The Same Kind of Dishonest

Arkansans are familiar with former President and Governor Bill Clinton.   And the Arkansans who have watched him closely know that Clinton is a dishonest man, but he was so good at it that you had to be watching very closely to catch him.   He counted on most people not watching that closely.  He also had an ability to radiate so much synthetic moral indignation at the suggestion that he had anything but the best of intentions that casual observers would shrug off what they thought was contradictory evidence.   In the face of such persuasive protests from the man, the average person would figure that they must have just misunderstood what really went down.  In the case of Bill Clinton this resulted in an incensed minority that had his number, and a clueless majority that wondered why a few people were such "Clinton Haters."

After going through the facts on a couple of key issues, I realized something.  Texas Gov. Rick Perry lies like Bill Clinton.   He is not simply a man that I disagree with on policy.  He is a dishonest man.   I am prepared to show you what I mean, but to do so, you will have to be of the minority of our citizens who is willing to sift through the evidence.  Just as important, you will have to believe what you see even in the face of a person who has copied to a "T" the indignant outrage routine that most people accept on an emotional level as evidence that it all must be some sort of misunderstanding.  But it's not a misunderstanding, but rather an attempt to create misunderstanding by a man of low moral character.

First issue: the bailouts for the Banksters.   Rick Perry now denies that he ever supported the bailout, but the facts show otherwise.  Please review the evidence at the link.  As head of the Republican Governor's Association he co-signed a letter with the leader of the Democratic Governor's Association urging Congress to pass the "economic stimulus" package before them.   He did not call it a bailout of course, none of them did.  But there was no other such bill before Congress at the time that they could have been referring to in that letter.  The establishment needed bipartisan cover for them to pass something that over 90% of the voters were against.    Perry was so crafty, so Clintonesque, that the same day he released the letter his office released a covering statement seeming to be against some of the policies in the very same bill that he just got through asking Congress to pass!

But of course the real story about Perry right now is over the triple-shot Gardasil injections for fifth grade girls which he attempted to mandate by executive order.   To understand why this issue is so serious, first we need some background.  Gardasil is a live-virus vaccine from Merck that protects against some but not all strains of HPV that can cause cancer.  HPV is a sexually transmitted disease.  For every such vaccine, a small percentage of recipients will experience an adverse reaction.  For example, thousands of such adverse reactions have been tied to Gardasil, including paralysis and even death.  Some of these may be because the Gardasil vaccine has been found to be highly contaminated.  

First of all, I am against the government mandating that my children get live-virus injections even if they are convinced that it might save my child's life.  I am the parent and I strongly reserve the right to be the one to make the decision as to whether or not the risk to my child of taking a medication is higher than the risk of not taking it.  This is nowhere more true than with a vaccine for 11 year old girls against a virus that is sexually transmitted.  Remember, all such vaccines have a small chance of an adverse reaction.   If my daughter lives a chaste lifestyle and marries someone who does the same, then taking the vaccine poses a greater health risk than not taking it.    I want to be the one to evaluate that risk for my children, not have the government decide it for us.

That should take care of Perry's claims that he only did it to "save lives."  If implemented, his edict may well have cost the life of some girl due to an adverse reaction to a vaccine that she did not need.  But of course, Perry told us at the Tea Party Debate that there was an "opt-out" clause in his executive order.   Read here about the hoops that parents had to jump through every two years if they wanted to "opt-out" of the vaccination.  Notice that if your timing was wrong, your child would have had to leave school until the bureaucrats of Texas decided to approve your paperwork.   The so-called "opt-out" clause was close to a farce.

Perry also said at the Tea Party debate that he realized afterward that he was wrong about the way he went about it and that he should have gone to the legislature.    But his recollection of his own response to the legislative rebuke was a fiction.  Instead, he acted much as Bill Clinton would have in a similar situation.  Michelle Malkin recounts his true reaction....

Not only did Perry defend going above the heads of elected state legislators, but his office also falsely claimed the legislature had no right to repeal the executive order. “The order is effective until Perry or a successor changes it, and the Legislature has no authority to repeal it,” Perry spokeswoman Krista Moody told The Washington Post in February 2007.

When both the House and Senate repealed the law six weeks later, Perry did not — as he now claims — listen humbly or “agree with their decision.”

Human shield demagoguery. In response to the legislature’s rebuke,the infuriated governor attacked those who supported repeal as “shameful” spreaders of “misinformation” who were putting “women’s lives” at risk. Borrowing a tried-and-true Alinskyite page from the progressive left, Perry surrounded himself with female cervical cancer victims and deflected criticism of his imperial tactics with emotional anecdotes.
He then lionized himself and the minority of politicians who voted against repeal of his Gardasil order. “They will never have to think twice about whether they did the right thing. No lost lives will occupy the confines of their conscience, sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.” Perry, of course, has now put his own ghastly Gardasil order on that same altar — but with no apology to all those he demonized and exploited along the way.

When Congresswoman Michelle Bachman pointed out that the vaccine distributor Merck was a Perry Contributor, Perry said they only gave him about $5,000.   The truth documented here shows it was much more than that.   In addition, Perry's former staffer now has a key role at a drug company "Super-PAC" that is very likely to be in a position to send millions of dollars his way.

UPDATE: During the Florida debate Perry looked as the camera and said "I was lobbied...by a 31 year old cervical cancer victim."   The facts now show that he did not meet her until after he issued the executive order.

The bottom line is that based on what I know to be true, I cannot in good conscience vote for Rick Perry.  When I listen to the guy, I like what he says.  When I look at the facts later and compare them to his words, I become furious.   That's just the way I felt for many years about Bill Clinton.