Sunday, March 01, 2015

Rick Perry: Scott Walker's a jerk

And when Rick Perry thinks you're a jerk, you're probably more of an a-hole.  And by that, he means a bigger a-hole than he is, Scott.

Saturday morning, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said that "the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime" was Ronald Reagan's aggressive response to an air traffic controllers strike in 1981. Forget Nixon's outreach to China, Reagan's defense buildup, or the Iraq war — it's all about the firing of about 11,000 federal employees.

Walker has made similar remarks about Reagan and the air traffic controllers before. But now, he is one of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination in 2016. And he is trying to convince party elites that he can be their guy. But instead of checking off the foreign policy box, this latest comment adds to a list of foreign policy screwups.

The context surrounding this quote is important. Walker had repeatedly asserted that the air traffic controllers strike was a critical foreign policy decision, arguing that it sent the Soviets a message that Reagan meant what he said. At one point, he cited Soviet documents to support his point — documents that, it turns out, were entirely made up. Reagan's own ambassador to the Soviet Union told Politifact back in January that Walker's interpretation of these events is "utter nonsense."

Earlier this week, Walker had gotten into hot water for saying that his fight with union at home prepared him for fighting ISIS abroad. "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world," Walker said. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, another 2016 hopeful and no squishy moderate, called Walker's comments "inappropriate."

Overlook his being a jerk or an a-hole or whatever.  Scott Walker is just too effing dumb -- even for a Republican -- to be president of the United States.  This time, it has nothing to do with him dropping out of college 34 hours short of an undergraduate degree.  It may take a few months for the GOP base to figure this out, however, so who might be the most stupid in this regard is an open question.

On the other hand, our formerly worst Texas governor ever (just since the current one) might not have learned his lesson four years ago about demonstrating empathy towards 'the enemy' publicly, and if you believe the so-called libertarians who vote in the CPAC poll, Oops doesn't have much ground left to lose.  So, as usual, I can't really determine which of these conservatives committed the bigger gaffe.

C'mon, debate season!

Update: It's not as if Governor Glasses was going to just let Scott Walker be the most ignorant person of the weekend, after all.

Following a weekend full of conservative attacks on Hillary Clinton at the Conservative Political Action Conference, former Texas Governor Rick Perry added to the list, questioning the former secretary of state’s “loyalty” in an interview that aired Sunday.

Responding to news that the Clinton foundation had not notified the State Department when it previously accepted a donation from a foreign nation, Perry argued that Clinton was disloyal.

“I think it falls flat in the face of the American people when it comes to, are you going to trust an individual who has taken that much money from a foreign source? Where’s your loyalty?” Perry said in an interview that aired on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

He winks and nods at Texas secessionists, he supported Cliven Bundy's armed insurrection, and he's questioning someone -- anyone -- else's "loyalty".  Sometimes you just have to laugh.

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