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On August 6, 2011, he was billed as just Rick Perry from Austin, Texas. He didn’t want it to look too obvious that he was using his office, the state’s image and authority to promote his particular brand of religion. It was kind of hard to hide, though. The 32,000 people in Houston’s Reliant Stadium knew they were hearing from the governor of Texas. His title may have been absent from the three giant TV monitors hanging behind him on the stage but Perry was the second most important person in the room, (the other one, Jesus, was invisible; well, to most people). Playing as the opening act for the messiah was okay with the governor. The lord was just a bonus on this day for Rick Perry. Jesus wasn’t on the Jumbotron; the man from Paint Creek was and while Jesus discreetly gathered up souls Perry was secretly looking at the sea of faces and envisioning legions of voters to take him to the promised land.

The Response: A Day of Prayer for a Nation in Crisis was a chance for Rick Perry to strut his Christian stuff and it became the opening gambit in a primary campaign that was designed to rely on what was described by analysts as “dog whistle politics.” Although not yet formally a candidate at the time, the governor was doing more than being an evangelical exhibitionist. He was sending simple messages to GOP primary voters that he was not a Mormon. He might as well have hung a banner from the stadium ceiling that said, “Rick Perry: 2012 – Not a Mormon.” The early frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, Mitt Romney, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a religious faith that many, many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians view as a cult. Rick Perry was setting up the Republican Primary as his Neon Jesus versus Mitt the Mormon. “How,” he seemed to be asking, “can we take seriously as a candidate a man whose religious beliefs require him to wear long underwear year around?” (Look it up, people. Not time to explain here).

“He’s a good man, I think, Romney is,” one prayer rally worshipper said. “But I just can’t vote for a Mormon. They got a story I can’t believe. The Bible tells us all there is to know about Jesus. Anyway, don’t use my name in your story.”

In a few dozen interviews, Perry’s people sounded ready to follow him through whatever economic or cultural desert he could find, (or create after he was elected). As Christian bands jumped for Jesus, the devout raised their arms in the air like prayer antennae better tuning in to their god. A youth pastor with spiked hair, who had traveled hundreds of miles in a van with his group of teens, stood with his head tilted skyward. The hands of about a dozen young people were placed on his body as if he were an amplifier to more efficiently send their pleadings heavenward. A few worshippers lay on the floor flopping their arms and legs while others closed their eyes and danced in delirium to a beat unheard by non-believers. Parents, meanwhile, sent their toddlers to be watched over at Reliant Stadium’s Jose Cuervo Family Area, where they were not, one hopes, taught to count, “One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor!” For what was believed to be the first time in the big football venue’s history, beer was not for sale. When that news came unto reporters, they were “sore afraid.”

Rick Perry had arrived on this big stage in a football stadium for reasons other than his faith. He had built a political career with relentless campaigning, hard right conservatism, and a government power structure that was filled with thousands of appointees who were unfalteringly loyal to his career and conservative political agenda. Texas history had been made when the governor was reelected three times after he had succeeded George W. Bush. Perry ran the state on a protocol that demanded reductions of already austere budgets and the privatization of any government service where there was money to be made by a corporation or one of his lobbyist friends. Although he had denied every inquiry about whether he intended to run for president, Perry was convinced that what he had done in Texas, or had done to Texas, had built a platform for a national campaign. He had gone from a state representative from a small rural community to Texas agriculture commissioner and then Lieutenant Governor before he took over as governor for the departing president-elect Bush. Perry had never lost an election and had become the longest-serving governor in Texas history.

The Texas governor did not think his political achievements were pure luck. Everything to Rick Perry is providential and he was standing before the fervent crowd of Christians in Houston because he was being moved by the spirit, and, according to his wife Anita, summoned by god to run for president of the United States. Perry’s faith raises interesting questions about him as a politician and a man. As he was introducing himself to America as a potential president, he used his Christianity to define his character. But few of his friends or associates recall religion being integral to his personality as he moved up the political ladder in Texas government. Most descriptions of Perry have always included “regular guy” and “likes to have fun,” which might be code for partying behavior when he was younger but can’t be mistaken for outwardly devout. Nonetheless, here he was, stepping into the glare of TV lights to introduce himself as an unwavering Christian, committed to converting all non-believers, before he launched a more formal effort to win the GOP nomination for president.

Organizers insisted that Perry was participating in a strictly religious event, but The Response was about as apolitical as a candidate who drops out to spend more time with his family. It was an agreed-upon fiction. Before Perry came to the stage, James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, compared the U.S.’ situation under President Obama to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, but he said this in a very loving and forgiving Christian way. Dobson, whose radio show potentially reaches hundreds of millions around the globe, has been using his organization since 1977 to affect conservative political change. He is paranoid about the future of heterosexual marriage and is convinced the messages about diversity are really “designed to promote the homosexual agenda.” This was red-letter Republican dogma. By playing the three-note chord of gays, Nazis and Obama, Dobson sneered at claims The Response had nothing to do with politics.

The presumed election of President Obama in October of 2008 had prompted the least reverend to write “A Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” which was clearly designed to frighten Christians into rising up against liberal oppression. Dobson’s dark warning to the future predicted an Obama administration would pay mandatory bonuses to gay soldiers and order a gay curriculum in every American school. Boy Scouts and guns were going to be banned; prime time and daytime television were to be rife with explicit pornography (which would free up more disposable income for a lot of families paying for porn subscriptions), Tel Aviv was to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb, Christian school groups and adoption agencies would be illegal, and health care would disappear for all Americans. Full frontal irony, then, that trying to provide health care has been Obama’s biggest political curse. Clearly, this preacher needs Prozac. James Dobson was making the Mayans’ prediction of 2012 being the end of time look like an optimistic vision.

And this was just the opening act.

The governor, though, kept trying to sell his apolitical nonsense, if not to the right wing conservative crowd, then to the 300 journalists and the TV cameras sending his image onto satellites for broadcast. As convinced as he is that god thinks like a Republican, Perry suggested his deity doesn’t vote in Republican primaries.

“He is a wise, wise god,” the governor said. “He is wise enough not to be associated with any political party, or for that matter, he’s wise enough not to be affiliated with any man-made institution.”

He’s also apparently wise enough to avoid Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, and Buddhists. The sponsors of The Response said that all faiths were welcome to the god gala but, well, they didn’t really mean it. The American Family Association (AFA) spent a million dollars to rent the stadium, and they weren’t investing in anything other than creating more Christians and forcing their belief system into the institutions of the U.S. government. The AFA has such a long record of vitriolic attacks on gays and lesbians and non-Christian religions that the Southern Poverty Law Center had categorized the organization as a hate group along with Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan. Donald Wildmon, AFA’s founder, his employees and publications, have claimed that, “Jews favor homosexual rights more than other Americans,” deftly smearing two groups of people with one brief declarative sentence, and that “homosexuality gave us Adolf Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine, and six million dead Jews.” Obviously, Wildmon and his minions teach religious fealty and not history since under Hitler gays were, in fact, rounded up, made to wear a pink triangle, and, eventually, killed by poison gas. Bryan Fischer, who is in charge of issues and policy analysis for the AFA, once wrote that welfare caused black women to “rut like rabbits.” Wildmon’s son Tim, who is AFA’s president, told the Texas Tribune that Jews, Muslims, atheists, and all non-Christians would “go to hell” if they did not accept Jesus Christ as their saviors. Perry supporter Robert Jeffress, a pastor in a Dallas mega church, seemingly holds the same belief regarding Mormons; he described the religion as a cult when introducing Perry to a values voters’ convention in Washington, D.C. He did not back away from his assertion, either, and went on a media tour to push his idea. Perry never moved to denounce Jeffress but said he disagreed with his characterization of Mormonism as a cult. The Texas governor did not say he thought Mormons were Christians.

Going to the prayer rally scared the hell out of at least one Jewish reporter. “Yeah, they had a circumcision pat down to get in here,” he joked. “Was kind of nice. I went back through a second time so they could be sure about me.”

