Rick Perry Follows Palin Lead

There are a whole host of Republican politicians who have taken a page from the Sarah Palin book of avoiding hard questions by refusing to talk to the national media.   This is especially true of teabagger candidates like Christine O'Donnell, Jan Brewer, Rand Paul, Sharron Angle and the like.   Some of them, like Rand Paul, tried to hold his own with the national media at first, but quickly learned that this meant fielding hard questions -- the kind of questions that people with a teabagger philosophy are embarrassed to answer.

It didn't take Sarah Palin long to discover that she couldn't control the national media by winking and throwing off some country witticism.   The national media expected her to actually answer their questions, and like other teabaggers, she had no answers for their questions.   So she stopped talking to any media except for Fox News (who only asked easy "softball" questions of teabaggers and other right-wingers) and pre-approved local media outlets.   And it's worked for her.   She hasn't been embarrassed because she hasn't been asked any difficult questions.

But she didn't stop there.   She also recommended that other teabagger candidates follow her lead and do the same thing, and they are doing it.   Giving a stupid answer to a difficult question is a great way to lose votes, and since they have nothing but stupid answers to give, they are avoiding the national media as if that media was carrying a combination of the ebola and swine flu viruses.

Now Texas' own teabagger candidate, Governor Rick Perry, has decided to climb on board the "avoid the national media" bandwagon.   He was invited to speak to the National Conference of Editorial Writers, hosted this year by the Dallas Morning News.   When he was invited (and accepted the invitation) he was informed that his speech would be followed by a short question-and-answer period.   He agreed to that.

But when it came time to make good on his promise, all he had was excuses for why he wouldn't participate in the question-and-answer session.   He told the group that he didn't have time to do the 15 minute session, although they noticed that he took five minutes to talk football with friends after the speech and another 20 minutes to chat with the local media in front of the auditorium (media he could count on to not ask the hard questions).   He had the time -- just not the desire or courage.

Frankly, I don't blame the teabagger candidates for not speaking with the experienced national media.   The ideas of these candidates are so ridiculous and out-of-the-mainstream that they could only lose votes by speaking to the national media.   The only chance they have to be elected is to avoid having to defend those crazy beliefs as much as possible.

Perry knows he currently has a lead in the governor's race and he's not about to endanger that lead by exposing his stupidity or crazy ideas to a debate or to questions from the national media (especially editorial writers).   He figures he can best protect that lead by keeping his mouth shut until election day.   I think he's probably right about that.