It’s Baaa-aaack
March 9th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
That cracking you hear coming from the Capitol is the sound of Rick Perry’s base slowly breaking up. For years Perry benefited from the once-rock solid alliance of corporate Republicans and social conservatives. But recently sex and money has complicated things, and the divide between the two camps appears to be growing.
The most recent example: the Texas Eagle Forum, a conservative group whose president endorsed Perry as recently as last November, has hounded Perry’s HPV vaccine mandate from day one. The vaccine may not be dominating the news anymore, but that hasn’t stopped the national Eagle Forum from running columns like yesterday’s ominous “Experimenting on Teen Girls.” (It’d be nice if these groups gave similar scare treatment to, say, school vouchers: “Students For Sale” or some such.)
The column, in so many words, accuses Perry of being a pawn of the evil Merck lobby. Lobbyists influence governor’s office! Use campaign contributions! My goodness! Welcome to our world. And while the author makes her points through assertions that only occasionally border on the truthful (more on that later), the column is notable for one particularly nasty insult, considering the source: comparing Perry to none other than Hillary Clinton.