There wasn’t actually much funny about Rick Perry’s prayer gathering, (well, except for the long lines at concession stands buying cheesy nachos, peanuts, popcorn, and hotdogs even though it was billed as a day of prayer and fasting). The unnoticed was what became unnerving. By attending the event, Perry had aligned himself with a radical religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which is built upon a concept called “Dominionism,” and amounts to a coup de god. Dominionists are convinced they have an obligation to serve god by taking control over all of the institutions of government and daily life in order to prepare the earth for the return of Jesus. According to the teachings of their living prophets and apostles, god lost control of the earth when the devil tempted Adam and Eve and the only hope for humankind is to wage warfare against the demons running governments, churches, schools, and probably also your favorite corner pub. NAR is conducting what it refers to as a Seven Mountains Campaign to take over American culture by defeating the demons in charge of arts and entertainment, business, education, family, government, media, and religion. The business thing might be right; there is something demonic about the price of an iPad or a gallon of gasoline, and polling suggests that many liberals would rejoice if Dominionists got Jersey Shore cancelled.

As Rick Perry looked out across the dancing, swinging, swaying, and chanting people arrayed from about the 40 yard line to the Houston Texans end zone (which is otherwise rarely occupied), the people at his side, two leaders of the Dominionist movement, were pleased by his presence. Alice Patterson, who is one of the apostles of the New Apostolic Reformation movement, had been traveling Texas since 2002 trying to convince voters that the Democratic Party was composed of “an invisible network of evil comprising an unholy structure, which was unloosed by the biblical character Jezebel.” Forrest Wilder, writing in The Texas Observer, indicated that Patterson claims to have seen these Democratic demons around the ankles of Jezebel during a 2009 meeting of prophets in Houston. She saw “Jezebel’s skirt lifted to expose tiny Baal, Asherah, and a few other spirits. There they were, small, cowering trembling little spirits that were only ankle high on Jezebel’s skinny legs.” Sure, you’re thinking, “tiny Baal beneath a lifted skirt?” But that’s just too easy.

The African American minister standing just to Rick Perry’s left on the stage, C. L. Jackson, joined Patterson in her exultations. Jackson, who Perry embraced before he left the stage, is not one of the NAR’s apostles but is spending his time trying to convince other African Americans that this Christian movement must infiltrate government and they need to be a part of that effort. Jesus just isn’t coming back until all of the protestant religions have been united, abortion and homosexuality are eliminated, and all Jews are converted to Christianity, all of which makes Jesus seem kind of high maintenance. According to extensive research and reporting conducted by Rachel Tabachnick and Frederick Clarkson of the Talk to Action website, at least eight of the planners of The Response were apostles in the New Apostolic Reformation movement to prepare the world for the End Times. But there is much work yet to do for NAR. Jews won’t convert easily and the Demonic Dems keep fighting for a woman’s right to choose and equal rights for people born with a sexual orientation other than heterosexual. It’s going to be a while before there will be nothing left for anyone to do but find a place to sit and wait for Jesus.

As awareness increases of Perry’s alignment with the New Apostolic Reformation, Jewish voters will likely be troubled. The Texas governor is embracing a theology that envisions its fulfillment of prophecy with the conversion of Jews to Christianity and the destruction of Israel in the Battle of Armageddon. He was not questioned about the Dominionists when he made his first campaign to trip to New York to give a speech about Israel. The language he used was rife with political insensitivities and blamed the Obama administration for “appeasement” of the Palestinians. Perry said that he favored continued construction of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and that as a Christian he had what he described as a “directive” to protect and support Israel. The terminology was an inexact expression of an evangelical belief that Israel’s fate is connected to the return Christianity’s messiah at the end of time. Perry, consequently, supports the Dominionists who want to convert all Jews. At the same time, Perry expresses support for Israel, which the Dominionists and evangelicals envision being destroyed as part of the fulfillment of prophecy.

Robert T. Hughes, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Religion at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, said the Texas governor’s position is impossible to intellectually reconcile. “These fundamentalists like Perry, who appear to be supporting Israel, in fact don’t, because the theology calls for the full destruction of all Jews who don’t believe. That’s the script they believe in. It always surprises me that the state of Israel welcomes these fundamentalists as friends because they aren’t Israel’s friend. They are about Jesus. Everybody else gets annihilated in the end.”

Israel may exercise caution with Rick Perry but he is the prophet that the New Apostolic Reformation has envisioned to take over the “mountain” of government. Perry loves them, too, but not just for their rockin’ radical Christianity. Tabachnick describes this movement as a kind of religio-political hybrid with Prayer Warrior Networks in all 50 states, and that’s probably a part of what gets the spirit to moving in Perry. In secular terms, that’s a pretty healthy GOTV, or “get out the vote,” operation. The prayer networks are direct conduits to church congregations and ministries all across the country.

“I believe it’s [Perry’s and other politicians’ interest in NAR] because they’ve built such a tremendous communication network,” Tabachnick told The Texas Observer. “They found ways to work that didn’t involve the institutional structures that many denominations have. They don’t have big offices, headquarters. They work more like a political campaign.”

President George W. Bush’s political strategist, Karl Rove, made effective use of religious groups to win re-election in 2004. The Bush campaign organized churches and ministries and urged them to use their membership directories to register voters and get their souls to the polls on Election Day. The general assumption, when approaching certain denominations, is their vote will be conservative, so if they vote, they’re probably voting Republican. The challenge for Republicans with Christian voters isn’t persuasion; it’s motivation. In 2000, the Rovian construct of “compassionate conservatism” left these voters cold, and hundreds of thousands stayed home. In 2004, Rove used gay marriage and abortion as issues to motivate Christian voters, and their numbers helped Bush in swing states like Ohio. Although The Response said all the right things about there being nothing political about its assembly of worshippers, the signup list of more than 30,000 attendees got an email a few weeks later from Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association (AFA), the event’s sponsor.

“Today, I want to introduce you to Champion the Vote, a friend of AFA, whose mission is to mobilize 5 million unregistered conservative Christians to register and vote according to the Biblical worldview in 2012,” Wildmon wrote.

Even a small percentage of that number of voters can turn a presidential election. These people are not going to cast their primary ballots for a Mormon, and Michelle Bachman (plus being a female, she has a more “traditional” role to play, according to NAR) didn’t make it to Houston for The Response. Champion the Vote is pushing attendees from The Response to register and talk to other Christians, get them to register, too, and then vote for a candidate with a Biblical approach to government. (Any idea who best fits that description for the New Apostolic Reformation?)

There is always something unsettling to people without religion when they see a crowd of worshippers demonstrating their faith in a great public exhibition. As Rick Perry and the religious leaders stood before the podium and the cameras, the rapt, glassy-eyed look on the faces of so many in the audience suggested scenes from one of the History Channel’s black and white films from pre-war Germany. The description may be harsh but the perception was unavoidable, and certainly more on point than Dobson’s slander of Obama. A creepy kind of Christianity emerges, which may be why one of Jesus’ apostles taught that god did not want anyone to pray in public. The practice was denounced in Matthew, 6:5-7, a long, long time before anyone had ever thought of launching a presidential campaign by having a prayer rally in a football stadium.

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily, I say unto you they have their reward. (This, reward, presumably, is not the presidency). But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”

Obviously, there was nothing secretive about The Response or Rick Perry’s involvement in turning Reliant Stadium into a public prayer palace. There were websites and video promotions and email campaigns and numerous marketing efforts by the New Apostolic Reformation. Maybe Perry had an oil lobbyist find them a loophole or two in their Bible so they could pray publicly without sin.

The rampant hypocrisy made an uglier mess than the Texans football team’s defense usually did when Peyton Manning visited that stadium. The governor of Texas and his prayer pals at The Response might have widely proclaimed they are in favor of religious tolerance but the goal is one, gigantic Christian family running the world. They say they don’t hate Jews or Muslims; they are simply sad for non-believers and are praying for them to see the light and convert, which the apostles think is inevitable. If Reliant Stadium had been filled with Muslims on prayer rugs, though, the tolerant Christians would have been parading in protest outside, regardless of the 100-degree Houston heat.

