Rick Perry: Teamwork Needed If GOP To Win White House

by JASmius

And probably an armored column or two, complete with air support, for good measure.  But otherwise, teamwork is certainly a prerequisite - which leaves no room for purity purges and circular firing squads:

Texas Governor Rick Perry is spending time in Iowa, possibly in hopes of seeking support for another run at the presidency and calling for Republicans to "find our middle ground" so the party can retake the White House in 2016.

"I don't think somebody's going to stand up and say, 'send me to Washington, D.C. and I'll fix everything, unless fixing everything means we're going to try to make Washington as inconsequential as we can in your life," Perry said in a wide-ranging interview with the Des Moines Register this week.

Perry in 2012 was considered a "conservative's conservative," and was a favorite among tea party supporters, evangelical Christians and others. But there are plenty of people with that description among the 2016 Republican possibilities, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul,and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Perry's new strategy, the Register reports, seems to center around rebranding himself as an economic policy savior who will transfer power to the states.

Governor Perry is absolutely correct, of course.  As we just saw demonstrated in Virginia last Tuesday versus four years ago, when the GOP is united, it wins; when it is divided, it loses.  Period, exclamation point.

The Newsmax story didn't indicate whether there were any long, vacant pauses in his Des Moines Register interview, but the fact that that crack comes instantly to mind is a pretty good indicator of Governor Perry's 2016 prospects.  It probably isn't fair, but pratfalls of the magnitude of his fifty three seconds of dead air on which Cabinet departments he would eliminate as president in that GOP 2012 primary debate are the kind of thing that gets tattooed indelibly on a candidate's forehead.  Like, forever.

Besides, if Governor Perry does run again, and the Tea Party contingent is as overpopulated as Sandy Fitzgerald anticipates - and I have no reason to disagree with her take - that will make it all the likelier that the TP vote will be hacked into irrelevance, and all the easier for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to position himself as the "mainstream" Republican alternative.  Or, more or less what happened in '12, with a gaggle of TP pretenders taking turns beating each other senseless while Mitt Romney soared above and beyond them, unfettered, to the nomination.

My Tea Party friends, if you want to ensure that one of your own can secure the GOP nomination, please, be serious and smart about it: Don't scatter to this favorite or that hero or the other icon - unify behind the most electable and viable Tea Party candidate.  And I'll help you by striking Paul, Cruz, and Rubio from the list.  They're all freshmen and all senators, rendering them unelectable unless running against another senator.  Just avoid senators as a general rule.  Particularly when there is a fine assortment of Tea Party Republican governors available.

My recommendation?  Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, assuming he can win re-election a year from now.  If anybody has proven his mettle in the fighting trenches, it's Scott Walker.  That way the nominating contest can be a head-to-head, grassroots vs. "establishment" showdown without a bunch of Herb Cains and Michelle Bachmanns fusterclucking the debate stages, diluting the TP message, and wasting everybody's time.  And whether Governor Walker or Governor Christie got the nod, may the best man win.

Unity, gentles, unity.  Without it, we're beaten before the race ever begins.