Has the Tea Party Set a Trap for Rick Perry in South Carolina?

[pampango]

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/94424/perry-immigration-south-carolina-demint

But Team Perry would be well advised to stay very alert this weekend. The same South Carolina event that is being widely billed as a spectacle of Mitt Romney bending his knee to kiss the ring of Jim DeMint could produce a nasty ambush for Perry on the subject of his immigration record.

It’s well known that Perry’s record and positions on immigration represent the one glaring area where he’s significantly out of step with conservative orthodoxy. He has, after all, consistently supported a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for undocumented workers, both positions contemptuously dismissed as code for “amnesty” by many conservative activists. Worse yet, from their point of view, he signed and still defends a state version of the DREAM Act, which provides in-state tuition rates at state universities for illegal immigrants brought to this country as children. He opposes any modification of birthright citizenship. And he kept Texas off the bandwagon of states emulating Arizona’s SB 1070 law. ... Indeed, anti-immigrant demagogue Tom Tancredo published an op-ed on the eve of Perry’s announcement of his candidacy denouncing the governor’s record in terms normally reserved for Barack Obama.

So it’s well worth noting that the co-inquisitor who will be sitting next to Jim DeMint (along with right-wing Princeton professor Robert George) at the Palmetto Freedom Forum event on Labor Day will be none other than Tancredo’s successor as Congress’ preeminent anti-immigration agitator, Representative Steve King of Iowa. King, whose views on the subject are so extreme that he was denied the chairmanship of a House subcommittee on immigration despite being its senior member, can hardly be expected to pass up an opportunity to bash Perry’s record in the forum’s one-on-one questioning format.

If Rick Perry does walk into a beatdown by King in Columbia, and doesn’t handle it well, the political consequences could be pretty serious. South Carolina is not a state where Republicans are particularly enamored of undocumented workers or sensitive about the Hispanic vote. If the extremely powerful Jim DeMint is looking for an excuse to support someone else or simply withhold his imprimatur, watching Perry squirm while his buddy King taunts him with a hot poker could provide an excellent excuse.

[Richardo]

1. I'm for it.

:popcorn: +

[blogslut]

2. What an intriguing thing to hear

It will be interesting to hear how Goodhair handles that particular flavor of grilling.

The eyes of (majority-minority) Texas are upon you...

[ThomWV]

3. Not at all possible. Reason? Because there is no Tea Party.

Who speaks for the Tea Party? Who makes the decisions for the Tea Party? Aside from paid-for bus-loads of "Tea Party Activists" a year or two ago and one one-day rally by Glen Beck in Washington a year ago just where is this fabled Tea Party to be found today?