At a news conference the day before the prayerapalooza, members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations made a tenacious grasp at the abundantly obvious. “If it had been a Muslim governor, head of state, and he elected to have Muslim prayer, and opposed bringing other people in, that would have been a big issue,” said Mustafa Carroll of CAIR, a comment to which most observers responded, “Duh, this is Texas.”

The prophets, apostles and followers of the New Apostolic Reformation have operated as if they were invisible from the scrutiny of the general culture. They resist any attempts to label their endeavors and dismiss suggestions they are making progress with their plans to infiltrate the seven “mountains.” In fact, the mainstream media have almost universally failed to notice the movement or its importance in religion and politics. After Michelle Goldberg of Salon wrote about Dominionism and the NAR, CNN’s anchor Wolf Blitzer and analyst Jack Cafferty admitted they had never heard of the term, what it meant, or the NAR, which likely indicated that the hundreds of journalists at The Response had little idea of what was transpiring right in front of their notebooks: Rick Perry was firmly aligning himself with a Christian reform movement whose leaders have told the governor they see him as a divine prophet to take over the government for god and lay the foundation for Christianity to become the planet’s only religion. They actually do want to take over the world. Jesus is still coming, apparently, but not until Rick’s work is done.

“I like him,” a large prayer rally woman said between her loud exhortations of “Amen!” “I think he’s a good Christian man who can get our government back to god.”

Perry was so focused on the adoring throngs of worshipers at Reliant Stadium that he didn’t notice the suffering people he was elected to serve. If he were more closely adhering to the scripture of the faith he was parading as the guiding force in his life, the governor might have facilitated policies to help the disenfranchised in his state. Instead, he had made life more difficult for the unfortunate, whom he has barely ever seemed to notice. A little more than 5 miles distant at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston, police estimated that 100,000 people showed up for free school supplies, immunization shots, and fresh fruits and vegetables. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) had expected about 25,000 and was forced to close the doors on most of the needy families waiting in the morning sun. Regardless, 60,000 pounds of food were distributed as well as nylon backpacks for carrying school supplies and vouchers for haircuts and immunizations. Even in the energy capital of America, which Rick Perry claims is booming, school administrators and a few generous oil companies knew there was great need and organized the clinic and the distribution of school supplies.

Fortunately, additional help was expected to arrive for everyone in financial trouble. Just back down the road at the godathon, Governor Perry was praying to improve the situation of those enduring hardship. He had tried the same thing to end the drought but temperatures continued to rise in Texas toward hellish levels. The air conditioning bill the good Christians paid for the use of Reliant Stadium would have likely changed the course of many lives if the money had been spent instead on the needs of the poor just down the road. The million dollars to rent the stadium for The Response would have certainly eased the troubles of every one of those families turned away from the school supply and food giveaway at the convention center.

Instead, they got Perry’s prayers and lamentations.

“Our hearts do break for those who suffer,” he said, “those afflicted by the loss of loved ones, the pain of addiction, the strife that they may find at home, those who have lost jobs, who have lost their homes, people who have lost hope.”

Celebrants did not appear to be speaking in tongues, though Perry’s did sound forked. During the course of his decade long administration, the governor of Texas has been more accomplished at praying in public than helping those in need. In both his personal life and government policy, Rick Perry has shown virtually no interest in giving or providing services to assist his constituents who have “lost hope.” He completely ignores the teachings of Jesus and his instructions to assist “the least of these brothers and sisters.”

Hughes, the religion professor at Messiah College, finds the Texas governor’s public image regarding the poor to be hypocritical. “Rick Perry really bothers me,” he said. “If he were truly a Christian, he wouldn’t be worrying about gay marriage and the other issues that motivate the evangelicals he’s trying to enlist. What has he done as governor, for the poor, the dispossessed? I cannot think of even one fundamentalist leader who has in any meaningful way stepped up in behalf of the poor. They never put poor people or the sick or dispossessed at the center of their agenda. It seems like the louder they talk about Jesus the less they do for the poor. That’s what I find very disturbing about Rick Perry.”

And there is an abundance of clues Perry does not notice the poor.

The best evidence comes from his federal income tax returns. In his three most recently reported filings from 2007 to 2009, Perry’s charitable giving to his church ranges from paltry to non-existent when compared to his income. In 2007, his adjusted gross income, due to a lucrative real estate deal, was $1,092,810; his donation to his church that year was $90. The next year, the governor’s earnings totaled $277.667 and his gift to his church rose to $2,850, which remains the most he has ever given during his ten-year term. He must have been unsettled by sharing that much of his money because in 2009, when he reported earning $200,370, Perry’s charitable contribution to his church was listed as $0. His cumulative adjusted gross income over nine reporting years is $2,694,253 and his sum for church giving is $14,293.

The figures paint the picture of a publicly religious man who stopped reading the Bible before he got to 1 John, 3:18, “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” Mitt Romney’s Mormon church requires that their congregants “tithe” 10 percent of their annual earnings, which might be another reason Perry wants people to understand he’s not a Mormon; he’s not giving away 10 percent to a church. Perry’s donations reach just over a half of one percent (.53%) of his accumulated yearly income during those nine reporting years. When he gave, the governor also did not miss a chance to make the most of a deduction. Clothing and household items donated to Goodwill were listed individually on his gifts to the charity (with Perry’s liberal assessment of their value). The deduction reached $30,768.

Hope and faith are more politically useful to Rick Perry than charity.

The governor’s charitable spirit appears as little as that “tiny Baal” one of the NAR apostles saw under Jezebel’s skirt. Perry’s personal disposable income is also much higher than the average Texas taxpayer’s because he does not have similar monthly obligations. He has no mortgage payment. In fact, since 2008 when a Texas terrorist threw a firebomb at the mansion and destroyed the historic structure, Perry has been living in a $10,000 a month mansion taxpayers rent for him in the hills of West Austin, which includes a subscription to Food and Wine magazine. The Perry family does not pay utility bills, property taxes, nor do they need to purchase food, home insurance, buy gasoline, or make car payments. The governor’s six figure annual incomes don’t get stretched quite as thinly as the lower wage earners he remembers in his prayers.

The manifestations of Rick Perry’s true attitude toward the less fortunate is much more profound and harmful in his government policies. Texas is no place to be if you are poor, unemployed, elderly, or in need of health care that you cannot afford. His philosophy is best articulated by an opening monologue from a movie Blood Simple, which was filmed in Texas by Ethan and Joel Coen. The character Loren Visser, played by the late actor J. T. Walsh, is explaining how whining about problems does nothing to fix your situation.

“And go ahead, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help, watch him fly. Now in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else, that’s the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas. And down here, you’re on your own.” Any poor, sick kid in Rick Perry’s Texas can testify to that fact.

But Perry still turns to Jesus to help him get elected. During one reelection campaign he sat on a golden throne in the church of Pastor John Hagee in San Antonio. Perry’s custom-made Luchesse cowboy boots (about $2,000 per pair, one named “Freedom,” the other called, “Liberty”), were shining in front of him as Hagee urged his TV congregation and the 5,000 assembled in his gigantic sanctuary to get out and vote. Hagee, round in the face and square in his thinking, issued a dire warning to the 90 million people who are exposed to his broadcast ministry.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’ll tell it to you plainly. If you do not believe in Jesus Christ and seek his forgiveness through his blood you are going straight to hell with a non-stop ticket.”

Perry didn’t flinch. From his ornate perch in the church’s throne on a red carpet, he was comfortable with the fact that there aren’t a lot of Muslims or Jews in Texas. Christians tend to choose the Republican Party’s nominees, and also winners on Election Day. Hagee had condemned to eternal oblivion less than one percent of the state’s electorate. Perry could live with that, which was proven by the Houston prayer rally.

