The American Prospect blogger Adam Serwer says that GOP presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry will change his mind on controversial matters only when urged by his political base. But he will not apologize for saying things they like.
It's 2000 all over again: A Republican governor from Texas is running for president, and the press is swooning over his manly manliness.
Opinion columnists are already lining up to squeeze Perry's biceps. Washington Post "liberal" columnist Richard Cohen thinks Perry "looks like a president," whatever that means, while Kathleen Parker writes that Perry shares George W. Bush's "certain brand of manliness." I can't tell if she means being a conservative from Texas or being a cheerleader.
It's getting a little hot in here for the straight reporters too. Yesterday, the Washington Post's Chris Cilizza wrote an uncharacteristically credulous post where he labeled Governor Rick Perry the "no-apologies" candidate who "is brash, bold and unapologetic about being so."
Cilizza concludes, "Put simply: Rick Perry doesn’t apologize — and it's worked for him politically." The Perry campaign must have been delighted — after years of Republicans trying to paint Obama as the kind of president who goes on "apology tours," the Cilizza piece frames Perry as his diametric opposite. And after poor Mitt Romney went through the trouble of literally titling his book "No Apology!"
Read Adam Serwer's entire post at the American Prospect.