Inexplicable Politics

There exist candidates and politicians in positions of power about whom no exist explanation or understanding of how they have arrived at where they are now. But above all, how is it possible that they are trying to get even further?

Yes, every people has the government (and the politicians) that they deserve. But in the case of the United States, the advancement of Rick Perry, current governor of Texas, as a possible winner of the nomination to be the Republican candidate for the presidency is surprising.

In his first week as an official candidate for the Republican nomination, Perry made various statements that have left at least a few Americans perplexed. Perry suggested that the U.S. Army does not respect Obama, since the current president did not serve in the Army during his youth. He did not wear the uniform. He also referred to the current director of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, as a possible traitor if he decided to print more dollars to confront the economic situation. “Traitor”? This is a man who has not gotten involved in politics, a man who was named by George W. Bush and ratified by Obama!

In addition, he talked of a conspiracy whereby the environmentalists of the world scare everyone with what has happened due to global warming, just to keep the money granted to research for themselves.

And if this wasn’t enough, in a visit to a school, he commented to a nine-year-old student that the theory of evolution is a lie and that he feels that all American schools should teach creationism as well. This would actually be unconstitutional in the United States because of the Kitzmiller v. Dover verdict, which explicitly prohibits it as an act against the First Amendment.

Even with this series of scandalous declarations, in this moment Perry is the politician with the most possibilities to win the Republican candidacy.

Intrade’s website, a company dedicated to probabilities, gives him a 35.5 percent probability of winning, versus Michele Bachmann’s 5.3 percent and Mitt Romney’s 29.5 percent.

Polls also favor Perry. Rasmussen’s poll of August 15 gives Perry a 29 percent probability of winning, compared with 18 percent for Romney and 15 percent for Bachmann.

I suspect that if Perry ends up with the Republican Party’s nomination, the statements that he made during his first week, maybe with the intention to appear in national news coverage, will come back to bite him — him and the Republican Party.

Or maybe not. Maybe the situation will develop like it has with those (one in four Americans, according to CBS’s poll of April 21, 2011) that keep on saying that Obama was not born in the United States, even when he has publicized his birth certificate; or that he is really a socialist Muslim in disguise.

In Mexico, the PRI (Institution Revolution Party) has its own cheap version of Perry. Humberto Moreira has become the target of attacks for his excesses as governor — something that the PRI already lived in its moments with Arturo Montiel.