“There’s nothing he said that I could really disagree with,” Perry told reporters. “My Christian faith teaches that the way to heaven is through Jesus Christ.”

“So Jews and Muslims are going to hell?” The question came from a Jewish reporter.

“I said I don’t disagree with Pastor Hagee,” Perry answered.

Perry might be a little light in his Luchesses on public policy and his interpretations of the Bible but there is something politically and personally calculated about his religious fervor. When his behavior suggests that he believes Jews and Muslims are bound for hell in a gasoline suit designed by Jesus, Perry might be making another kind of statement. “My sins are not big sins. I’m a good Christian man. I’m not like they say I am. Don’t believe what you hear. I’m godly and spiritual.” Is he overcompensating for something by spiritually thumping his chest like Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard?

There is, of course, the possibility that Perry, like many politicians, suffers the additional sins of vanity and ego. His motivation for seeking public office has never been clear. Does he like the attention and the accumulative power? His political career has been marked by opportunism for himself and the wealthy individuals and corporations that have provided him financial support. Each time Perry has acquired a higher office, he has used his influence to add to his power structure and benefit his associates, which raises the essential question of what he might do if elected president. Rick Perry has a vision that has very little to do with the principles he espouses in the public forum.

And he has left a record that can be used to predict a troubling future for America under a Perry administration.

Americans love a good story.

A nice, inspiring narrative makes our presidential politics slightly less vinegary. Herman Cain’s stature has more to do with his humble background and rise to corporate success than it does anything he has said regarding policies. He sounds like he rolled out of bed one morning, got bored over coffee, and decided to run for president. His ignorance of issues ought to be an embarrassment to the GOP.

Rick Perry, too, brings with him a nice yarn. The first seven years of his life were spent in a house without indoor plumbing and now he’s being thought of as presidential. Journalists are finding their way to little Paint Creek and beseeching Perry’s acquaintances and family to sit for interviews. In the process, they file reports that romanticize the roots of a man who is almost single-handedly destroying the state where he was born.

Perry’s mother and father, hard working and humble people with West Texas horizon eyes, agreed to be interviewed by the Dallas Morning News. Unsurprisingly, they spoke with love for their son who they said doesn’t lie and is exactly what this country needs.

Parents are often wrong about their children.

The romanticizing of the handsome man riding in from the west to save the nation is a dangerous construct for Americans in need of answers and political courage. Rick Perry can provide neither. Even the critics of his decade as governor have hesitated to call his cash and carry government worse than cronyism. But it is much, much worse. The exact adjective for Perry’s administration is corrupt. How is it anything other than corrupt to have two slush funds paid for by taxpayers to write checks to your campaign donors and corporate sponsors? Voters appear not to notice that the Emerging Technology Fund (ETF) invested $16 million dollars in enterprises that were owned or founded by Perry campaign donors. A Dallas Morning News investigation found that big campaign donation checks were written shortly after the announcement of investments by the state.

How, exactly, is corruption defined?

The ETF was established with regional panels to review startup applications and then recommend them to a review committee in Austin before being sent to the governor, lieutenant governor, and house speaker for approval. In the case of Convergen, however, the company appears to have skipped straight to the governor’s desk and bypassed review. Convergen founder David Nance, according to the Dallas paper, filed at least two lawsuits against the state attorney general in an attempt to stop the release of information on his company. Convergen was awarded $4.5 million, and Nance, not coincidentally, had given $80,000 to Perry’s campaigns since 2000.  Convergen went bankrupt in 2008. Perry’s office blocked the release of information on Convergen until after he was reelected in 2010.

But maybe that’s just cronyism, which is nicer than corruption. Why has there been no real transparency of the ETF? Further, why are politicians making business decisions for taxpayers when the opportunity for favoritism is clearly too hard for people like Perry to resist?

Examples like Convergen are abundant in Rick Perry’s Texas. The fact that the governor parcels out millions in taxpayer dollars for corporate frivolity or “projected” jobs at a time when he is cutting health care and welfare for the indigent ought to chastise those who would write his small town hero narrative. One in four Texans lacks health care and the state is first in the percentage of uninsured children. We have the highest percentage of residents 25 or older without a high school diploma. Perry’s booming economy is apocryphal enough that the state over which he presides is 49^th in credit scores for individuals. But we do lead the nation in hazardous waste generated and carcinogens released into the water and air.

Meanwhile, as Rick Perry was forcing the Texas legislature to cut $4 billion from the state’s budget that would eliminate most home care for the mentally and physically disabled, increase class sizes in schools and require firing tens of thousands of educators, he was also busily administering the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) to assist corporations looking for a handout. Perry talks about rousting the corporate fat cats that run Washington but the TEF is nothing more than a $453 million dollar account that he has used to bestow favors upon companies like ebay, T-Mobile, Bank of America, Samsung, Lockheed, Office Depot, Cabela’s and Caterpillar. The man who wants to “make government as inconsequential as possible” in your life is using tax money to make life less risky for corporate America. 20 of the 55 companies that got tax money to move jobs or offices to Texas gave money to either Perry’s campaign or the Republican Governors’ Association when he was its chairman, according to the Dallas Morning News. When promised jobs don’t materialize, the governor’s office quietly revises downward the projections or imposes minor penalties on companies that have contracted for the corporate welfare.

The funding cycle is infuriating and ought to be indictable. People pay their taxes to the state government, which dumps the money into the general revenue fund, and then is apportioned to the TEF and ETF, before it is distributed to corporations promising jobs, and those corporations then make campaign donations to Rick Perry. A generous definition might call this campaign money laundering. The most confounding thing about the Texas governor is the manner in which he complains with a straight face about government waste and calls for difficult cutbacks while he writes multi-million dollar checks to corporations on a taxpayer account and with virtually no oversight. This is beyond hypocrisy and cronyism. Corruption is the only appropriate descriptive. If this form of delivering favor is not considered corrupt then American democracy is beyond salvage.

In their exclusive interview with the Dallas paper, Ray and Amelia’s evident pride in their son didn’t do much to obfuscate his horrid record as governor. They are proud of the fact that he was raised in the church but seem completely unaware of the fact that he continues to foster policies that ignore Christian teachings and harm the poor, ill, and elderly while he heaps largesse upon friends and companies who can help his political ascension. The Perry’s undoubtedly raised their son well but he has failed them as mightily as he has let down the people who voted him into office. Rick Perry, the rancher’s son from Paint Creek, grew up to become a very corrupt politician who lost whatever moral guidance his parents taught.

And he ought to be prosecuted. Not elected.

A friend is fond of saying, “There is no truth in politics, there is only winning.” He’s only partly correct. Politics does have one truth in the modern era and it is simply that candidates will smear each other and do whatever is necessary to win. Of course, they don’t take these actions themselves but they enlist dirt devils and leakers and unprincipled researchers who deliver portfolios of feces to their clients. And then they begin the smear campaign.

Hell, Karl Rove built a career on these practices.

The sexual harassment story about Herman Cain didn’t come out of nowhere. Cain and his campaign manager are blaming Rick Perry’s team, which is not unreasonable. The numbers Cain has been carrying to the top of the polls are a lot of disaffected Perry supporters who left the governor after he didn’t back down from his tuition plan for children of illegal immigrants. If Cain falters, those voters will be forced to reconsider Perry.

But there has to be a decent sized universe of people who knew about the allegations against Cain that were leveled when he was at the National Restaurant Association. Any one of them, a disgruntled board member who wanted Cain removed, an employee who didn’t get an advancement, or a secretary who didn’t care for flirting, might have dropped the rough outlines of the story on the Politico reporter. More likely, it was one of the two women who got settlements from NRA and didn’t want to see Cain as president and they picked up the phone and called the reporter and agreed to talk under certain conditions. That’s the most probable scenario.

