Rick Perry's good day

Contrary to what others are saying, I think Rick Perry had a pretty good day yesterday.

James Pethokoukis:

Bottom line: If a President Perry could balance the federal budget by 2020 and cap spending at 18 percent of GDP — and if you buy the JDA analysis — the result would be a more financially stable America and a richer America than the current economic and budgetary trajectory would indicate.

Kevin Williamson:

But here’s the thing that gets my attention: Governor Perry has some pretty serious entitlement-reform measures in here: Raising the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare benefits, changing the indexing formula to CPI rather than wages, giving younger workers at least a partial opt-out into private accounts, block-granting Medicaid, putting Medicare recipients directly in control of their own spending—this would be huge. A Republican president who got nothing else done in a four-year term would be a smashing success in my book if he achieved that kind of entitlement reform. I expect Perry to emphasize taxes, but the entitlement measures are the meat of the Perry proposal, in my view, though there’s a lot of good gravy: repealing Dodd-Frank, procedural reform for spending and regulating, repealing section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, expanding the “Galveston model” (another Social Security opt-out) to most government employees, etc.

Yes, I, too am inclined to scoff at promises to cut $100 billion in non-defense discretionary spending, as though that were something to call an achievement, and I doubt very much that Governor Perry’s proposal would produce an actual balanced budget in the foreseeable future. But getting a big piece of entitlement reform done would be a major victory that would set the fiscal Armageddon clock back significantly. And beginning the process of flattening and simplifying the tax code is worthwhile as well, though the Perry plan does less along those lines than I would like.

Rush Limbaugh: "I, El Rushbo, think is great. It's fabulous. I like it."

Mark Levin: "a great program"

Club for Growth: “massively pro-growth”

Perry's inept joking about the birther issue has provoked some serious negative responses -- "Perry fatally beclowns himself" -- but placed in context, I believe that's an overreaction. See Bryan Preston's Perry didn't "wade into birtherism" and Video: Perry rips reporter on live TV for bringing up birther nonsense.

Perry is hitting Romney exactly where he should be, on his lack of core conservative principles. Mr. Preston again: And Romney re-earns his flipper cred and Perry hits Romney: You can't change from one election to another


And Perry acquitted himself well on Bill O'Reilly's show:



I think the Cain bubble is going to burst soon, through sheer ineptitude, and it will ultimately come down to Romney or Perry. Mitt Romney is a liberal. That leaves Rick Perry.

So enjoy some Perry propaganda. Here's his first TV ad.

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