Two of Rick Perry's New Hampshire Speeches

His November 30, 2011 address to the New Hampshire House of Representatives
His October 28, 2011 "Animated Speech"

additional commentary by Timothy Horrigan; December 11, 2011

Rick Perry has made some blunders in his 2012 Presidential candidate— most noteably his amazingly unpopular "Brokeback Mountain" commercial which made him the second-most hated man on YouTube after Justin Bieber. But he does still have some things going for him, his looks, his money, the fact that he isn't Mitt Romney— and he is the Governor of Texas, just like Bush II used to be.

I was at his November 30, 2011 speech before the New Hampshire House, although I missed his entrance because I was roaming around making sure that neither John Wolfe nor Darcy G. Richardson had showed up. Neither of them showed up— although I knew that both lesser-known Democrats had at least been thinking about asking Speaker O'Brien for their own ten minute speaking opportunities. The Speaker had originally invited all Presidential candidates, including President Obama, to come address the House during one of three scheduled fall session days. He subsequently limited the invitation to those candidates who had been invited to debates, and in the end, all the major Republicans showed up except Ron Paul and Mitt Romney.

Perry's November 30 speech inspired a fair amount of bipartisan applause every time he referred to Texas's part-time citizen legislature. This was because O'Brien had unconstitutionally extended our own calendar into the fall. (The Speaker sent us home early at lunchtime: he was so disgusted with us, he cancelled a scheduled December 14 session day, and put off all remaining business till January 4, 2012.)

His October 28, 2011 speech at the annual banquet of Cornerstone Policy Research (New Hampshire's most notorious right wing pressure group) has become legendary. According to who you believe, he was either drunk, on painkillers (after back surgery), dumb as a post, and/or perfectly OK. In any case, it was an amusing speech. The "brother in Christ" he rambles on about at the beginning is Kevin Smith, the President of Cornerstone, who is now running for Governor. (Smith's predecessor, Karen Testerman, ran in 2010 and got 10% of the vote in the Republican primary.) The "snow" is the Halloween blizzard of 2010.

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