Rick Perry has always been just smart enough to know what he can do and what is a waste of his time. When he was asked to sponsor bills during his days in the legislature, he told proponents not to bother leaving him analysis or draft copies because he would never read them.

“Just tell me what it does,” he said.

When he won his first statewide office as Texas Agriculture Commissioner, he did it by changing parties and having Karl Rove run his campaign. Perry, in fact, later acknowledged, “Karl did everything.” Unfortunately, more than a decade after he left that office, Texas is still dealing with bad debts from an agriculture loan program backed by Perry.

He was not Lieutenant Governor long enough to make major stumbles because George W. Bush left for the White House and Perry moved into the governor’s mansion. If he’d had even the slightest amount of self-awareness, Rick Perry would have looked around that grand old structure and pinched himself while wondering how in the hell it all happened.

Rick Perry has never had a true sense of who he is until he conceded here in Iowa. What he knows, and what most of America has also learned, is that he may be the least intelligent governor in the country. Just like he had never paid attention to those bills he was asked to sponsor as a legislator back in the 80s, Rick Perry ignored issues relevant to winning the presidency. He was always too busy helping his lobbyist friends and corporations seeking taxpayer handouts to bother learning the number of Supreme Court justices or even their names.

He was a gaffe machine in cowboy boots powered by oil money and rich Texans who drooled over the idea that Perry would open Washington’s doors to all of their big dollar dreams. And Perry, on paper, which is where he should have stayed, was the best candidate for the GOP. He had been a governor of Texas for more than a decade and had the political positions that evangelicals and the Tea Party lusted over. Perry would have done better in this campaign if he had never spoken a word and simply walked around and waved his arm at the crowds.

But then he went and talked.

Sort of. His “oops” moment will be taught in political science books for generations to come. And young collegians will wonder how a man so stupid could ever think that he might become president. Hell, even Ronald Reagan learned his lines. But Perry couldn’t be bothered. He’d never had to debate much to get where he was and it’s clear he didn’t read or think on complex issues. He just decided to run for the office and raise money.

He might say he is “reassessing” but he is done. The worst governor in the history of Texas may have set a new standard for the worst presidential candidate. Money and profile and reputation are not sufficient in the race to the White House. Perry has embarrassed himself and his state and is likely oblivious to the scope of his failure. A friend and long time associate of Perry’s said the governor had always been very good at just trying things to see how they unrolled. If he failed, he simply shrugged and moved on. He has failed and failed miserably and a simple shrug will hardly do for a response. How does he explain the $17 million plus that he wasted, including about $4 million on TV ads in Iowa? One analysis indicates he spent $500 per vote. He has done worse than Texas Governor John Connally did here in 1980 and worse the Texas U.S. Senator Phil Gramm in ’96. Rick Santorum did better with $500,000.

His endorsement may end up being sought by Romney or Gingrich or Santorum because Texas will be essential to any Republican presidential plans for Washington. But who wants the dumb guy’s support? Rick Perry can reassess all he wants, but his campaign, which was mangled as poorly as his syntax, is finished.

And if he doesn’t know that, he is even stupider than he appeared during the debates.

Iowa, again, will not be about who wins. The caucuses are about the person who does well enough to be taken seriously as a potential nominee beyond the fuzzy field of dreams that hides here in “the land between two rivers.” In this case, Iowa is about who becomes the Non-Romney.

Polls show Romney poised as the likely winner or second place finisher in a fight with Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Even Dr. Paul has suggested in interviews that he doesn’t go to bed at night with visions of himself in the White House. His race continues to be more of a movement than a candidacy and he lives under a ceiling of support that rarely rises.

Romney, though, has money and the moderate politics to give the president a tough fight in the fall. But he doesn’t give his own party those sweaty palms of excitement. And everyone in the GOP wants to see if there is a viable candidate that can become the party’s dreamboat, which is the only democratic service likely to be provided by Iowa.

The third place finisher here will get more media narrative and attention than has ever happened to an also-ran. This will be Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, or Newt Gingrich, (unless the Santorum surge has gone so far the polls haven’t measured it accurately and he wins.) The former speaker seems the least likely to take that third slot. Every other ad on television here in Iowa is an attack on Gingrich and his poll numbers have fallen precipitously.