But it could have been Rick Perry’s campaign or Mitt Romney’s or Newt Gingrich and maybe even Ron Paul. Third party surrogates do the distasteful work for candidates so that those seeking elected office can stand on principle and deny any involvement. When George W. Bush was running for governor of Texas against Ann Richards, Karl Rove started a whisper campaign in the coffee shops of East Texas that Richards was a lesbian. Just look at all the gays and lesbians she has appointed, he suggested. The buzz finally turned into a vibration and then a bit of an earthquake and went public. W was able to simply stand back and say, “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t think the governor’s gay.” That only made the story more real and she was politically wounded in East Texas, which has long been essential to win any statewide office.

Rove facilitated Perry’s transition from Democrat to Republican in Texas politics and was working with an aggressive FBI agent who had launched an investigation into Perry’s opponent for the office of Texas Agriculture Commissioner. During Perry’s first statewide election in 1990, he and Rove always had information about the investigation before it was made public. Rove frequently called reporters to talk about subpoenas before they had even been issued while Perry was standing in front of microphones talking about how he’d clean up the office and there’d be no federal investigations when he became agriculture commissioner. The FBI showed up in the Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower’s office with subpoenas the day he was out of town to announce he reelection campaign. Rove and Perry leaked new material to reporters covering that story almost every day, and it destroyed the reelection of incumbent Hightower and gave Rick Perry his first statewide office in Texas. Perry knows how to leak material to reporters and he knows whom to use to get that job done efficiently and clandestinely with plausible deniability. Rove taught him.

Herman Cain is blaming his ex-senatorial consultant, who joined the Perry campaign two weeks ago, for doing the leak to Politico. Seems a little too obvious for a political professional to time something so poorly, even though Cain says he shared info on the harassment allegations with Anderson during the senate race. But what in the hell does it matter? Cain had to know this information was going to come out from someone during a presidential race. If he didn’t, he’s too naïve to be president. And his handling of this story doesn’t create confidence in how he might manage a national crisis from the White House. Politico approached him 10 days before the story was published and asked for a response and there was nothing until the ham-handed iterations of the narrative that unfolded over the course of one news cycle.

Cain can blame Perry. And he might be right. But it doesn’t really matter who did it. The information was there and he ought to have planned his messaging for when it went public. And he didn’t. Now he is casting blame and parsing his language to escape incrimination.

Maybe that friend was right. “There is no truth in politics, there is only winning.”

The most important unresolved question of CNN’s GOP debate in Las Vegas may be how to tell an apple from an orange. Herman Cain’s use of a hackneyed metaphor actually helped him to avoid offering an explanation of how his nine percent national consumption tax doesn’t double the sales tax of many states. That apple is rotten, though, and Cain, who was banged around early for his tax plan, and then largely ignored, has discovered what it’s like when the luster fades from a bright, shiny political object.

Because he remains the lead dog of a snarling pack, Mitt Romney had to suffer flanking attacks on health care and immigration. When Rick Perry came after the GOP frontrunner for hiring a lawn care company that used undocumented workers. Romney’s answer to Perry sounded petulant almost like a troubled rich man who has a hard time finding qualified domestic servants. His description of the conversation he had with the yard guy compounded Mitt’s fumble. “I said, look, I’m running for office, I can’t have illegals…..” Does this suggest it would be okay if he weren’t a candidate for governor when this happened? The moment was akin to Perry letting everyone know he can’t be bought for $5000.

Romney scored serious body blows on Perry regarding immigration and jobs. The Texas governor keeps yammering about his experience dealing with the border but he has no real results to report. He has spent about $400 million on cameras and cops and patrols but just last week his hometown newspaper in Austin began running a series of reports about how a drug cartel was using the Texas capitol city as a location to trans ship narcotics to the north. The inflow of undocumented workers and contraband seems unabated. Cameras on poles are pretty easy to spot and walk around in the hundred mile gaps.

Michelle Bachmann’s solution to this problem, though, is halogen-lit ignorance. A 1700-mile wall from San Diego to Boca Chica Beach in Brownsville is a preposterous concept in terms of cost, engineering, and effectiveness. On the border, the recurrent joke is that the only way the U.S. could ever afford to get it built would be if they got the labor from cheap undocumented workers. Can’t be built without Mexicans. Cain’s notion, which was first a joke and then a plan, of building a twenty-foot tall wall that is electrified and will kill transgressors, dismisses him as a serious candidate. It also brings to mind a great line from Texan Jason Stanford who said that, “The only thing a 20 foot wall does on the border is create a market for 21 foot ladders.”

Border issues are complex far beyond the matter of simply shutting down the frontier. Rick Perry is fond of blaming Uncle Sam, who is supposed to protect the borders, but if Perry were as good at dealing with the issue as he claims, he would have shown some traction with reduced immigration and drugs. Nobody in the GOP has seemed even slightly interested in asking the people who live on the border what they think might work.

Perry and Romney might have appeared publicly in the debate to make peace on the question of faith but the issue won’t die off. The Christian evangelicals supporting Perry will keep up their third party efforts to let everyone in their churches know that they ought not be voting for a Mormon. And Perry’s campaign is doing a wink, wink, nudge, nudge approval. His super PAC can also be expected to help fund those communications. Romney, though, missed his chance to make Perry squirm. If he had forced the issue with a simple question, “Governor, do you think Mormons are Christians?” Perry would have been backed into a corner he does not have the political skill to escape. His honest answer would be no.

The CNN debate was also notable for the fact that Newt Gingrich was not the grumpiest person in the room. Rick Santorum, who has nothing to lose, went after all of the lead dogs, whose rear ends he can barely see from where he is running. Santorum’s “Pennsylvania strategy,” though, was more silliness. He got elected twice to the US Senate from his home state but when he got voted out, he was really and truly and forcefully shown the door by an 18 percent margin. Pennsylvania isn’t going to launch Santorum to the White House.

Sort through that and try to find an apple or an orange that isn’t at least badly bruised or almost rotten to the core.

Rick Perry knew.

If the polls suggest that there is a particular vulnerability in your campaign opponent’s resume’, you make a calculated risk by ignoring the weakness. In the south, it is not a secret that evangelical Christians view Mormonism with a wary eye. According to a 2007 survey by the Pew Center, 57% of voters identifying themselves as Christians don’t think of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as being a part of traditional Christendom. Consequently, logic suggests they might not vote for a person of that faith.

And Rick Perry is not going to ignore those numbers or that logic. The reason the Texas governor informally launched his campaign at a gigantic prayer rally with evangelical southern Christians was to let all of them know that he came from their tribe. He might as well have been telling them, “Vote for me. I’m not a Mormon,” which, in a fairly obvious manner, is exactly what he accomplished. Perry did not denounce Mitt Romney’s religious belief system but he knew there were others to do that important political work.

Perry’s surrogates are running a campaign to spread the word that Christians ought not to support a Mormon for the president. Dallas mega church Pastor Robert Jeffress, who was having a conversation in the hallway after the Value Voters convention, went public with the message that Mormonism was a cult to most Christians. Jeffress found himself, perhaps not accidentally, on most of the political cable talk shows and news networks explaining his perception of Mormonism, and, by extension, speaking for millions of evangelicals. Rick Perry had asked Jeffress to introduce him to the Values Voters convention audience. Perry knew what Jeffress thought as was going to say, on stage and off.

Using a well-established political protocol, , though, Rick Perry distanced himself from Jeffress’ comments, but just slightly. The standard approach in presidential campaigns is always to have third party surrogates do the dirty work and allow the candidate to take the high road. In this case, Perry said that he did not believe that Mormonism was a cult. What he did not say, however, was whether he believes the religion is a part of Christendom and whether Mormons are true Christians. And he won’t say that because it’s not something he believes.

Mitt Romney has not pressed Perry on this question because Romney knows that his religion is an issue for southern evangelicals and the less it is discussed the less harm is done to his campaign, which is why Perry’s surrogates will not drop the subject. Romney and Jon Huntsman, who is also a Mormon, have consistently suggested that discussions about their religion are a distracting sideshow from the important issues but Rick Perry and his strategist David Carney are counting on it being a weapon in their political fight for the GOP nomination. The argument that a person’s faith ought not to play a role in the debate in the public square falls apart if a Muslim candidate enters the race; consequently, it is of relevance to the Republicans when they look to their nominee.

