Remember Barack Obama telling his followers to always “bring a gun to a knife fight”? Like good subjects do, his supporters in Texas obeyed. Friday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was indicted on two counts of abuse of power.
This ridiculous politically motivated “indictment” of Governor Rick Perry stems from the ugly thug tactics of the “politics of personal destruction” that the left is known for. They draw blood and leave scars on conservatives who threaten their political power, hoping the threat retreats and hoping his or her base of support remains silent in fear of becoming collateral damage.
Thankfully, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and those of us with scars to prove it can help others learn from things like this Texas-sized political drama.
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First and foremost, today’s liberals have no shame. Case in point: Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg.
Lehmberg was busted for drunk driving with an open bottle of vodka in her car after a 911 call reported her endangering others while swerving erratically on the road. The D.A. was smashed — three times over the legal limit.
She was a nut job while in custody, disgracefully threatening law enforcement officials and lashing out violently. The D.A. had to be physically restrained. It was all caught on tape. The extent of the D.A.’s serious drinking problem was uncovered, evidence included her purchase of 72 bottles of vodka in just one store alone, in just over a year. It’s reasonable to believe she imbibed elsewhere, too.
The appropriate and honorable thing for this powerful D.A. to do — note, she’s the county’s chief law enforcement officer and her job is to decide which law-breaking Texans she wants to put in jail – is resign. Governor Perry asked her to do so, which any good governor would do. But because this D.A. is a hardcore Democrat in a hardcore-Democrat county, and Governor Perry is a Republican, Democrats rallied around her and she refused to resign.
Lehmberg’s D.A.’s office runs the state’s Public Integrity Unit which prosecutes public crimes like government corruption. Texans were baffled that this clearly unfit official was running a unit with huge statewide importance and they lost confidence in this government oversight unit.
Governor Perry used appropriate tools under the Texas Constitution to urge Lehmberg to do the right thing, using line item veto power to defund the Public Integrity Unit until it could actually serve the public with integrity, under a leader who had integrity.
According to reports, he reached out to alleviate the Democrats’ fears about her replacement by promising to select her right hand man for the post – essentially giving liberals their desired replacement. All he wanted was for this unfit public official to step aside.
The governor was doing his job in looking out for the people, but Democrats only care about Democrats, and drunk or sober, Lehmberg was one of them.
Her liberal supporters filed an ethics complaint against Perry, defying commonsense and common practice by claiming he abused power when he publicly announced his intention to veto.
The Travis County D.A.’s Office, still under Lehmberg, convened a grand jury, and – surprise, surprise! – Perry was “indicted.” Remember, a grand jury indictment is not a criminal conviction. It’s the result of a one-sided preliminary hearing run by the prosecution.
I don’t worry about Perry, personally, in all this because he’ll have a microphone plus millions in people and dollars to mount a strong defense at the courthouse and in the court of public opinion. But what we should all worry about is that the left doesn’t care about the end result, they only care about immediate headlines in their strategy to destroy a person.
Most Americans will only read that glaring headline orchestrated on a Friday night to minimize rebuttals: “Rick Perry Indicted On Felony Corruption Charges!” Once that bell is rung, it’s impossible to un-ring it.
I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason, so in hindsight I can value my own experience as a conservative governor dealing with leftwing activists who would stop at nothing to take out a successful Republican.
I was riddled with countless frivolous ethics complaints and lawsuits after being nominated as the GOP vice presidential candidate, all in an attempt to derail my governorship and personally bankrupt my family.
One by one these complaints were tossed out on the basis of their frivolity, but the activists got what they wanted via the complicit liberal media’s consistent headline: “Palin Charged With Ethic Complaints!”
It didn’t matter that the “complaint” was for something as absurd as wearing an old snow machine jacket with my husband’s logo on it, or answering reporters’ questions inside my state office, or giving a pro bono speech for a pro-life charity; again in hindsight the ridiculousness of the constant charges — that cost millions to defend and halted all progress in my administration — would seem hilarious if they’d not been so unfair to the public.
The media breathlessly reported on every one of the liberal’s complaints with bold font, front page coverage. But when each one was overturned, most times we never even saw one mention about our vindication.
I have no doubt that Rick Perry will weather this storm because he’s better prepared for this kind of B.S. than we were up here in Texas’s big sister state, when the politics of personal destruction ramped up to unimaginable levels.
Rick won’t have to worry about the Republican establishment piling on, either. He’s more ingratiated with the political machine than someone considered still an unknown who’d go rogue on GOP kingmakers when they acted unethically, so he’s fortunate to only face a firing squad from one side.
All over the country people are facing challenges. Some are unfairly charged with wrongdoing and they may feel defenseless and are absolutely slack jawed at the injustice it seems their detractors get away with. But like Rick Perry will do, Americans must all keep the faith that justice will be done, and whether it’s a personal or political battle, know that if we lose that faith, there’s no hope for America.
We come out of the battle with more scars, but look at those as reminders of what it takes to overcome. The scars toughen your skin to prepare you for something perhaps tougher up ahead, but surely for something greater.
In today’s political ring, these leftwing Chicago-type tactics of personal destruction are a corruption of our democratic process. It’s a slap in the face of the American way of affecting change. We see the same “take no prisoners” tactics at play in the scandalous Democrat-run IRS – as officials with liberal sympathies brazenly harass conservatives to shut us up and shut us down.
We see the same cruel and unfair tactics at play in the liberal-run press that chooses to ignore the liberal president’s threats against Congress with his “pen and phone,” and his threats against any who question his failed policies when instructing his supporters to meet us with a gun in the proverbial knife fight that is today’s politics. All of this prevents good people from even wanting to get involved in politics.
This will only stop when We the People wise up and buck up enough to demand better, and to fight back with a warning to liberals to pull in their horns because we’ll never fall for their sick game again.
Don’t fall for those “Another Corrupt Conservative Governor; This Time in Texas!” screaming headlines. It’s true that everything’s big in Texas, including this pile of B.S. thrown at their governor that may be bigger than usual.
An indictment is serious business, and if found to be baseless it gives a big black eye to every watchdog group and every D.A.’s decision, so let’s expose these thug tactics for what they are: the corrupt power plays of an embarrassingly failed Democratic Party lacking integrity and honor.
Rick Perry and conscientious citizens will expose this on a national level in coming days, mark my words, because you don’t mess with Texas nor do you poke the rest of us independent Americans fed up with hell rousers turning the bad guy into the hero while demonizing the good.
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