Perry announces he will not seek reelection

[ScooterSissy]

My biggest problem with the idea of Perry as a presidential candidate is that I would prefer Ted Cruz.
My biggest problem with the idea of Perrry as a VP candidate is that I wold Prefer Ted Cruz as the presidential candidate, and the P and VP can't be from the same state. One of them would have to change their home state, and I suspect that wouldn't work out as well for them as it did for Bush/Cheney.

I'd rather see somethign like a Cruz/Rubio ticket. My dream team would be Cruz/Rice.

As far as Perry, he's been a decent governer, but it's time for new blood.

[Cedar Park Dad]

He had his head handed to him in the debates. I'm not seeing how he is going to do better against A Team competitors this time around.

[fishman]

He had his head handed to him in the debates. I'm not seeing how he is going to do better against A Team competitors this time around.

Obama did ok in his debates (in some peoples views) now look where were at.

[Cedar Park Dad]

He had his head handed to him in the debates. I'm not seeing how he is going to do better against A Team competitors this time around.

Obama did ok in his debates (in some peoples views) now look where were at.

And Reagan won his, handily. Perry was an embarrassment, and looked like a Not Ready For Prime Time Player up there against relative light weights. This cycle will have substantialy stronger candidates.

[cb1000rider]

He had his head handed to him in the debates. I'm not seeing how he is going to do better against A Team competitors this time around.

The commentary that I heard was that he'd need some time off to "study up" for those debates... I think the damage is already done.

[TexasCajun]

My biggest problem with the idea of Perry as a presidential candidate is that I would prefer Ted Cruz.
My biggest problem with the idea of Perrry as a VP candidate is that I wold Prefer Ted Cruz as the presidential candidate, and the P and VP can't be from the same state. One of them would have to change their home state, and I suspect that wouldn't work out as well for them as it did for Bush/Cheney.

I'd rather see somethign like a Cruz/Rubio ticket. My dream team would be Cruz/Rice.

As far as Perry, he's been a decent governer, but it's time for new blood.

Isn't there a third reason?

Seriously, though. Ted Cruz is (so far) a great senator for our state. I'd like to see him gain some seniority there for a while before moving on.

A second potus run for Perry wouldn't go so well. While his first stab at it was brief, he provided way too many sound bites. And 2016 will be a fight on both sides of the aisle making the last election seem like a Sunday picnic.

Rubio was on a solid track until the immigration derailment. I'm curious to see how he plans to recover from that. A lot of folks from Florida aren't real happy with him right now. But I think it is recoverable.

[Chaparral]

My biggest problem with the idea of Perry as a presidential candidate is that I would prefer Ted Cruz.
My biggest problem with the idea of Perrry as a VP candidate is that I wold Prefer Ted Cruz as the presidential candidate, and the P and VP can't be from the same state. One of them would have to change their home state, and I suspect that wouldn't work out as well for them as it did for Bush/Cheney.

It would require a constitutional amendment for Ted Cruz to be US President. He was born in Canada.

[The Annoyed Man]

I've been busy listening to the hearings... All I've heard is claims that this is protecting women health, not outright admissions to protecting the unborn.

I do stand corrected, the official press releases indicate that it's about both - protection of the unborn and womens health... I was wrong on this... Didn't do enough digging on my own.

I'm unabashedly pro-life, but I'll try to throw a couple of facts in here to maybe lend some balance to the discussion.....

A) Roe v. Wade defined a right to abortion in the first trimester gestation. That's 3 months, or 12 weeks, depending on how you want to see it. A pregnancy lasts approximately 40 weeks, and the pending bill proposes to severely limit access to abortion (no ban it) after 22 weeks of pregnancy.....well into the second semester of gestation.

B) I have personally drawn blood specimens from babies that were born at 21 weeks of gestation, when they were newborns. They will almost fit in your hand. If they survive the first few days and weeks, they will usually grow up to be normal children. In any case, they are fully formed infants at that age of gestation. Their lungs still need to mature, and their eyes aren't open yet, but they are definitely human.

Opponents to the pending bill wish to preserve a system in which fully formed humans—who are no more dependent upon the medical support of a critical care unit than any post-operative heart transplant or brain surgery patient—can be killed in the womb for the sake of the mother's convenience.

