Rick Perry's August 13, 2011 Appearance at Deputy Speaker Pam Tucker's House

additional commentary by Timothy Horrigan; August 15, 2011

This video interested me because of where the event was and who was there, more than because of what was said.  (Frankly, I skipped over a lot of it.)

Part 1: Perry's Speech (about 15 minutes)



Original URL: http://youtu.be/0Mw7Hse3pqQ
(Speaker O'Brien himself is in the audience: he can be seen around the 1:15 mark, and his wife is the woman whose face is half-hidden by the podium throughout the video.)

Part 2: Q & A (about 24 minutes)
Original URL: http://youtu.be/B_7pXmWBxlo
(Around the 1:15 mark, he defends nuclear power— and the crowd cheers, even though the controversial Seabrook Station is just a few miles away.  He tells the audience not to worry about a repeat of the recent catastrophe in Japan, because we have no tsunamis in New Hampshire.  We do have earthquakes, however.)

You probably never heard of Rep. Pam Tucker (R-Greenland), but she is (at least) nominally the #2 person in the New Hampshire House leadership, ranking just behind the legendary Speaker O'Brien.  She is one of those chameleon teabaggers. She represents a community in the most liberal region of the state (the Seacoast), and she is a very likeable and softspoken indivdual who runs as a moderate.  When she gets to the State House, she becomes a rabid rightwinger (although she continues to be softspoken.) A few days before Perry officially jumped in, she was one of a delegation of O'Brien loyalists who flew out to Austin to urge Governor Perry to throw his hat into the ring. (He is all hat and no cattle— so he couldn't throw any cows into the ring.)

Perry flew up to Rep. Tucker's house (which is practically next door to the Portsmouth International Airport) immediately after officially announcing his candidacy at the RedState Gathering in North Carolina.  Speaker O'Brien himself can be seen in some of the crowd shots. I also spotted (amongst others) House Ways & Means Chair (and Friend Of Bill) Rep. Steve Stefanek, Rep. Will Smith (an ardent opponent of marriage equality) and the extraordinarily corrupt former Governor Craig Benson.  I am pretty sure Benson was one of those who asked a question.



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