Laura Ingraham Tip: Perry's Running, Will Announce In the Next Few Days

Caution on this. I didn't hear this myself and am relying on "Bruce's" description of the interview with Mike Pence. He says that while talking to Pence, Ingraham offered the nugget that she knows someone very connected to Perry, and that guy says he's in.

So there are a lot of ways in which this tip could be false.

But that's what was said. Or, um, that's what I'm told was said.

Bonus: Fat stupid sweaty sub-cretin who can barely speak calls Ingraham "a rightwing slut" on TV, but that's okay, because it's "The Truth" or something.

Change the tone, change the tone.

Incidentally, will the excitable Tommy Christopher admit, whatever Schutlz' intent, that this is a problem?

I'm going to respond to Christopher later, seriously, and tell him what a jackass he is. But for now I'll just note he's failed to sufficiently condemn Schultz, as far as my own exquisitely-sensitive Offense-O-Meters are concerned.

Perry Spectacularly Well-Positioned This Cycle? I've already begun to really like T-Paw (and I didn't even note his guts in Florida; I'll do that later).

T-Paw was a good governor with a good conservative record.

But Perry has a little datum that will make him very attractive. That datum is that during the worst recession since the Great one, Texas has added 732,000 jobs.

I am always a skeptic about the power of ideological, verbal appeals. I do not believe people change their minds based on such things. I think people have heard all that, mostly, and either buy into it, or they do not.

Repeating it endlessly with increasing stridency and "confidence" doesn't change the fact that everyone's heard this.

What I do believe changes minds are practical results and facts on the ground.

I do not believe people embraced a more liberal economics because of Reagan's words. His words were as good as you could hope for, but that's not what changed minds.

What changed minds is that his words about the economy were followed, in two and a half years, by a vigorously growing economy, pumping out something like 6-10% quarterly GDP growth per quarter.

I continue thinking that people who think it's a winning strategy to just field candidates simply repeating the same dogma over and over -- but doing it "unapologetically" this time -- are borderline delusional.

They can look to their very selves for a refutation of this idea: The leftwing media pumps ideology to them 24/7. Have their views changed? Did they themselves convert to liberalism simply when it was "explained clearly" to them?

No. And yet this part of the conservative party is damn-sure that just "explaining it right" to the public is suddenly going to shift opinions to our side.

Doesn't work. Or works to a trivial extent. Necessary, but more as a logical framework for one's actions than something that is persuasive in itself.

One thing I agree with David Frum about -- one of the few things -- is a disdain for what Frum calls the "Say It Louder" theory of political persuasion.

What changes minds is facts and results. Period.

We sit here all day mocking the liberals for being ideological and thinking that their pretty words have any meaning, stating, over and over again, that it is results and not intentions and not theory that counts.

And yet... when it comes 'round to our side, some of us start making the claim that all we need to do is explain conservatism properly this time, and it'll all work out for us.

posted by Ace at 11:49 AM

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