Perry will win big

You read it here first: Rick Perry will amble to the Republican nomination and will win the presidential election easily. In June I wrote an article -- "Is Perry the One?" -- suggesting that Rick Perry may be the best nominee for Republicans. His personal life is spotless. His policies reflect his political beliefs and have worked the way conservatives intend.

Talking like a tough Texan is the worst thing anyone can say about him, but that attack will fail. The unpopularity of George W. Bush in his last two years created a false notion among leftist elites that America does not like cowboys. Wrong: we love leaders who look confident and act decisively; we love our frontiersman and cowboys. We like straight talk and straight shooting. Most Americans also sense that we desperately need a tough hombre in the White House in 2013.

We also want heart. Perry's long and happy marriage shows that heart. His hard work on the family cotton farm shows that too. Perry's honorable and significant service in the military shows the courage of a true patriot. His love of America's most noble private organization, the Boy Scouts, shows that heart too. Perry's unabashed faith in God will hurt him only in Manhattan or in San Francisco.

In stark contrast is our current president. Has Obama ever really worked a day in his life? Did he walk out of church when Reverend Wright damned America, as Perry would have done? Can anyone even picture Obama as a Boy Scout? Does anyone believe that Obama, who did not give an Easter measure and who in private parties sneers at Americans clinging to their faith, believes only in anti-Americanism?

Perry, even at what more nuanced conservatives may consider his rough edges, stands in dramatic contrast to Obama. In a nation which, according to Gallup, is more conservative than at any time in twenty years and in which every state has more conservatives than liberals, the Republican Party needs a conservative -- not a "compassionate" conservative -- to run straight at Obama.
Why is Washington D.C. more economically upbeat than any other part of our nation? Our nation's capital is doing so well because politicians have made the federal government our biggest growth industry. The attacks on Perry by flacks like David Axelrod -- Texas' economic growth is because oil -- will backfire on the left: yes, extracting oil, coal, and natural gas can create millions of high-paying jobs, make the dollar stronger, and increase tax revenues without raising tax rates. Yet that is what clueless leftists will accuse him of trying to do.

Perry is not Reagan but he is more like Reagan than any Republican in the last fifty years. He is physically strong. He honed his speaking skills as a young salesman, and those who worry about him talking like Bush should listen: he sounds more like Reagan.

Perry, like Reagan, governed the second-largest state in the Union for multiple terms. He also has had the chance to connect with other Republican governors, arguably the strongest force in the party. Several governors have come close to endorsing Perry already and more will openly support him. His message of genuine federalism is vital to these governors. Strong support from conservative Republican governors will make winning the nomination much easier.

Next year anyone touched with the deficit deal in Washington will be damaged political goods. Republican political leaders who have created prosperity at the state level will look much better. Rick Perry in 2012 will not just be able to run against Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, whose leaders have appalling bad approval ratings, but Perry will be able to run against the federal government itself. He will run as the longest-serving governor in America running a state (as large as a nation) which works.
Polls already show Perry leading the Republican field, ahead of a much better-known Romney who has been campaigning for years. Gallup shows a very high intensity level for Perry as well. As other conservatives drop out, their support will inevitably gravitate to Perry. A united Republican Party in 2012, led by a sitting governor, will sweep to victory. An America given the choice between an unapologetic conservative and a clear liberal will give that conservative a landslide.

In 1979, enclaves of pundits were feverishly analyzing the candidates. It was very clear what would happen: the popular conservative big-state governor would win the nomination fast and then crush the bitter but smiling one-term leftist in the White House. That is exactly will happen next November 2012.