A conversation over religion in a presidential campaign can lead to some awkward assertions. Mormons might ask how Joseph Smith’s never seen tablets are somehow less real than the one(s) on which Moses delivered the Ten Commandments. Is the foundational narrative of Mormonism and the appearance of the Angel Moroni any less believable that the story of a man who rose from the dead, moved a giant boulder in front of his tomb, and ascended into heaven to be with god? This is the discussion the Republican Party does not want to have on the airwaves. If neither Smith’s tablets can be produced nor the Ark of the Covenant, how can Christians dismiss Mormons? Is one a story and the other history and where is the empirical proof that exists beyond faith?

Those questions will not be answered in a presidential campaign. There will simply be a continued and orchestrated effort via emails, phone calls, and a whisper campaign that Mitt Romney is part of an alternative belief system and is, therefore, not qualified to be president and Christians ought not to vote for a non-Christian. Perry’s Make America Great Again super PAC, run by the governor’s old roommate and his former chief of staff Mike Toomey, can be expected to provide resources to get out that message along with the New Apostolic Reformation’s Prayer Warrior Network, which has operations in all fifty states.

The Perry family, seeking to distract from the full-frontal assault on Romney’s religion, has been working to position the governor and his wife and children as victims. The governor’s wife Anita made fatuous and emotional claims that the Perry’s were being attacked for their Christian Faith. She offered no proof beyond her glistening eyes because there was none. But there is probably a bitter conversation coming for Republicans on the question of religion. When a presidential candidate like Perry offers up his faith as an attribute that makes him an attractive nominee, he can expect to be scrutinized.

But let them argue over whose god is right. And the voters can focus on how the Republicans are all wrong.

The people who manage Rick Perry’s communications are really, really bad. Because of their aggregate incompetence, Perry is digging out of a policy hole that makes him look like that hiker in the Utah badlands who had to saw off his arm to survive. Perry has the same challenge.

His communications team is headed up by Ray Sullivan, who has become a millionaire by being Perry’s chief of staff. And then a lobbyist. And then Perry’s chief of staff. And then a lobbyist. Sullivan has rotated back and forth between working for Perry and lobbying for corporations that want Perry’s favor. His wife has also been made wealthy from her association with the governor. Unfortunately for Perry’s attempt at the White House, Sullivan and his entire staff have spent the past ten years practicing media avoidance. Perry was consistently unavailable when reporters wanted to ask him about anything controversial and Sullivan has passed twenty years in the capitol offering little more than a grunt or two word responses even in conversations with friends. He is cryptic enough to pass for a former CIA agent, which is a counter-intuitive skill when your boss is trying to effectively tell his story.

It’s also how Sullivan helped Perry screw up the immigration tuition issue.

There was a politically safe answer to why Rick Perry offered tuition “subsidies” to the children of illegal immigrants: They aren’t subsidies. Why this obvious response did not occur to Perry’s team is unknown but it would have avoided the hit he has taken in the polls. The children of illegal immigrants are required to live in Texas for three years, be in pursuit of US citizenship, and graduate from a Texas high school, before they qualify for in-state tuition rates. This is a daunting standard for young people who are in a locale as a consequence of their parents’ decisions. This is not a subsidy. In fact, if you move to Texas from another state and don’t want to pay out of state tuition rates, you only need to spend one year establishing domicile by getting a Texas driver’s license, paying taxes, and getting a Texas address. Perry has made it tougher on the offspring of undocumented immigrants. Too bad for him his communications team and Ray Sullivan don’t know how to offer that clarification to reporters.

Perry’s immediate challenge, though, as the New Hampshire debate looms is to find some way to mitigate that political anger over his tuition “subsidy.” He will do this in the debate at Dartmouth College by talking about how he has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on border security. Much of it was wasted, sure, and there were a few corrupt law enforcement officials involved, but Perry has slopped a lot of Texas taxpayer money in the direction of the border security hogs. He has called for strategic fencing and installed a series of cameras and wants to run up the numbers of national guard, border patrol, customs, and every other type of agent who can draw a paycheck to protect the frontier with Mexico.

And he wants you to know.

Politics is not complicated. By arguing that he has been tough on the border and has sent resources there Perry can mitigate damage done by his tuition subsidy problems. If you provide resources to clamp down in illegal immigration, you have no issues with needing to provide reasonable and humane treatment of the people who crossed the border illegally and then had a child. They aren’t here because they couldn’t cross the border. Shut down the border and you shut down discussions about tuition. Perry is going to be talking a great deal in coming weeks about everything he has done to prevent illegal immigration and drug smuggling along the border. Unfortunately, his hometown paper, the Austin American-Statesman is running a special report right now on how even the Texas capitol city has become a staging point for the trans-shipment of cocaine and methamphetamines from Mexico to US cities. A major drug cartel has moved into Austin from the mountains of Mexico. The border still has security issues.

No matter what the question might be that Rick Perry gets asked on Tuesday night on the campus of Dartmouth College, his answer will be about either how he has stomped down on the Texas-Mexico border and how he has been governor of a state with a growing economy. He has to fix his communications problem regarding tuition subsidies and begin to turn his discussion in the direction of all things economic. He could be asked about the relationship between gravity and hemorrhoids Tuesday and he would end up with a long rant about how nobody has dealt with the border more than him and how Texas has been adding jobs while the rest of the nation has been losing paid positions.

He’s also not going to denounce the Dallas pastor who called Mormonism a cult. If asked, Perry will talk about his own faith and how it has informed his life and its direction. Perry’s religion was never a topic when he arrived in Austin in 1985 nor did it have anything to do with his legislation or the partying he did with lobbyists and fellow legislators. But like George W. Bush, Rick Perry has had his fun and now he wants everyone to not have theirs and turn to his god. There are likely to be more Perry surrogates and evangelicals that work to keep alive the matter of Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith as a news topic but Perry will judiciously avoid it, even though he does not believe the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a part of Christendom. He’ll just keep rambling about his own faith and let his Christian cronies denounce Romney’s spiritual beliefs. The idea of the angel Moroni delivering golden tablets to Joseph Smith is apparently considerably less believable than the notion that a dead man rose, moved a giant rock, and slipped heavenward to be with god.

The hypocrisies of Perry’s campaign have yet to do him great harm. Before he had planned to participate in the Houston prayer rally last summer, reporter Gary Scharrer of the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News had acquired the governor’s tax returns. They indicated that Rick Perry was not exactly generous with giving to his church even though he had, in one annual filing, earned a million dollars. One year Perry gave nothing even as his income soared with sweetheart land deals. When Scharrer contacted Perry’s office for a comment, he was told by Sullivan’s staffer Mark Miner that, “Governor Perry never talks publicly about his faith.” Yeah, well, except when he wants to fill a stadium full of people to hear just how Christian he is and how humble he is as a man.

Perry isn’t really worried and neither is his strategist Dave Carney. They know that the evangelicals who cannot handle Mormonism, and are upset with Perry over immigration, have nowhere else to turn other than the Texas governor. Right now they are dating other people. They will not go to Herman Cain and have already left Michelle Bachman, have not looked at Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich or Gary Johnson, and don’t have sense enough to see that either Jon Huntsman or Romney represent the most rational mainstream approach to governance before the GOP. But those voters aren’t worried about the economy as much as they are the threat of two people of the same sex loving each other and pregnant women getting abortions because they aren’t ready for children. Rick Perry frets about those things, too, and they will remember him for that and forgive and forget his tuition problem. And he will rise again.

Rick Perry is about to become the Comeback Kid.

Rick Perry is looking wobbly. But he has been politically staggered before and recovered to win the fight. If he falters in his current effort, it will be the first time in his 26-year career of public service.

