were already under-funded.  Anchia also speaks of the $250 that Perry took away from pre-K schools.  This is obviously decreasing the investment in Texas’s human capital.  This also happens to be an issue that Hispanics are highly involved in and one that they care a lot about.   Coming from Texas, Perry seems to think that Hispanics may be on his side, but in order for that to happen, I think he needs to create some promise on issues that Hispanics care about, such as education.  With the rapidly growing number of Hispanics in the U.S., we will continue to see an increased amount of attention on the political issues that concern this community.  It will be very hard for a candidate to win in this country without favoring Latinos.       

Polls-http://www.fronterasdesk.org/news/2011/oct/18/republican-caucus-democrat-election-2012/

Article-http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/guest-column-why-rick-perry-bad-hispanics/

Rick Perry Against African Americans

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/rick-perry-needs-the-help/2011/03/04/gIQAIUDDaL_blog.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZHQJHYgsFI

Many years have passed since the days of Martin Luther King Jr., but African Americans still feel disadvantaged in certain political issues.  Today, African Americans in general are concerned about inadequate health care, and institutional discrimination in housing, education, employment, criminal justice, and civil rights.  As for Rick Perry, he is not the most liked candidate by African Americans as a whole.  It has been an uphill battle for Rick Perry with regard to gaining the support of African Americans.  As Jonathan Capehart’s article in the Washington Post describes, Rick Perry’s family is said to have leased a property for years that is known as “Niggerhead”.  The name of this property is obviously involves a word many African Americans are sensitive towards.  Rick Perry’s involvement with this property has resulted in him being called very insensitive towards the African American community.  Perry’s involvement in with this property probably isn’t the best thing he could’ve done to gain African American support. 

There is another issue for which Perry has been criticized for his insensitivity towards African Americans.  In the youtube clip from Hardball, Perry is asked about the importance of the civil rights movement.  In the clip, Perry compares the civil rights struggle to the struggle of republicans for corporate tax rates.   These may be two issues  one for African Americans and one for Republicans, but it doesn’t take a political genius to realize that these issues are of different magnitudes for the two groups and not quite comparable.  Once again, Perry is seen as insensitive towards the African American community’s struggle for civil rights.  In addition, when Perry executed the Texas Miracle in job creation, he neglected the minorities and the poor. Rick Perry seems to have realized that he is not going to win over the African American community’s support.  However, in doing so, he is showing much insensitivity towards the African American community.