{"id":1271,"date":"2010-03-08T14:13:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T14:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2010\/03\/08\/perrys-voters-disappearing"},"modified":"2010-03-08T14:13:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T14:13:00","slug":"perrys-voters-disappearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1271","title":{"rendered":"Perry&#8217;s voters disappearing?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m mystified.<\/p>\n<p>Texas Gov. Rick Perry dismantled his two Republican gubernatorial rivals this past week, winning the GOP primary with an outright majority &#8212; garnering 52 percent to 30 percent for Kay Bailey Hutchison and 18 percent for Debra Medina.<\/p>\n<p>But I cannot locate anyone who says they voted for him. Granted, I haven&#8217;t talked to every Republican in Amarillo. But I&#8217;ve talked to quite a few of them, many of whom are mainstream conservatives. One guy, a prominent Amarillo lawyer, said he never could vote for Sen. Hutchison &#8220;because she favors Roe v. Wade,&#8221; so he voted for Medina. Another friend, a strong supporter of Congressman Mac Thornberry and other leading Republicans, said he &#8220;held my nose and voted for Kay.&#8221; Others have said much the same thing: They just couldn&#8217;t vote for anyone with great enthusiasm. Medina, the Wharton County &#8220;tea party&#8221; activist who shot herself in both feet near the end of the campaign with that nutty talk about 9\/11 possibly being an inside job, did well among the most ardent conservatives.<\/p>\n<p>That was the vote Gov. Perry was targeting. The ballot totals suggest he did quite well, avoiding a runoff.<\/p>\n<p>But where are they? The folks I&#8217;ve encountered in the days since the election aren&#8217;t fessing up to voting for the guy.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s reasonable to note that Perry doesn&#8217;t engender much warmth. He&#8217;s a tough dude, able to campaign as hard as anyone who&#8217;s come along in decades &#8212; as Hutchison learned.<\/p>\n<p>Great politicians &#8212; like Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy &#8212; often have their names become political adjectives. I haven&#8217;t heard anyone yet declare himself to be a Perry Republican.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m mystified. Texas Gov. Rick Perry dismantled his two Republican gubernatorial rivals this past week, winning the GOP primary with an outright majority &#8212; garnering 52 percent to 30 percent for Kay Bailey Hutchison and 18 percent for Debra Medina. But I cannot locate anyone who says they voted for him. Granted, I haven&#8217;t talked &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1271\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Perry&#8217;s voters disappearing?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}