{"id":20844,"date":"2017-04-07T03:23:45","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T03:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20844"},"modified":"2017-04-07T03:23:45","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T03:23:45","slug":"trump-and-perry-national-security-bffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20844","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Perry: national security BFFs?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How in the world do these things happen?<\/p>\n

Political foes say some amazingly harsh things to and about each other. Then when the fight is over, they declare a winner, all is forgiven and forgotten. It’s just politics, man. Which means that we didn’t really mean all those angry things we said to the other guy.<\/p>\n

I just caught up with a story published in the Texas Tribune that seems to illustrate all of that quite nicely. Former longtime Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who now serves as secretary of energy in the Donald J. Trump Cabinet — is now joining the National Security Council. Perry has become one of the president’s more trusted national security advisers.<\/p>\n

Did they cure the ‘cancer on conservatism’?<\/a><\/p>\n

Rick Perry once challenged Trump for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. He was one of a thundering herd of GOP hopefuls seeking to succeed President Obama.<\/p>\n

Perry didn’t make the grade — again! But before he stepped off the stage, he did manage to launch a scathing, blistering attack on Trump, whom he called a “cancer on conservatism.” He said the cancer needed to be “excised” from the party, meaning, I suppose, that Republicans needed to do all they could to avoid nominating Trump.<\/p>\n

Lo and behold!<\/em> Trump wins the election and then selects Perry to run the DOE, which in itself is soaked in irony. You’ll recall that Perry ran for president in 2012 and during a primary debate sought to name the three federal agencies he would eliminate. He mentioned the departments of Education and Commerce, but then forgot the Energy Department, producing that infamous “oops” moment that likely will live forever.<\/p>\n

I get that energy policy is a national security matter and that the energy secretary deserves to be included in national security discussions on the NSC.<\/p>\n

It still does boggle\u00a0my mind to see\u00a0Rick Perry — of all people<\/em> — elevated to this exalted place during this troubling time.<\/p>\n

It makes me ask: Did he really mean that stuff about curing the conservative movement of its “cancer,” or was he\u00a0making it all up?<\/p>\n

How will we know when he’s speaking from the heart or whether he is merely pandering?<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How in the world do these things happen? Political foes say some amazingly harsh things to and about each other. Then when the fight is over, they declare a winner, all is forgiven and forgotten. It’s just politics, man. Which means that we didn’t really mean all those angry things we said to the other … Continue reading Trump and Perry: national security BFFs?<\/span> →<\/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":[13,14,18],"tags":[1126,6746,1424,1941,3951],"class_list":["post-20844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","category-state-news","tag-conservatism","tag-doe","tag-donald-trump","tag-gop","tag-rick-perry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20844","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=20844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20846,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20844\/revisions\/20846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}