Santorum’s, however, have been rising, and he could finish anywhere from third to first. Unfortunately, this rise in popularity is connected to the fact that he has practically lived in Iowa for the past year and has had the profile of an Iowa gubernatorial candidate. Even with money, he cannot sustain that level of exposure beyond Iowa to New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and on to Super Tuesday in March.

The case is harder to make for Texas Governor Rick Perry. He has begun to turn around his campaign’s blunders and has been on an almost endless bus tour of this state but his numbers appear unlikely to reach above the mid-teens. If, however, that leaves him in third place, Perry will get a new narrative as the Non-Romney. A reconsideration of that nature means he gets examined not so much as gaffe machine but as a long-term governor of a very large state whose politics please both the Christian evangelicals and the Tea Party.

But the Iowans who were supposed to reconsider Perry have been looking hard at Santorum. Even though the former Pennsylvania US Senator lost his reelection campaign by a margin of 18 percent, his support has been on the rise here. A surge in the turnout of evangelical voters, which was once supposed to help Perry, now more likely means Santorum will become the Non-Romney. Perry has been directly attacking Santorum because his campaign team is aware of the threat the Pennyslvanian poses for the Texas governor’s chances of a rebound. But there is no data to show the shots have harmed Santorum.

In none of these candidates, however, is there the kind of voter enthusiasm that is tapped when a future president shares a vision of the country’s future, except for Ron Paul. When the Texan contrarian walks into a room in Iowa, his supporters are loud and animated. Romney, Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich get a kind of polite applause as if the crowd were trying to make a final decision on whether to buy a Mac or a PC. They seem to want to get the process concluded and see how their machine functions. But that doesn’t mean Congressman Paul will be able to outlast Mitt Romney over the long run to the convention.

The winner will be the Non-Romney.

And if that candidate can generate money and enthusiasm in the coming primary and caucus states, Mitt Romney will have a very miserable 2012.

When listening to Rick Perry campaign in Iowa, the question that occurs to those of us who have watched and reported on him since 1985 is simple: How in the hell can this be happening? There is a bright shining light on the Texas governor’s ignorance and hypocrisies and yet the latest poll shows him with 14 percent of the Iowa caucus vote.

What’s the matter with Iowa?

His latest bit of oblivion occurred when he was asked yesterday about a landmark Supreme Court case called Lawrence v. Texas. During the early 70s, while the rest of America was worrying about the Vietnam War, the Arab oil embargo, and violence in the streets, free love and cheap marijuana, down here in Texas our state government was fretting over consenting adults of the same sex making love. The state passed a law making it illegal. A quarter of a century later, Harris County sheriff’s deputies in Houston were looking for a gunman and broke into the apartment of two men engaged in sex. They were arrested under the Texas law. Eventually, the men decided to fight to protect their privacy and the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court during Rick Perry’s third year as governor.

The late Tyron Garner and John Lawrence, Jr, who stood up to the Texas law that intruded into their private lives

But yesterday in Iowa, the man who has fought so hard to protect marriage as an institution reserved for the union of males and females, admitted to the Austin American Statesman’s Ken Herman that he didn’t know a damned thing about the Texas law. Perry’s flat-out stupidity on this issue must be difficult for even his most ardent supporters to process. When the Texas GOP nominated him for governor in 2010, the party’s platform had a plank that called for making it a felony for same sex couples to be married and any public servant who performed such a service to be prosecuted as a felon. The measure did not become law but Perry’s going to be back in Texas shortly after his further national embarrassment and he’s likely to be bored and vengeful.

The rank hypocrisy of Perry on the matter of the law and government and same sex partners is a bit astonishing. He has built his political career on the notion that the government’s rights and responsibilities stop at an individual’s doorstep, or, at least that is his rhetoric. Unfortunately, there are voters in Texas and Iowa that appear foolish enough to think he actually practices the principles he espouses. The government only stops at your doorstep in Perry’s world if it is trying to enforce a law that he and radical conservatives don’t like. Perry’s commitment to making “government as inconsequential in your life as possible” is abundant garbage when he wants you to act more fundamentally conservative. In those cases, it’s okay for the law to break into your home and tell you that you are having illegal sex or that your daughter must take an HPV shot developed by one of his major campaign donors and promoted by one of his oldest friends and lobbyists.

A walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction

Perry has no shame about any of this because he does not have the intellect to even begin to understand what’s wrong with his contradicting ideas. The same principle of political stupidity applies regarding his notion of a part time congress. The Texas governor wants to reduce government spending and stop making life so easy and pleasant for members of congress and make them more accountable. Government spending is okay, however, in fact, even kind of sweet, when it comes time for him to double dip on the taxpayers of Texas. Even though he is still on the state payroll for $150,000 as governor, Perry has filed for and receives a Texas government pension that amounts to $92,000. When congress gets pensions and benefits, Perry calls it excessive spending but in his case he and his staff have referred to it as smart “estate planning.”

In his polemic book that was ghostwritten under his name, Perry yaks and yabbers about activist and interventionist judges subjugating the will of the states and how frivolous lawsuits are destroying America’s economy. He refers to the Supreme Court justices as “oligarchs in robes,” which, apparently, is a lesser being than an oligarch in cowboy boots and hat. Perry thinks federal courts ought to stay out of state business.

Except when he needs them to step in to save his presidential campaign.

He filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to overturn the Virginia ballot access requirement that a candidate collect 10,000 signatures before they be placed on the presidential nominating ballot. Perry wanted one of those awful activist judges to tell the state of Virginia its rules are stupid and illegal. He has also promulgated the idea that when people file what Perry views are “frivolous” lawsuits and they lose their case, they ought to be responsible for all legal costs. It is doubtful that when he was told by a federal court that Virginia’s regulations were the state’s prerogative and were just fine the way they were implemented and his case was lost that he was willing to write a check to pay Virginia’s state lawyers for their time and the court’s costs.

His lawsuit wasn’t frivolous. But yours will be. Rick Perry has worked very hard to close the courthouse doors to citizens who have been harmed by corporate incompetence. Caps on settlements make it almost impossible to cover the legal costs simply to get a case to the point of being placed on a docket. These changes in the law are helping to lure big businesses to Texas. Of course, the multi-million dollar taxpayer checks Perry is giving corporations that promise jobs, which often never materialize, also helps lure industry south of the Red River.

Rick Perry is not a conservative. He is a man of little intelligence who has used charm and looks to build a political career. And his success is a crime against democracy.

How does Rick Perry avoid smirking at himself? Is he completely without a sense of irony or what constitutes hypocrisy?

He talks about budget management and fiscal austerity and then puts the state in a position of spending like a fool on his security. While he decries the Congressional revolving door of lobbyists as “legal corruption,” some of the richest people in Austin tend to be his friends who worked for Perry and then went out into the lobby. There are, according to research conducted by the Huffingtonpost, 40 lobbyists who have worked for Perry and are now making money by carrying messages to him from corporations and conservative causes.

Maybe it’s not legal corruption in Texas. We tend to just think of it as bidness. But Perry is trying to be one of the serious candidates on the grandest of global stages and he thinks no one is noticing his hypocrisies.

Bus Boy in Iowa

The latest absurdity is the money being wasted on his security. The Texas Tribune has reported it’s about $400,000 per month, which is likely to total around $4 million by the time Perry plops back down in his $10,000 per month taxpayer-funded mansion in the hills west of Austin. Perry, like George W. Bush before him, sees a relationship between his self-importance and the number of armed men around him whispering into their coat sleeves.

How many are traveling with the Texas governor is hard to discern. News media outlets have been trying under open records laws to get copies of vouchers but can only acquire general spending information. Details won’t be available until after the presidential campaign has ended but figures reported by the Texas Tribune indicate an absurd level of spending by taxpayers on a candidate who claimed to raise $17 million for his campaign. Between September 5 and 28 of this year, lawmen shadowing Perry spent more than $50,000 on food, $161,000 plus for airfare, and $112,111.00 for lodging. In one instance, they spent $4400 to eat at a restaurant near the Ronald Reagan Library during the debate and another $6400 for plane tickets to San Diego.

Even if there were 44 of them traveling with Perry, $4400 for one meal seems absurd when spending taxpayer money.

