Tom’s Big Picture

The hard thing about this one is that, unlike most politicians, I actually liked Perry as a person.

“Now, strategic fencing in certain urban areas to direct the flow of traffic does make sense, but building a wall on the entire border is a preposterous idea,” Perry said.

“The only thing a wall would possibly accomplish is to help the ladder business.”

This is probably the most shameless open-borders argument possible: it’s impossible to stop therefore it’s inevitable. If the Mexican Border Patrol can manage to keep Guatemalans out of Mexico, surely the US Border Patrol can keep Mexicans out of the US.

It gets worse:

“Good neighbors do not foster fear and engage in divisive appeals. They seek solutions”

Perry said the federal government needs to quickly enact immigration reform, and he said he supports a guest worker program that would bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows.

The governor also said he believes legislation that has been filed in the Texas House to do away with “birthright citizenship” is divisive.

State Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, has a bill that would challenge a U.S. constitutional interpretation that gives automatic citizenship to everyone born in the United States. Berman’s bill would deny such citizenship to anyone born to parents who are in the country illegally.

So basically, Perry here is saying that he supports an amnesty- letting illegals stay. And he supports automatic citizenship (and welfare benefits) to the child of any pregnant Mexican who can make it across the border. What’s “divisive” about that, except providing an incentive for a pregnant woman to risk her and her baby’s life while hastening the demographic displacement of the American people?

We’ve got a real problem here in Texas. How does arguably the most conservative state in the country have such sorry leaders? A governor who basically lied to us in the campaign and now supports open borders. Both of our Senators (Cornyn and Hutchinson) have this year supported their own amnesties. Hutchinson is even pro-choice, for goodness sake, elected in the very state whose laws against murdering unborn children were overturned by Roe v. Wade!

I think the main problem in the state is its size- it takes so much money to run for statewide office that the grassroots have relatively little influence over the selection. If a good candidate were to run for governor, unless that candidate could convince the money-men to fund his campaign, you’d never even hear about him, or else dismiss him as a wasted vote. I have hopes the Internet can change this in the long-term.

But for now, all this almost makes me wish I had voted for the crazy Jewish cowboy:

Kinky Friedman has said that if he was elected governor of Texas, he would make the Mexican government pay for the costs of illegal immigration in Texas or face what he called the “Israeli discount.”

“We should be as ruthless as they are with the southern border,” said the author and musician. He says: “I would tell [Mexican officials] to step up to the plate and pay their fair share of the cost illegals are costing the state of Texas…If they don’t do that, then I want the border on the nightly news every night.

But we should have better choices than a washed-up wannabe cowboy Yankee transplant named “Kinky”.

We only have ourselves to blame: we ought to research every candidate on the Republican Primary ticket for statewide offices and vote for the most conservative ones, regardless of funding. Did you do this? Did you even vote in the primary? If you didn’t, you really have no right to complain when Tweedledee calls Tweedledum a liberal in the campaign and then adopts his positions after the election.