Analysts are busy writing obituaries for Perry’s presidential aspirations and there are many of us who would like to attend that funeral. But his current predicament is only a transitory moment in the GOP primary. Herman Cain’s Florida success has Republican Primary voters and big campaign donors wondering if Perry is good for the long, hard haul that is a run for the White House.

But what are their other choices?

Perry’s bumpy performance in the debates has prompted these reconsiderations. Media trainers have taught him how to “bridge” away from questions and talk about whatever he wants but when he ignored the query about Pakistan and started rambling about selling planes to India he looked foolish. When he tried to describe the various versions of Mitt Romney he sounded a bit like George W. Bush struggling to recite the aphorism about not getting fooled again. And then Perry told his base supporters they didn’t have a heart. But they aren’t seeking either a legal separation or a divorce. His voters are just upset after a bit of a lover’s quarrel.

They won’t hook up with either Ron Paul or Michelle Bachman because neither of them have electability. And when those two candidates drop out of the race, their supporters will be left choosing between Perry, Romney, Cain, and maybe Huntsman. Cain’s unfettered rhetoric offers a grand appeal and his 999 tax plan is simple enough for a broad group of voters to understand and embrace, and like Romney he has had great success in business. But he is new to politics on this scale and doubts about his electability will persist.

Which, basically, leaves Romney.

And the conservative wing of the GOP cannot forgive Romney’s statewide health care plan in Massachusetts, and his constantly evolving positions on the Tea Party and evangelical issues like abortion, gay marriage, and global warming. Romney brings a disturbing level of rational thought to those topics and the right wing GOP base is not interested in listening. It already knows what it thinks. The primary voters re-thinking their Perry support after the debates and Florida aren’t re-thinking what they already think about Mitt Romney.

A new CNN poll taken after the Cain mutiny in the Florida Straw Poll and subsequent to Perry’s amateurish performance in the FOX News/Google debate shows Perry still with a comfortable 7-point lead over Romney. Everyone else is below 10 percent but the Bachmann and Paul vote together totals around 16 percent. As their campaigns fade and they are forced to confront reality, where, exactly, can their voters be expected to land?

Not in Romney’s camp.

Perry’s support will return. Straw polls and debates don’t decide nominations and are only a small piece of what picks a president. George H. W. Bush was so bad in debates with Michael Dukakis that his lack of linguist skills was turned into a Saturday Night Live skit and everyone remembers how Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas stuck a shiv in Dan Quayle for comparing himself to John F. Kennedy. But nobody remembers a Dukakis-Bentsen administration.

The only place Rick Perry is going is further out in front of the GOP pack.

Mitt Romney is emerging as the grown up in the GOP primary process, which is too bad. He will not win the nomination. He would make the strongest candidate for the Republicans in 2012 but he cannot win the primaries. The primary process does not require sanity and moderation in the GOP race. The candidate must appeal to the Tea Party, evangelicals, fundamentalists, and right wing conservatives who vote on social issues.

And they rarely vote for Mormons.

Romney’s problems with the radical right go a bit beyond his religion. He has refused to sign an abortion pledge because the way it was worded meant that too many federally funded hospitals would be forced to close. He decided that everyone in his state ought to have health care and passed a bill his own party derisively calls Romneycare. He thinks that global warming is a real issue but he is not sure about human contribution to the problem. And he doesn’t seem afire with desire to stop gay people from getting married.

Romney makes too much sense to win this GOP nominating process.

And lucky Ricky Perry is the guy in the perfect position to win by default. The Texas governor is neither as smart or as poised as the former Massachusetts governor but he’s close enough to be the first choice of the primary voters who will take their anger against Obama into the polls this winter and into next spring. Romney’s repeated squishiness on social issues will give them pause and then his religion will help them make their decision to vote for Perry. He is consistently conservative on the social issues that matter to primary voters.

And he is not a Mormon.

Religion is the biggest issue in the GOP primary and it is being completely ignored in the debates and public discourse. The only way a Republican can win back the White House in 2012 is with a southern strategy that turns out huge numbers of conservative Christian voters. And conservative Christian voters do not view the Mormon faith as being a part of Christendom. If Romney is the nominee, they will stay home and President Obama will be easily reelected. Romney’s campaign keeps trying to suggest that a tiny percentage of evangelical voters will ignore him because of his faith, which is unfounded optimism.

James Gimpel, a GOP political scientist and consultant, argued in the Boston Globe that Romney is failing to recognize what could be an “insurmountable” problem with fundamentalist Christians. “The question is whether a church-going Christian is willing to set those differences aside as irrelevant to holding the office of president, or take them quite seriously as heretical and cultish. There are a great many evangelical Christians who would have a hard time justifying a vote for Romney under any circumstances.”

But they are enthusiastic about the wildly conservative Christian Rick Perry.

Republicans must carry the south, including Florida and Texas, to win the presidency because they will split the plains states and the Intermountain West. The president will win New York and California and the Northeast and the election will come down to the Midwest. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Pennsylvania are the electoral votes that will pick the president. Romney can do well in that part of the country; his father was a popular governor of Michigan. But it is irrelevant unless he wins the south and that is impossible. A Mormon cannot win Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, the Carolinas, and, consequently, the White House.

A 2007 Pew poll reported that 43% of Christians do not believe Mormonism is a Christian religion and among Christian evangelicals that number jumps to 57%. The unanswered question until Election Day is how many of those evangelicals will cast a ballot for a Mormon, who has also been vague or contrarian on social issues that matter to religious conservatives. A significant number of these people view Mormonism as a cult. They will not vote for Mitt Romney.

Rick Perry will have to make a huge mistake to lose this GOP election. Christian conservatives in Iowa will make him a big winner. If he loses in New Hampshire, where Romney has a home and has been campaigning for four years, Perry will win handily in South Carolina as well as Florida. On Super Tuesday, which includes (under current GOP scheduling rules) states like Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Virginia, Perry will win handily. Romney has the resources to stay at least through that March 6^th multi-state contest but the race will not last any longer and he will be forced to concede.

Romney and Jon Huntsman, both Mormons, are the best candidates for the GOP to have a chance against President Obama. But neither of them will survive the primaries because of their faith. Rick Perry will win.

And the GOP will lose.

(Houston) – The devout can be deceptive. But sometimes they are just blatantly hypocritical. And because the attendees of Rick Perry’s and the American Family Association’s (AFA) The Response event in Houston are human, there was an abundance of contradiction in Reliant Stadium. A lot of good comedy material, too. But too much sadness to ignore.

Waiting for Jesus on the Jumbotron

The AFA might call itself Christian but its intolerance has gotten the organization labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of the nature of written and verbal comments from AFA leaders about gays and Jews. (Both are hell bound, apparently; Jews because, well, you know, and gays because they have “chosen” an alternative lifestyle). Of course, AFA says it loves gays and is praying for them to understand the sinful choices they have made. And Jews, well, you know. If AFA believes you can “pray away the gay,” can you get rid of your Jewishness, too?

Sounded like AFA founder James Dobson was also praying for President Obama. The prayers are needed since Dobson equated Obama’s policies and his administration with the Nazis, but in a kind of loving, forgiving, Christian sort of way. Anyone looking at the crowd in the stadium, though, might have recognized the borderline mass hysteria as something they had seen on The History Channel’s black and white films of the rising Reich, arms raised, chanting, stomping feet, tears.

Perry, who wants to replace the president (regardless of his lack of a campaign proclamation), also prayed for Mr. Obama. He quoted scripture and mentioned suffering but he didn’t mention all of the agony in Texas. As Hair Almighty took the stage with a nuclear smile and a red power tie, he had much to pray about, and most of it was in the state he has been running for more than a decade.

