Just One Week Into His Campaign, Rick Perry Disavows His Nine-Month-Old Book

[ProSense]

Just One Week Into His Campaign, Rick Perry Disavows His Nine-Month-Old Book

By Ian Millhiser

Last November, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) published Fed Up, a 240-page ode to tentherism, which argues that everything from child labor laws to the Clean Air Act to Medicare violates the Constitution. As it turns out, however, claiming that America’s entire social safety net is unconstitutional isn’t a very popular position — so Perry’s now trying to take it all back just one week into his presidential campaign:

(Perry's) communications director, Ray Sullivan, said Thursday that he had “never heard” the governor suggest (Social Security) was unconstitutional. Not only that, Mr. Sullivan said, but “Fed Up!” is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program. <...>

In an interview, Mr. Sullivan acknowledged that many passages in Mr. Perry’s “Fed Up!” could dog his presidential campaign. The book, Mr. Sullivan said, “is a look back, not a path forward.” It was written “as a review and critique of 50 years of federal excesses, not in any way as a 2012 campaign blueprint or manifesto,” Mr. Sullivan said.

The campaign’s disavowal of “Fed Up!” is itself very new. On Sunday evening, at Mr. Perry’s first campaign stop in Iowa, a questioner asked the governor to talk about how he would fix the country’s rickety entitlement programs. Mr. Perry shot back: “Have you read my book, ‘Fed Up!’ Get a copy and read it.”

Fed Up is not some 20-year-old graduate school thesis that Perry wrote before he served in elected office. It is a substantial, nationally published manifesto that Perry was proudly signing at book tours just a few months ago. Indeed, as recently as last Monday, Perry was on the campaign trail citing Fed Up for the unusual proposition that “I don’t think the federal government has a role in your children’s education.” Watch it:

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Oops!

[stevenleser]

1. This guy is a pathetic joke. Unfortunately, Republicans like electing pathetic jokes. n/t

[Enrique]

2. no oops about it n/t

[Inuca]

3. Not meant to be taken as factual statements n/t

[gordianot]

4. You mean it has been a week it feels like 10 years. n/t

[treestar]

5. So he is less fed up than he was

:rofl:

[lindysalsagal]

9. Yeah. Now he's fed half-way up. Totally different.

:applause:

[Yavin4]

6. So, The Fetus Must Be Protected, But The Child Has To Go To Work??!!!

Message to children from Rick Perry: Never come out of the womb.

[sammytko]

7. Maybe it was a youthful indescretion in book writing?

He's matured in the last two days...

[SpartanDem]

8. That book is a gold mine of great advertising

[lindysalsagal]

10. Unbelievable, that his handlers couldn't see how secession and this wouldn't be a problem nationally

It's one thing for an egotistical politician to believe his own BS. It's another thing, altogether, that these other fools decide to take the job of selling this sausage to the national spotlight.

How good are his handlers if they couldn't see this backlash coming?

Makes me wonder if Sarah Palin isn't scouting the actual job right now, but hoping to pick up enough fools to work for her. so that she can announce her candidacy.

Last time, McCain and the GOP got stuck with her. It's entirely different for her to go out and recruit workers, herself.

[Blue_Tires]

11. Who was that pro athlete years ago who said he was mis-quoted in his autobiography?

lol