What Do Rick Perry and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Have In Common?

Ha! I thought that would get your attention.

But really, the Governor of Texas and the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran do have a common trait.

They are both given to overgeneralization. In Ahmadinejad’s case, he just can’t help it: he’s a weasel. In Rick Perry’s case, he just can’t help it: he really means it.

Yes, in Ahmadinejad’s case it just makes him look like the obfuscating little weasel that he is. In Rick Perry’s case, it gets him in trouble with his compadres in DC.

Take Mahmoud’s speech to the UN yesterday. What is it with his use of the words “certain powers?” It sounds like the weak sister who wonders who it was that used his favorite coffee sweetener without asking his permission.

You know. You’ve all run into the guy who says this:

SOMEone used MY “Sweet and Low.” Now WHO could THAT have been, hmmmmmm?

Ahmadinejad, in his address to the UN yesterday kept mentioning certain countries or certain powers. Fact is, we all know what countries or powers he meant in reality: The United States of America.

“The lives, properties and rights of the people of Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia are victims of the tendencies and provocations of NATO and certain western powers, and the underhanded actions of the Zionists.”

“…a few bullying powers have sought to put hurdles in the way of the peaceful nuclear activities of the Iranian nation by exerting political and economic pressures against Iran, and also through threatening and pressuring the IAEA.”

But if you are still not sold that Ahmadinejad had a certain country in mind in his harangue at the UN yesterday, maybe this last one will leave no doubt:

“These are the same powers that produce new generations of lethal nuclear arms and possess stockpiles of nuclear weapons that no international organization is monitoring; and, the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perpetrated by one of them.”

One of them?

Do I have to stop and look it up?

What a little weasel.

Speaking of weasels, what about what Governor Rick Perry is doing to his Republican colleagues in Washington, DC? It seems in his exuberance to paint his probable Republican opponent in next year’s gubernatorial primary, Kay Bailey Hutchison, in a false shade of “do-nothing politician” he has used too broad a brush.

Maybe.

In applying a liberal coat of tar on his brethren, he has caused his Republican colleagues in DC to yelp in protest.

Courtesy of the Austin American-Statesman:

“In a closed-door meeting Thursday in Washington with Perry chief of staff Ray Sullivan, several top aides to Texas Republican U.S. House members expressed anger over the language Perry is using as he tries to fend off a challenge from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Perry often criticizes Hutchison in code by complaining about Washington.”

“Stoking their anger was a Sept. 14 fundraising letter in which Perry contrasts Texas' relatively healthy budget climate with the Washington model of ‘more government, pork barrel spending and fiscal ruin.’”

“But instead of just talking about Democratic congressional leaders or President Barack Obama, the letter calls out Republicans.”

“‘Let's be frank,’ the letter says. ‘Washington Republicans got us in this mess.’”

It’s as if Perry caught all Republican in his brush stroke. It’s as if Perry meant to use the words “certain Republicans” but ended up tarring the whole bunch.

And that’s not bad, but I bet you they have had just enough of that without getting it from the right wing of their own party.

Which brings me to my final thesis on Perry’s language.

Perhaps it is not a broad brush at all. Perhaps Perry meant what he meant and to heck with whomever it was in his own ultra right wing that got in the way. If you aren’t a Texas politician, he is saying, you don’t matter.

You are, in fact, the enemy.

And my oh my, what an appeal that kind of thinking must have to Texas Teabagging Secessionists.

Perry’s base.