And nobody laughs when Perry says he’ll control spending when he gets to Washington. Maybe because it’s not funny. It’s a bit frightening that he is pulling close to ten percent in recent Iowa polls. In the last budget Perry passed before he went north of the Red River to chase his fantasy, he cut the heart out of virtually every government program. Teachers got fired by the tens of thousands, class sizes went above state legal levels, in home care for the disabled was dangerously cut, money for state parks, already in serious decay, was reduced, and hundreds of thousands of children and indigent adults were booted off of basic state health care. (The Texas Tribune’s web page, which carries the latest Perry story, includes a banner ad from the state’s Parks and Wildlife Department asking the public for funding help. The budget has been cut almost every year the legislature has met under Perry’s leadership and the parks system has gone hat in hand to the public.)

But there is money available for corporate giveaways like the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Emerging Technology Fund. Perry has now doled out hundreds of millions to companies that are run by friends of his who make donations to his campaigns or to large corporations that promise to come to Texas and create jobs but the work never materializes in the numbers described.

If god really told Perry to run for president, as he claims, then god has bad judgment. Or a twisted sense of humor. Rick Perry is a certifiably ignorant religious zealot who thinks the world is 10,000 years old and global warming is a hoax and evolution is a theory that ought to be subjugated in textbooks to creationism. The fact that he is given any type of consideration by Republican voters is a condemnation of their party and the American electoral process.

And Perry owes Texans millions for the money he has wasted on traveling security.

Romney’s problem is still that he’s Romney. Don’t expect better than third out of him in Iowa. The reasons are many and manifest and have been talked about and written about until they are likely carved into tablets of jade somewhere. Evangelicals, and there are a lot of them in Iowa, won’t get behind a Mormon. The nice Christian activists won’t say “cult” but they are thinking it. And the conservatives don’t think Romney’s a conservative. Romneycare, abortion, gay rights, global warming, blah, blah, blah. He spends too much time explaining his past and in politics when you’re explainin’ you’re losin’. He’ll do well in New Hampshire since they are more intimately aware of his political evolution. But if he wins, it won’t be by as much as predicted and then he’s off to South Carolina for a big time butt whuppin’. Romney gets to Florida politically wounded. Romney’s not likely to do better than third on January third. He is still the GOP’s best chance to win in 2012 because he is the most moderate but that also makes it impossible for him to win his own party’s primary.

As for Newt, the polls in Iowa and elsewhere have been friendly to him but the voters in Iowa will be less magnanimous. They aren’t likely to be as forgiving as the analysts think. Remember that only 120,000 Republicans took part in the 2008 caucus. Might be more this time but no way to know. Caucuses, as everyone knows, require active participation that goes beyond just punching buttons in a booth. People have to drag themselves out in the cold to community centers, homes, police stations, etc, sit through speeches, and then make a decision. This kind of set up discriminates and the devoted and fervent and devout are the ones who turn out. Note that last word. The devout are the voters who gave ‘08 to Mike Huckabee. This time they’ll vote against Newt. He’s just not convinced them he’s one of them even if they do forgive him is marital indiscretions. And the ones who do forgive him are likely to be pissy about his lobbying and insider status in DC. The main asset working in Newt’s behalf is the electorate’s perception of a guy who can intellectually stand toe-to-toe with the president in a debate. But that will matter less in Iowa where the values voters don’t mind getting their toes cold tromping through the snow to make their opinions known. Newt is the favorite, nonetheless, to win Iowa but if he does, it won’t be by much, and don’t be surprised if he finishes second.

Ron Paul is the guy who could end up as the Mike Huckabee of 2008. He might even do considerably better throughout the spring. Paul’s numbers in Iowa are strong and don’t waver. He needs to break through his traditional ceiling of low to mid-teens but appears poised to do that in Iowa. In fact, as primary and caucus voters grow more and more disgruntled with their available choices as well as the president, Paul’s support may increase. Doesn’t matter, though. He’s going to stay around 20 percent and high teens all through this election cycle, unless one of the more “traditional” candidates catches fire with a message. This is where Paul wins; his message has been consistent his entire political career and it seems more resonant in this election cycle when Romney spends his time explaining who he isn’t and Gingrich acts like he is intellectually ordained and Perry cannot master declarative sentences. There actually isn’t a single candidate in this cycle who has an accessible message that is unmistakable to the electorate in the GOP, which is why Paul may very well win in Iowa in spite of his soft support among evangelicals who want to push religion into public institutions. He has a message and as frustration with Washington grows almost daily, his message gains more believers.