Perry's Prayerapalooza

According to researchers in the Texas Legislative Study Group, 17.3 percent of the state’s population lives in poverty, 4.26 million people. 66 percent of Latino children and 59 percent of black children live in low-income families, compared to 25 percent of white children. 28 percent or 6.1 million of the population of Texas is uninsured, the largest share of uninsured in the nation. And if you are a woman with a child and in financial straits, don’t come knocking on Uncle Tex’s door for a handout. In 2010, the average monthly benefit for Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) recipients in Texas was $26.86, the lowest in the country. Yes, that’s for a month. You want more, you better pray. But so far that hasn’t worked in Texas.

Perry didn’t pray about any of that or the fact that Texas is 50^th in workers’ compensation, 50^th in percent of women receiving prenatal care, 50^th in percent of non-elderly women with health care, 50^th in per capita spending on mental health, 49^th in per capita state spending on Medicaid. Texas was sad before he became governor but Rick Perry has turned the state into a tragedy.

Maybe that’s because we aren’t all doing our share to help our neighbors or perhaps we aren’t praying enough to be heard. Perry, of course, wants to privatize much of government and believes that faith-based groups, individuals, and non-profits can help reduce the burden on government. This is what you’d expect of a conservative man of faith, and that he would do his personal part to help the less fortunate (since the government he is running clearly does not give a damn about “the least of these”). The evidence in Rick Perry’s tax returns, however, indicates he may have missed some Sunday school classes on giving.

In 2007, the governor of Texas earned $1,092,810. According to his IRS form, he gave $90 of that total to his church. He was a tad more generous in 2008 when the governor’s adjusted gross income was $277,667 and he donated $2,850 to his church. Perry was feeling less magnanimous in 2009 when he earned $200,370 but shows all zeroes as a line item for church donations. For the years 2000-2009, Governor Perry’s adjusted gross income on his tax returns adds up to $2,694,253 and church donations are $14,293. He did, however, manage to itemize each article of clothing and household items he donated to Goodwill, which amounted to a deduction of $30, 768 during those same nine years.

Perry isn’t exactly troubled by daily expenses, either. He lives in a $10,000 per month mansion, which the state is leasing for him since fire destroyed the historic residence of the governor. No fretting about making mortgage payments, and health care is provided, along with all transportation costs, and he does not pay for utilities, food, or property taxes. Maybe he could have edged up those church donations a bit without much personal suffering.

The information about Perry and the state he is destroying indicates he is both mean and stingy, and at The Response he proved that he hangs out with organizations that promote hatred against certain types of people. They all claim tolerance, of course, and inclusion, but take the folding chairs out of Reliant Stadium and roll out some prayer rugs for a Muslim Day of Prayer for America and see what happens. Perry has used his office, his tax paid time, state letterhead, and the Texas brand to promote a single religion. The man who would protect the Constitution as president begins his campaign with a gross violation of one of its most basic tenets.

Let’s hope he doesn’t have a prayer.

When Rick Perry told the Des Moines Register he felt “called” to run for president, he wasn’t exactly the first Texan to claim a landline to god. George Bush famously related to Mahmood Abbas that god had told him to invade Iraq and that if Abbas didn’t act quickly on a peace plan for the Palestinians god might give Bush other jobs. When it comes to sorting through presidential timber, god’s judgment appears to show some weaknesses. Whether she likes it or not, the Christian god is getting credit for a lot of weird things down here in the Lone Star state.

Good Hair, Good Suit, Bad Politics

As the legislature was trying to figure out how to deal with a $27 billion dollar budget deficit, Governor Rick Perry made it an emergency measure to pass a sonogram law. The legislation, which was successful, requires women to undergo a sonogram if they are seeking an abortion. The doctor is then forced by the law to describe what he sees and to ask the woman if she wants to examine the sonogram or hear the heartbeat. At the signing ceremony, Perry brought in the bill’s senate sponsor, Republican Dan Patrick, who told reporters this wasn’t about politics and it was a “god” issue. A few dozen pro-life types had been invited to the governor’s reception room and one of them asked Patrick if there was anything that could be done for the women who had already “killed babies with abortions.

“The good news, the good news,” Patrick was almost weeping as he repeated the evangelical phrase, “is that there is hope of redemption for those women through the blood of Jesus Christ.”

The church (Christian) and the state are Siamese twins in Texas.

Patrick, who has been an instrumental ally for Perry’s more extreme political accomplishments, walked out of the Texas Senate Chamber when it started its daily session with its first Muslim invocation in state history. The man who led the drive to have government intrude in the lives of women with problem pregnancies, is, like Sarah Palin, is a former sportscaster. Not too many years ago Patrick painted himself and a room blue and put on a big blue foam hat to yell at the TV during Houston professional football games. (Culture czar in a Perry administration?)

Perry, though, had already demonstrated a facility for messing with the lives of young women. In 2007, he signed an executive order requiring all sixth grade girls to get a shot vaccinating them against HPV, a sexually transmitted virus that can lead to cervical cancer. The governor, however, was being neither thoughtful nor progressive; he was being politically expedient. Merck manufactured the vaccine and the pharmaceutical company’s lobbyist at the time was Mike Twoomey, a Perry friend who has made millions getting the Texas legislature to bend to corporate will. Unfortunately, in this case, Christian conservatives wailed against the governor’s order and the legislature tossed it out. One GOP lawmaker even asked, “Does the governor think my daughter is a slut?”

The HPV rule was a perfect vehicle for Perry’s religious and political beliefs. He was able to cloak the intrusive nature of the bill under the guise of caring about young people while also making a lot of money for his lobbyist friend and a major drug company, which was likely to deliver large donors to any presidential campaign. Perry exhibits, as do many of his conservative consorts, a most fundamental of all contradictions: They are able to stand on stages and howl about government intruding in our lives and businesses but are quick to use the power of government to intrude when it serves their politics and profits.

These political expressions of god and faith, and, in Perry’s case, Jesus, conveniently ignore “the least amongst us.” Perry and his politics are determined to protect a child in the womb but they don’t do a hell of a lot for that kid once he or she starts walking in the world. According to the “Texas on the Brink” report, produced by State Senator Elliot Shapleigh and the Legislative Study Group of the Texas House of Representatives, the land south of the Red River has the highest percentage of children without health insurance of any state in the union.  In fact, 6.1 million people, 28 percent of the state’s population, the largest share in the U.S., is uninsured. We are also 4^th in the percentage of children living in poverty and 34^th when it comes to full immunization.

There is no argument to be made that Rick Perry does not own this grim real estate. He has been governor for more than a decade. The fact that Texas ranks 50^th among people over 25 with a high school diploma is his problem as much as it is the electorate’s that put him into office. “Texas on the Brink” indicates we are 45^th in SAT scores and the way we got there is because Texas ranks 47^th on the amount of money it spends on each public school student. Things will, however, get worse. To balance the state’s $27 billion dollar budget deficit, (why does that exist if we have made most of America’s new jobs?) Perry and the legislature cut $4 billion dollars from the two- year budget.  An additional $1.4 billion was eliminated by ending grants for pre-kindergarten and at risk students while also reducing state contributions to teacher pensions and health care. A teachers’ group called the educational budget cuts a “planned failure” for children.

If you happen to be an ethnic child in Texas, you are in a tough situation living under Perry’s Lone Star. 66 percent of Latino children and 59 percent of black children live in low-income families, compared to 25 percent of white children. Texas offers almost no help to change these circumstances. Parents making even poverty level incomes do not qualify for Medicaid under state standards, if they have two children and earn more than $4,942.70 in one year, (less than $100 bucks a week for those of us slow with math). This is a big problem when 4.26 million people, almost a fifth of the state’s population, lives in poverty.

This, then, is Rick Perry’s theology: by word you can claim to be a man of faith and care for others but by actions your truth is known. Texans have always been slightly deranged in terms of their politics but we are now almost certifiable with our continued election of Perry. What the rest of the country will learn with his political ascension is clearly described in the movie “Blood Simple.” The Coen Brothers’ 1984 film is about a Texas bar owner who is convinced his wife is cheating on him. The opening monologue describes the Texas social and political ethos.

“Now in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else– that’s the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas…And down here… you’re on your own.”