The Patriot Post® · Perry's Claim to Fame Is Simple: Jobs

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is considering another run for the White House in 2016, and his platform is strong in the primary concern of voters. As political strategist James Carville so memorably put it during Bill Clinton’s first campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

In his State of the Union, Barack Obama crowed about the jobs he created since 2010: “America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan and all advanced economies combined. Our manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs.”

But Obama didn’t give credit where it’s due. Since the start of the Great Recession in 2007, the 1.169 million increase in jobs nationwide up to December 2014 can be attributed entirely to the roaring Texas economy. The other 49 states and Washington, DC, altogether have lost about 275,000 jobs. Texas enjoyed its 51st consecutive month of growth in December, adding more that 2,000 jobs every business day. And while the nationwide headline unemployment rate stands at 5.6%, the rate in Texas dropped to 4.6%. Pretty impressive numbers for a candidate’s résumé.

Of course, Texas owes much of its boom to fracking on privately owned land. Fracking has sparked a recovery in other industries, including construction. From January to November, more building permits for single-family houses were issued in Houston alone than in all of California in the same period.

Unfortunately, some of Texas’ job growth came because of crony capitalism – sweetheart tax deals and so forth. That shouldn’t play well with free-market conservatives, but the average voter probably won’t care much about that angle when Perry can say, “Yeah, but Texas under my leadership is responsible for virtually all the job growth in the nation.”

One issue that will tickle conservative heart strings is that leftists are labeling Perry a “tenther.” Like the supposedly pejorative “denier,” the Left now labels anyone who believes in the Tenth Amendment a “tenther”. We’re mighty proud to be in that club.

Interviewed by Heartland magazine, Perry said that he wants to be a strong Tenth Amendment leader, working with other governors who share his passion. “We need to get back to 50 states competing against other … to become a powerful country, a powerful economy again.” He continued, “We need to … make the states … into laboratories of innovation [again to] put America back on the road to recovery.”

A push to restore the federalism our Founders established is long overdue and we hope the next president and governors have the wisdom to restore the Tenth Amendment as we have the Second.

Meanwhile, should Perry emerge as a viable candidate, the Left will simply lie to destroy him. Lies, character assassination, mudslinging. The Left’s stock in trade.

Indeed, this is why he had a run-in last year with Travis County Democrat District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg after she was arrested for drunk driving with three times the legal limit of blood alcohol. During her arrest and booking, she behaved like a bratty eighth grader. Sentenced to 45 days, she served half. Because she heads the Public Integrity Unit of the DA’s office, Perry asked her to resign. Like any good disgraced Democrat, she refused, causing Perry to cut funding to her office until she was replaced.

Smelling blood in the water, special prosecutor Michael McCrum took the matter to a grand jury and got an indictment for two class A misdemeanors: abuse of official capacity and coercion of a public servant. Got that? Perry allegedly “abused” Lehmberg by demanding her resignation. And he “abused” the power of the veto. That’s rich.

The Leftmedia lost no time headlining: GOVERNOR INDICTED. Unfortunately, the case will drag on for months, keeping Perry’s “sullied” name in the news. He could lose campaign contributors, as ridiculous as that might seem, but Democrats have been at this game for decades, and they know their stuff. Let’s hope the voters show more sense than the media hounds.

In terms of campaigning, two things will work to Perry’s advantage this time: He’s no longer governor and can focus all his energy on the campaign, and he’s not coming off back surgery, which many think put him off his game in 2012. And, again, that job-creation résumé is going to play well in a nation sloughing along under Obamanomics.