Rick Rolling

I'm a bit uneasy with Rick Perry; somehow, I don't quite trust him, and his big The Response prayer shindig that is going on in Houston even as we speak seems a bit too contrived as a de-facto kickoff of a presidential campaign.

Looking at the list of endorsers, there is an interesting overlap of folks who are political active theocons like the Dobsons, Richard Land and FRC's Tony Perkins, some over-the-top charismatics like Mike Bickle and some relatively sober largely apolitical evangelicals like Max Lucado and Jack Hayford; Hayford was in on the evangelical climate-change manifesto a few years back, so this crowd isn't all singing from the Club for Growth hymnal.

You have some hot-button items, like the toxicly-anti-liberal AFR folks (the SPLC has gone over the top in putting them in the same "hate group" bucket as your neo-Nazis, but they have their share of bile towards the left, which is nails-on-chalkboard when I channel-surf into one of their stations while in the South), but this is not that much different from pan-evangelical outings like the National Day of Prayer crowd where there is a lot of earnest prayer for the nation and a mildly unhealthy overtone of right-wing politics thrown in.

I'm struggling to come up with a coherent description of my unease with Perry. Part of it might be his ramming through a HPV-vaccination program through in Texas, which made many folks on the right uncomforatble. Part of it might be the lack of robust support for him in past elections, where he limped through with a 39% plurality in a four-way race in 2006 and had a tough three-way primary last year, paired with an old impression as a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time governor who backed into the job as Dubya's LG.

But a big part is the support Perry seems to be getting from the anti-government wing of the conservative movement. There seems to be an attempt here to make him Mr. Theocon and Mr. Tea Party in one grand package which seems to be rather unhealty. Those factions are both uneasy with Mitt Romney as the nominee and lack a clear champion, but there is a bit of a liberal-hater, government-hater vibe to that crowd that makes me uneasy.

Not that we don't need smaller government and less libertine influence in the halls of power, but I am not feeling a lot of God's love out of the faction that is building around Perry. Part of that might be a lot of anti-conservative media play that is putting bad spin on Perry and some of the more grating members of the Response crew, but there is something more there.

My mind goes back to some of the nastiness during the Harriet Miers nomination; I see a lot of that in the Perry crowd, and I'd like to think otherwise.

Comments

[Bene D]

I watched what I could while getting ready to head over to friends for dinner.

Wow. When NAR watchers said that they had an ethnic mailing list, they weren't kidding.
That was a NAR who's who. All I could think of was Matthew 6:5-6, I'll never understand such overt religious politics.

It's sobering and sad to watch Perry and NAR leaders maneuvering - I find him shallow and not ready for your national stage, but that's understandable given I've not been exposed to this level of neo-charismatic, spiritualizing bible belt rock show.

Richard Land had a good quote in The Atlantic:

"He's a charismatic figure. I think about him on stage with the other candidates and he'll stand out. He's not a wallflower. But the most interesting question for me is whether the country is ready for somebody who looks and sounds like George W. Bush on steroids."

[Bene D]

I see that Perry will be declaring his run a week after his prayer meeting.