The Washington Spectator

Because I divide my time between Austin and Washington, I’ve convinced myself that I have dual representation in the U.S. House: Republican Lamar Smith and Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton. Smith has a vote. Holmes Norton, because she represents the District of Columbia, has none.

Shoot low, sheriff, it looks like they’re ridin’ Shetlands. — Texas-swing legend Bob Wills

Texas will always be Texas. — former Texas Congressman Tom Loeffler

It’s self-indulgent, and a bit of a delusion, but it’s good to be represented by someone who shares my values, even if she cannot vote.

Lamar Smith might be undistinguished. But he’s a fit for Texas. For 25 years, his politics have tracked the rightward shift of the state. Texas is low taxes, low wages, niggardly social services, right-to-work laws, concealed handguns, restricted reproductive rights for women, a civil justice system that has closed the courthouse doors to anyone who might have a cause of action against a corporation. And the most happening death row in the nation. The bright spot this legislative session was the legalization of “noodling” — the practice of catching a large catfish by diving to its underwater wallow, thrusting a hand into its mouth, and dragging it to the surface.

As Molly Ivins used to say of her home state: “Texas is Mississippi with good roads.” In other words, everything to which the Republican “base” aspires.

So it was predictable that when Newt Gingrich’s campaign appeared to be collapsing under the weight of the candidate’s hubris, the Republican commentariat (encouraged by political promoters in Texas) would look to Texas Governor Rick Perry. The moment is right for a man on horseback, particularly when all the candidates in the Republican field appear to be riding Shetlands (think: Tim Pawlenty).

Haley Barbour’s out. Mike Huckabee is on Fox News. Fred Thompson earning his living selling reverse mortgages on daytime TV. The Republican Party’s spiritual home is the South, and Perry knows how to ride a horse.

Like Gingrich, Perry has described himself as a political leader willing to “stand athwart history.” But Perry is better described as an accident of history.

The governor of Texas was elected to the Texas House as a Democrat in 1984. At the time, there was a Democratic majority in both houses of the Legislature and a Democratic governor and lieutenant governor. But “Tory Democrats” were leaving the party, the state was becoming more Republican, and Bush advisor Karl Rove was recruiting. Rove persuaded Perry to switch parties, offering access to Republican money and organizational support for a statewide race. Rove saw Perry as a telegenic candidate who sometimes dressed as a cowboy and was easy to market in Texas.

In 1990, Perry defeated Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower. Eight years later, Perry was elected lieutenant governor, with Rove’s help, because Rove needed a Republican in the line of succession to complete George W. Bush’s second term.

When Bush moved to Washington, Perry moved into the Governor’s Mansion.

He’s been an unremarkable governor in a state where the real power lies with the lieutenant governor, and the governor is a ribbon-cutter.

But Perry has saddled himself with one big policy initiative, which returned to haunt him this year. In 2006, he called the Legislature into a special session to fix the state’s broken system of taxation. Since then, the business-margins tax he sold to legislators has consistently failed to provide enough money to pay the state’s bills. It underperforms by about $6 billion a year.

Perry got lucky last legislative session, when he used $16 billion in federal stimulus funding to balance the state’s budget (after making big news by refusing a small amount of the stimulus package, all of which he now describes as the “federal government using our own money to bribe us.”)

But federal stimulus money (and Perry’s luck) has run out. The structural deficit he created in 2006, and tax revenues that have collapsed in the recession, leave the state $23 billion in the hole — a deficit that puts Texas in the same league as New Jersey and California.

Perry has promised to veto any tax increase, and insists that the Legislature keep its hands off a $9-billion rainy day fund.

The result is an austerity budget in a state that underfunds everything except highway construction. Perry’s public-education cuts will cost the state 100,000 teachers and will increase class size. His Medicaid cuts will close almost half the state’s nursing homes, lay off 60,000 caregivers, and leave 46,000 nursing home residents (or their families) looking for beds.

And Rick Perry has no Pygmalion; Rove dislikes him and supported Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s failed 2010 campaign for governor. It’s going to be impossible to hide the ugly. And the consequences of Perry’s politics and policies will be unfolding in the middle of a presidential race.

The “Texas Miracle” that would have been the centerpiece of a Perry presidential campaign has been revealed. I’m betting that his presidential campaign is over before it begins and his vice-presidential campaign begins in the fall.