Perry already showing neocon influence

Last month it was reported that Gov. Perry was getting advice on foreign policy from Douglas Feith, a leading neoconservative and Muslim-democracy promoter in the Bush administration.

Today’s New York Times reports:

“At the end of the day,” Mr. Perry told supporters here, “getting America working again is what the bulk of the people really care about.”

“At the end of the day”? Is that the way a man of the people from a small town in west Texas talks? No, it’s the way a neocon talks.

- end of initial entry -

James N. writes:

I’m quite convinced that Perry is a globalist.

One of the greatest 21st Century political neologisms is “dog whistles”. A dog whistle is something only audible to certain audiences. When Bush used “wonder-working power” in the 2002 State of the Union address, that was a dog whistle for evangelical Christians, both black and white.

Perry has clearly leased the Karl Rove “conservative simpletons” dog whistle set for the campaign. He was Al Gore’s 1988 Texas campaign chairman, for heaven’s sake.

He’s a globalist. You betcha (wink).

Craig M. writes:

I listened to Perry’s speech from South Carolina Saturday. He said, “America is the last, best hope of the world.” That sentiment predates neo-con thinking by decades. Don’t you think that such feelings inform foreign policy on an instinctual level? Does one really need neocon philosophers for such an emotion to take hold of foreign policy?

LA replies:

I agree that by itself, “America is the last, best hope of the world,” is not necessarily an expression of the neoconservative world view—though, nowadays, neoconservatives are much more likely than others to use that phrase. I’m not saying definitely that Perry is a neocon, though there are signs he is. I don’t know enough about him yet. In the current entry, I was not speaking of his philosophy but just of a tell-tale turn of phrase he used which suggests that the “community of discourse” in which he is participating is Inside-the-Beltway and neocon. Also, given that up to this point his profile and perspective have been decidedly Texan not national, the fact that the moment he began to run for president he began using a phrase that William Kristol uses every time he opens his mouth may be indicative of where’s he’s heading.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 15, 2011 11:01 AM | Send