Rick Perry: Pissing Off Iowa One Farmer at a Time

You have to wonder whether Rick Perry has a lot of gall or, more likely, hasn’t an ounce of gray matter between his ears. Rick Perry, “son of a tenant farmer” just pissed off the entire corn-growing population in Iowa.

“Iowa” and “corn” are two words that you often find in the same sentence.

So when Rick Perry addressed, get this, a meeting of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, he completely avoided answering not one but two questions on whether he supported continuing the federal subsidy that Iowa farmers enjoy when they raise corn to be converted into ethanol.

Here is what he said after asked the question:

“The federal government doesn’t need to pick winners and losers. Rather, the federal government needs to get rid of all of these onerous regulations that are costing you substantial amounts of money. They need to level the playing field for everyone.”

Right. Message received. Rick Perry is totally against continuing the ethanol subsidy.

Like I said, it takes a lot of gall to address the Iowa Corn Growers and side-step this question, this is, after all, their one big issue. Either that or he simply wasn’t prepared to answer the question because he had no knowledge of the issue.

What just kills me is that this is such an issue with these farmers that one offered that if given the choice of voting for Perry or Obama (and this is an Iowa conservative) that he would have to “swallow hard” – implying that he would vote for the President.

But that’s OK. There’s still time for Rick Perry to change his position completely and come out for the ethanol subsidy. It’s not like he would actually support it, but as I have written before, Rick Perry actually has no political views.