Rick Perry's trial balloon

Things that make you go hmmm...

Back in February, I was thinking that Texas Governor Rick Perry could run in 2012. Being from Texas and watching him govern the past 10 years or so, there was never any doubt in my mind that he would run for president someday. It was only recently that I thought it could be in this election cycle.

Conservative blogs were ablaze yesterday with the rumor that Rick Perry could be running in 2012. No doubt this rumor was planted by Perry's camp itself. This was a trial balloon. He has strongly denied he's running for POTUS, so this was a test to see how the public would react to him running. For instance, a few months ago people were literally begging NJ Governor Chris Christie to run despite his constant denials. Since then, dirt has been dug up on him and now the calls for him to run are reduced to crickets. During the Perry discussion yesterday on the blogs, Perry's negatives were discovered and discussed. This is exactly what Perry wanted to see - if there were any deal breaker in his record that would make it impossible to run and win this cycle. Just like when everyone found out Christie was unelectable. Christie can now say that he never wanted to run anyway, it was just a rumor.

Things that make me go hmmm: (1) he's a close friend of Sarah's, which I never understood; (2) because of their friendship I highly suspect that he could be a VP pick for her; (3) he seems to be playing the same strategy as Palin which is a "wait and see which candidates decide to run and then make a decision;" (4) my opinion only, which is only a hunch, is that he and Palin are working together on campaign strategies. My conspiracy theory: He could already be in on being Palin's VP pick. He could possibly have zero interest in POTUS this cycle, and has only released this rumor in order to determine if he would be a good VP candidate. If anything too big came out then he would be out. That's why this trial balloon was released.

I'll discuss my thoughts on Perry's governing record in future posts. The quick summary is that he's been a big government Republican and is getting slightly more conservative as time goes on. That's why I never understood their friendship and their mutual endorsements of each other. He's always been a little RINO-y to me, but I'll keep my mind open.