I want to emphatically state that I do not want to see women thrown in prison for having abortions, but I absolutely expect that proponents stop dodging the implications of their advocacy, and that all of us, pro-life and abortion advocates included, exercise more than a little moral clarity in these arguments. The reason I insist on it is that the more radical of abortion advocates have proposed some pretty bizarre, and frankly savage and uncivilized things. For example, James Watson (Watson/Crick) is on record as saying that a mother ought to have the right to terminate her children up until the age of 2 years old. Are we going to be a society of commonly decent people, or are we going to be a society of people who rub out 2 year olds?

Princeton ethicist Peter Singer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sing ... nfanticide) has an even more bizarre approach to supporting abortion. Quoting his page on Wikipedia:

Consistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to life is essentially tied to a being's capacity to hold preferences, which in turn is essentially tied to a being's capacity to feel pain and pleasure. Critics such as Laing hold that this view is subject to charges of inconsistency, equivocation and contradiction.[23] Be that as it may, in Singer's view, the central argument against abortion may be stated as the following syllogism:

• It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.
  A human fetus is an innocent human being.
  Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.[24]

In his book Rethinking Life and Death, as well as in Practical Ethics, Singer asserts that, if we take the premises at face value, the argument is deductively valid. Singer comments that defenders of abortion attack the second premise, suggesting that the fetus becomes a "human" or "alive" at some point after conception; however, Singer finds this argument flawed in that human development is a gradual process, and it is nearly impossible to mark a particular moment in time as the moment at which human life begins.

Singer's argument for abortion differs from many other proponents of abortion, then; rather than attacking the second premise of the anti-abortion argument, Singer attacks the first premise, denying that it is necessarily wrong to take innocent human life:

• [The argument that a fetus is not alive] is a resort to a convenient fiction that turns an evidently living being into one that legally is not alive. Instead of accepting such fictions, we should recognise that the fact that a being is human, and alive, does not in itself tell us whether it is wrong to take that being's life.

Obviously, these are some really extreme illustrations, but they are not based on something I pulled out of my nether regions. Some really famous people who are at the vanguard of what passes for pro-abortion "morality" actually said these terrible things—and these terrible things are part of the total package of "moral underpinning" used to support abortion.

In my opinion, limiting abortion to the first 22 weeks of gestation is not going to condemn women to coat-hanger abortions. If you're pregnant, and that pregnancy is not literally endangering your life, and you can't make up your mind to have an abortion during that first 22 weeks, then you have made up your mind not to have one, and that living baby, fully capable of feeling both pain and pleasure, deserves a shot at life at that point. That is really not such a radical concept. In fact, the "abortion at all cost" faction are the real radicals.....particularly when the rest of us have to help pay for it against our conscience.

[cb1000rider]

Good post.. Thank you.

[v-rog]

There are three reasons why Perry should run for president. I remember the first two...can someone help me out with the third...?

[TexasCajun]

Opponents to the pending bill wish to preserve a system in which fully formed humans—who are no more dependent upon the medical support of a critical care unit than any post-operative heart transplant or brain surgery patient—can be killed in the womb for the sake of the mother's convenience.

Just as 'Pro Choice' is a euphemism that shields the proponents from the truth of what they're really advocating (killing children), 'Pro Life' doesn't do justice to my belief that we as a society should not allow the slaughter of innocent babies to continue. I see no difference between a baby that has yet to be born and my almost-1yr old son. Both require extensive daily care in order to survive. Neither can be self-sufficient for years. The only difference is in terms of developmental milestones that each have achieved and the length of time until they are able to survive on their own.

[Dragonfighter]

How about This:
Greg Abbott for Governor (He's got my vote no matter what he's after.

Ted Cruz, Condy Rice for pres and veep.

[varko]

Good post.. Thank you.

Thanks TAM.

[anygunanywhere]

My biggest problem with the idea of Perry as a presidential candidate is that I would prefer Ted Cruz.
My biggest problem with the idea of Perrry as a VP candidate is that I wold Prefer Ted Cruz as the presidential candidate, and the P and VP can't be from the same state. One of them would have to change their home state, and I suspect that wouldn't work out as well for them as it did for Bush/Cheney.

It would require a constitutional amendment for Ted Cruz to be US President. He was born in Canada.

Not true. He is a citizen and meets the requirements. His mother is a citizen. Ted was born in Canada while his parents lived there.

Anygunanywhere