Which points to the tragedy of Rick Perry. On the surface, he looked like the guy. He had the Christian rap, touted the dogma of values voters on abortion and gay marriage, had run a huge state for a decade, looked good on TV, and was a Washington outsider. But then he started talking. A message isn’t of much value if the candidate can’t even articulate it. But Perry’s likely to get a second look. Cain’s supporters ran off to Newt but Newt is like a houseguest who stays a few days too long. He’ll wear out. And the evangelicals and Tea Party types are likely to not give a damn that Perry can’t complete a declarative sentence. His stumble on immigration might still hurt him with some but he’s been hammering the message of shutting down the border with the military the day he takes office and that’s the type of rhetoric right-wingers like to hear. He’s off on a long bus tour of Iowa, capitalizing on his acknowledged retail politicking skills and he’s spending a fortune on advertising in the state. Plus there are internal numbers that now show Perry tracking into the high teens on polls. He might be writing a comeback narrative.

Santorum and Bachmann don’t figure large in the results in Iowa, although Bachmann is on a bus tour through all of the state’s counties. Her message is as unclear as Santorum’s. “I’m the real conservative in this race,” isn’t going to work when every candidate is making a similar claim. They will likely grab 5-8 percent each of the vote total on caucus day. They both expect to do better but they don’t have the money or the following essential to make a big impact in Iowa.

Where does this leave us? Bus tours and one more debate and advertising are going to have some impact but Iowa is going to be the first state in the process and will reflect what we will see on the long road ahead, which is a difficult campaign. We might end up with four candidates sharing totals in the high teens to the low twenties coming out of Iowa and into NH. One scenario might have Paul with 21 percent, Newt at 19 or 20, Romney and Perry both around 18, and Santorum and Bachmann sharing the remainders. This is likely the case, though those places could juggle a few percentage points. NH can be expected to be slightly different with Romney winning and Newt and Paul and Perry scrapping for second with not much separation. South Carolina will turn away from Romney and Perry and Paul and Newt will duke it out. Perry could take SC if the electorate has grown tired of Newt and Paul does not appear electable.

We could go all the way through Super Tuesday in the first week of March and still not know who will be the nominee of the Republican Party. There are potentially four candidates who consistently pull 18-20 percent of the vote, which means the GOP will not easily make a choice.

Rick Perry’s new ad is almost universally repulsive. And neither he nor his advisors seem to understand what is so offensive. (The ad is featured at the top of the Moorethink homepage.) In the span of thirty seconds the Texas governor manages to offend gays and lesbians as well as citizens who believe the constitution prohibits the intrusion of religion into public institutions. Good job, gov.

It’s too easy to call him an idjit, regardless of how accurate the accusation might be. In this particular instance, he knows what he’s doing. Republican pollster Mike Baselice, a reputable surveyor with fine credentials, has provided Perry’s team with numbers that indicate the governor may be moving up in Iowa. He’s in double figures at 11 percent. “We’re number four! We’re number four!” The gay bashing and god groping ad, though, is designed to get the attention of conservative evangelicals who turn out in large numbers for the Iowa caucuses. There were only about 120,000 people in the 2008 GOP caucus so it doesn’t take a monumental effort to move voters; especially when you are so eager to pander.

Evangelicals gave Mike Huckabee Iowa in the last election cycle. He’s got a TV show now. They can help Rick Perry win, too. Or get him a TV show. And he’s doing his best to let them know he thinks just like they do; Perry hates gay people, doesn’t want them to be able to marry, wants Jesus to tuck us all in at night, and no matter how many people are hungry or sick or unemployed, we shouldn’t turn to the government except when we want to say the pledge of allegiance or give money Israel. Amen.

And it just might work. Iowa is a steaming cauldron of Republican crazy, even in winter. And it takes a certain kind of motivation to run out into the cold on a school night and listen to political speeches at a community center or the post office and then vote for a candidate based on what you just heard or you saw on a repeating TV ad. When you think about the weather and combine it with the absurdity of the caucus process, it is a minor wonder that 120,000 people came out to play last time.

