Tea Party taking a good look at Perry

WASHINGTON — For the past few months, members of the Tea Party movement pointed to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, businessman Herman Cain and Texas Rep. Ron Paul as favorites in the GOP presidential field.

  • Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry greets veterans and reservists as he visits the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Monday.

    By Charles Dharapak, AP

    Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry greets veterans and reservists as he visits the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Monday.

By Charles Dharapak, AP

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry greets veterans and reservists as he visits the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Monday.

The decision by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to jump into the race is changing that as many view him as the long-sought candidate who cannot only unite the naturally disparate Tea Party vote, but also pose a serious threat to President Obama in the 2012 election.

"This is what I've been waiting for," said Toby Marie Walker, founder of the Waco (Texas) Tea Party. "He's a seasoned campaigner; he knows how to raise money; he has a track record … he doesn't believe in big, federal programs; and he's for individual rights and state powers."

Corralling the full force of the Tea Party — the grass-roots movement that helped propel the Republicans into power in the House of Representatives in 2010 — will be difficult.

Since Perry started hinting at a presidential run in recent months, voters have begun picking through his decade-long tenure as governor and wondering whether his vocal support of the Tea Party and its ideals matches his record. A number of those who know him best — Texas voters — don't sound convinced.

"He blows in whichever way the political wind blows," said Tammy Blair, an accountant who co-founded the Tyler (Texas) Tea Party. "I don't think he's going to get a whole lot of support out of the Texas Tea Parties, unless he ends up as the Republican nominee and we're stuck with him."

One of the biggest objections Tea Party groups have with Perry is his support for the Trans-Texas Corridor — a plan that would have created more than 4,000 miles of superhighways, rails and utility lines, cost more than $100billion and required the taking of private property through eminent domain. The proposal was eliminated by the state Legislature this year.

Even more upsetting to some was his decision to sign an executive order in 2007 requiring all sixth-graders in the state to get vaccinated against HPV, or human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease. The Legislature passed a bill striking down Perry's order two months later.

"That's something that we the people need to decide for ourselves," Blair said.

However upsetting those decisions may be to libertarian-leaning Tea Partiers, they may not resonate outside the state, said Sean Theriault, a University of Texas political science professor. He said a vaccine for sixth-graders and support of a highway program that never materialized are minor issues, compared with Mitt Romney's struggles to defend the health care plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts or Bachmann's inability to pass legislation through Congress.

"You can't be governor of a state as big as Texas and not make a few decisions that are going to rub some people the wrong way," Theriault said.

With the nation's economic struggles paramount in the upcoming election, Perry will benefit greatly from the job-creation numbers in Texas, said Judson Phillips, founder of the Tea Party Nation. Over the past year, Texas' job growth was twice the national average, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

"As this economy gets worse, when people are comparing Perry to Bachmann, I think a lot of people are going to be swayed by the fact that Texas is doing so well economically," he said.

Torin Archbold, a member of the Austin Tea Party, said the knocks against Perry have left him waiting for former Alaska governor Sarah Palin to get into the race. Short of that happening, he said, Perry's shortcomings still leave him ahead of the pack.

Palin "would be my first choice," Archbold said, "but Rick Perry is strong. He's the quintessential Texan, he's got great hair, he's a good-looking guy, he stands tall, and he talks directly.

"A Palin-Perry ticket would be fine with me."

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