All Republicans and conservatives have to deal with the condescending put downs by the liberal elites that their ideas and plans are “simplistic”. Ronald Reagan in particular was said to be naive and simplistic whether dealing with the Soviet Union (he was denounced as being provocative for calling the USSR “The Evil Empire”) or with the ideas of tax cuts. Our betters at The Washington Post have decreed that Gov. Rick Perry’s ideas on higher education to be simplistic, therefore I think we must give him the benefit of the doubt.
by Mona Charen
Anticipating his entry into the presidential race, the Washington Post ran a long piece on Texas Governor Rick Perry’s ideas about higher education. “A man of grand plans,” the headline warned, “criticized as not sweating the details.” Are the headline writers at the Post on summer break? Did the temps have to dust off headlines from the Reagan era? Reagan’s ideas were constantly dismissed by the bien passant as “simplistic.” So anyone who gets tagged as simplistic by the Post gets an immediate benefit-of-the-doubt from me. As Margaret Thatcher said at Reagan’s funeral, ” . . . his ideas, though clear, were never simplistic. He saw the many sides of truth.”
So what has Perry done to earn this epithet? He’s taken on the higher education establishment in Texas. He has proposed – gasp — that Texas’s four-year institutions develop a plan to offer bachelor’s degrees for no more than $10,000. “Skeptics,” the Post tells us, say that the goal cannot be achieved without sacrificing “academic quality and prestige.” It shows, these same unnamed critics assert, that the governor has a “record of plunging into splashy ventures, at times, despite the complexities, constituencies, or sensitivities involved.”
[…]
During that same 1997-2007 decade that home prices increased by 68 percent and created a housing bubble, college tuition and fees rose even higher — by 83 percent. In fact, college tuition and fees have never increased by less than 73 percent in any ten-year period back to the 1980s. And in the decades ending in 2009 and 2010, college tuition increased by more than 90 percent. The still-inflating increases in the price of higher education are starting to make the housing bubble look pretty tame by comparison.”
In addition to suggesting that tuition be reduced, a panel appointed by Governor Perry suggested that professors were “wasting time and money churning out esoteric, unproductive research.” Shocking. The panel suggested dividing the research and teaching budgets to encourage excellence in both, while also introducing merit pay for exceptional classroom teachers.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that students are flocking to colleges and universities in flat, freezing North Dakota to take advantage of lower tuition rates. Enrollment at public colleges has jumped 38 percent in the last decade, led by a 56 percent increase in out of state students. Colleges around the nation, the Journal advises, must now compete for a new kind of student: “the out-of-state bargain hunter.”
Admittedly, North Dakota benefited from oil revenue and spent generously on its colleges and universities over the past 12 years. But in a time of straightened circumstances for everyone, how does it not make sense to have colleges and universities compete on price?
Obama seeks to forestall this commonsense solution by once again increasing government subsidies. Student loans, courtesy of Obama, can now be “forgiven” after 20 years of payment, or after 10 years if students choose “public service.” Who pays the difference? You know who.
[…]
And Perry is the simplistic one?
Rick Perry’s education policy is more sophisticated then Obama’s
According to the Democratic leaning (to say the least) Polticio – there is another reason why I would support Rick Perry against all the Republican candidates and non candidates – Rick Perry loathes Karl “the overrated” Rove, whose influence will be gone and he can spend his time trying to sound like he knows what he is talking about on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox, if Perry wins. As the article states “Perry winning would be a deathblow for Rove.” By the way this is the second hit piece on Governor Perry in two days by Politico which tells me that Perry is the one that Obama does not want to have to run against.
For those of you who are interested in why the Bush’s and Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, James Baker, and Karen Hughes wanted to defeat Rick Perry in 2010 it goes back to 1998. Rick Perry plays to win and does not believe in turning the other cheek. I admire that!
In 1998, however, when Bush was running for reelection as governor and Perry was running for lieutenant governor, the two campaigns clashed over whether Perry should go negative against his opponent. Rove argued against it, insisting that Bush campaign polling showed Perry comfortably in the lead.
But Perry’s pollster Mike Baselice forecast a much closer result, and the feeling in Perry’s camp was that Rove’s real motivation was concern that negative ads would cut into Bush’s margin of victory, particularly among Hispanic voters, and undermine his efforts to build momentum for Bush’s planned 2000 presidential campaign.
After one particularly contentious phone call, one Perry campaign operative punched a hole in a wall in Arnold’s office. Perry’s campaign eventually went up with negative ads, and squeaked out a narrow victory. Rove offered a “most memorable” election night apology, Baselice told the Houston Chronicle in 2006.
In 2007, Perry was captured on video at an Iowa event for former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s campaign, declaring “George Bush was never a fiscal conservative — never was.”
Soon thereafter, Rove and other Bush allies began aligning themselves behind Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a longtime Bush family ally, in challenging Perry in last year’s Texas gubernatorial primary. It was in the context of that bitter race that Perry’s adviser Dave Carney, in a 2009 interview with The New York Times Magazine, disparaged the Bush crew — and Rove specifically — as “country-club Republicans” and “not conservatives.
by Kenneth P. Vogel
If Texas Gov. Rick Perry ultimately decides to run for president, it would shake up the Republican race, directly threatening Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty and the other candidates vying to be the leading alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney.
But it could also make things tricky for another powerful Texan — Karl Rove
Rove, who served as George W. Bush’s political strategist in Texas on his way to becoming the GOP’s best known political operative, had a falling out with Perry and his staff when Bush was governor in the 1990s that has become the stuff of Lone Star lore.
With no signs the two have patched things up — and with some suggestion that Rove, or at least his team, is tilting toward Romney — speculating how their relationship would play out if Perry becomes a candidate has become something of a fixation among Perry supporters and other Republicans in Texas and Washington.
Their interest is not just in the alliances and rifts stemming from a personal feud, but in the possible consequences for one of Texas’s major exports to national politics — money.
As the intellectual spark behind a network of outside groups including American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (or Crossroads GPS, for short), Rove is the unofficial leader of a shadow Republican Party that intends to raise tens of millions of dollars on ads to defeat President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats in 2012. But Rove’s network relies to a great extent on a small group of wealthy Texans, including some who have been major donors to Perry.
[…]
One person who has sent checks to both American Crossroads and Perry’s campaigns predicted that if Perry wins the nomination, his donors will cut off the spigot to Rove.
“Perry winning would be a deathblow for Rove,” said this person, who did not want to be identified talking about political contribution strategies.
Campaign filings show that if even a handful of big Texas donors feel the same way, it could have a major impact. Of the $35 million in reported contributions raised by American Crossroads (Crossroads GPS does not disclose donations), about half (more than $17 million) has come from Texas, according to an analysis of filings with the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service.
And 11 of the biggest Texas donors to American Crossroads, a super PAC, have also given Perry $4.7 million since 2001, the earliest year for which Texas state campaign filings are electronically accessible.
Houston homebuilder Bob Perry (no relation to Rick Perry), for example, who ranks as the biggest known donor to American Crossroads at $7.5 million, has also given at least $3.3 million to Rick Perry over the years.[…]
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