Which is why Rick Perry is spending $1.2 million on TV advertising to try to pump his poll numbers in the next few weeks. He wants to remind Iowans that he’s just like them – at least the evangelicals who are going to take part on January 3rd. Expect to see more ads showing him with his wife Anita and mentioning how they’ve been together since they met in eighth grade (subtle comparison to Newt Gingrich who changes wives about as often most people change the oil in their cars.) Rick isn’t going to talk much about jobs and the economy in Iowa. He’s got to motivate the people who are worried there are rainbow warriors sneaking down the corn rows to flaunt their same sex love of each other in their universal determination to destroy the institution of heterosexual marriage.

The people Perry is trying to reach don’t give a jolly good damn if he is stupid, (which, demonstrably, he is.) All they care about is that he loves Jesus and hates them homosexuals almost as much as he hates Washington, (though he can’t wait to get there.) Newt might scare them with his pseudo-intellect and his multiple wives and his millions of dollars made off of being a lobbyist for the guys who caused the mortgage and Wall Street collapse. Rick didn’t do any of that. He was down in Texas screwing up his home state.

But if he gets a chance, he’ll sure stick it to America, too.

Rick Perry appears politically doomed. But so did Newt Gingrich when all of his staff left in in the middle of last summer to head back down to Austin and work for the Texas governor. Regardless, there is no really believable scenario for Perry to recover that doesn’t include an intervention of some sort by the god to whom he so fervently and publicly prays. Perry is down to 4% support in Iowa, trailing the estimable Michelle Bachmann. He ranks fifth or sixth but still expects to get a BCS Bowl bid to New Hampshire.

American Hat Holder

The general thinking among analysts was that when Perry called his own party’s constituents heartless for not wanting to help educate the children of undocumented workers, his voters went to the ascendant Herman Cain. The voters that Cain didn’t sleep with began bailing out on him when stories of his infidelity went public and he began describing what appeared to be a large portion of the female population as liars. Unfortunately for Rick Perry, those Cainiacs didn’t reconsider Ricky; they went on over to Newt.

This must be painful to pretty boy Perry, if for no other reason than the aesthetic insult. The garrulous and rotund Newt, who has to look and sound like one of the college professors who gave the Texas A and M student his C and D grades, is apparently more politically fetching than Rick. But Iowa is a very, very strange place. They grow corn and presidents and the crops are inconsistent in terms of quality. And there are dynamics that can help Perry.

The most obvious is the conservative, evangelical nature of the GOP electorate. In the last presidential cycle, Mike Huckabee won Iowa with the help of a radical organization of Christians called the Family Leader. Run by a man who has been rejected by voters every time he has run for statewide office in Iowa, Bob Vander Plaats maintains an energetic core membership that will work to elect candidates that share similar philosophies, which tend toward ignorance. He has said publicly that children today would be better off under slavery than President Obama and thinks homosexuality is a lifestyle choice. Vander Plaats’ influence, according to Iowa media, has fallen off since 2008 but success in the caucuses is about organization and his group has infrastructure and zealotry and it is considering endorsing either Perry or Bachmann or Santorum. (Romney and Huntsman are out because they are godless Mormons.)

Afraid of Gays

And Perry has other pals. They are heading to Iowa in numbers after Christmas to work the phones and try to get someone to speak for him at each of the caucuses. What a grand way to spend the holidays. These include the Texas attorney general and state comptroller and probably a ton of lobbyists who still have to do business down here in Texas when Rick gets kicked back down south of the Sabine River by the GOP. They are traveling to Iowa on their own dime to see if they can resurrect a candidacy that is intellectually gangrenous.

The worrisome thing is that Newt does not sustain as a man of mass appeal. His sundry hypocrisies on lobbying and marriage and his unfettered arrogance in the increasing light of TV cameras are all virtually certain to harm him. And when voters begin bailing on Newt, where do they go? No, not Perry. This may be Ron Paul’s time. Mitt Romney might be able to beat the president in a general election but he is too moderate and too Mormon to win his party’s nomination. Watch for Ron Paul to surge in Iowa as January approaches.

The Apostle Paul

But both parties ought to think about why they let Iowa have this kind of influence in the nominating process. Nobody paid any attention to their caucuses until 1976 when Jimmy Carter came along and thought, strategically, it might be a good way to gain momentum going into New Hampshire. He was right then. But letting Iowa play this role now is all wrong.

(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.

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.

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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.