Rick Perry and Sarah Palin share one thing in common.  They are both very real people.  Virtually everyone who actually knows Sarah Palin describes her the same way:  “she is just the same off TV as she is on TV.”  While the main stream media tries to portray her as naïve and inexperienced with a huge cast of professionals covering up for her inabilities, the opposite is true.  She has very little staff, she makes her own decisions, she writes her own blogs and her husband Todd runs her Television studio.

 Rick Perry is starting to show very similar attributes.  The following article gives a first-hand view of how he campaigns:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61366.html

 He has already demonstrated that he is not terribly concerned about playing the political game.  He participated in that national prayer meeting because he thought it was the right thing to do and he didn’t really care if anyone agreed or not.  On several occasions he has said it is time for conservatives to stop apologizing. 

Democrats and Republicans have underestimated this man for years.  There is no doubt that the Republican establishment is not all that thrilled with Rick Perry.  That is why they ran Kay Bailey Hutchison against him in the primary last year.  He won easily.  Then the Democrats were sure they had a good chance of beating him in the general election.  They hated him, so they stupidly assumed everyone else would agree.  He beat Bill White, the former Mayor of Houston, 55 to 42.  It wasn’t even close.

The Republican establishment is firmly convinced that only moderates win elections.  Rick Perry is far from a moderate.  They fear that a truly conservative candidate will alienate the coveted independent vote.  That is why they preferred John McCain to Mike Huckabee and why they will prefer Mitt Romney to Rick Perry.  But this time the RNC is finding out that the Tea Party is for real, it means what it says and it has low tolerance for those who compromise with the extreme left.  The Tea Party is not a political party, it is a grass roots political awakening.  Unless I am missing something, they are going to love Rick Perry.

When George W. Bush first ran for Governor of Texas no one gave him a chance of beating Ann Richards, a Democratic superstar.  I didn’t even know who George W. Bush was, but I happened to be in Texas and saw one of his ads.  He just looked into the camera and said “Texas is not a state, it is a state of mind.”  He defeated her in a landslide because everyone understood what he mean.  At some point Rick Perry is going to say that the Tea Party is not a political party, it is just the loud voice of the American people who are fed up with the political establishment.

This could be the ultimate reality TV show.  At a minimum, it will be fun to watch.

 TDM