Bailouts and Rick Perry

May I have a word? Astroturfing and honeypots

It's a practice as old as Roman circuses, but it's been given a new name. Astroturfing is the modern day practice of using a professional marketing campaign to rally the public and have it appear as a spontaneous "grass roots" uprising.

One recent example was April's Tax Day Tea Parties, practically produced and directed by Fox News and presented to the public as spontaneous rallies across the nation.

A similar example is the email campaign to "stop the bailouts". One such email spamming inboxes bears the subject line, "Help your country get back on the path to freedom and prosperity." It encourages readers to contact the Supreme Court to stop the government-brokered deal by Fiat to rescue Chrysler from bankruptcy. Oh, and it also asks readers to visit a Web site where they are asked to sign a petition, providing their names, email addresses and telephone numbers.

The telltale sign that this is an astroturfing exercise is the legally required notice at the bottom: "Political advertisement paid for by Texans for Rick Perry." The Web site itself is a "honeypot," a trap set to attract conservative sympathizers and entice them into giving their contact information to the Perry campaign for re-election as governor. The strategy is clear: Perry won't let Kay Bailey Hutchison get to the right of him in his primary election battle. Perry intends to push all the hot button issues to work his base into a fury to ensure they turn out to vote for him.

The irony is that Rick Perry himself is accepting federal bailout dollars to keep the Texas budget balanced. As explained by John Young, in an op-ed piece reprinted in Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

"Gov. Rick Perry, who looks good in any suit, hitched up his designer tie and bragged that Texas was alone among states in cutting taxes during a recession. ...

"Thanks to $12.1 billion in federal stimulus money, this budget holds the rate of spending increase to less than 2 percent, below inflation and population growth. What will happen when those federal dollars go away will likely make even the most hardhearted conservatives wince.

"When those federal dollars go away, we will see what shreds are left of the fine threads our governor and lieutenant governor model today."

It's a nice trick Rick Perry is pulling off ... using federal bailouts to fund his business tax cuts while criticizing that same federal money in speeches to his base. And doing these political contortions without messing a single hair on his head. Kay Bailey Hutchison has her work cut out for her.

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The irony of Rick Perry using federal bailouts to fund his business tax cuts while simultaneously rallying his base to oppose federal bailouts was highlighted today by a story in Dallas Business Journal headlined "Texans receive $100 million in unemployment benefits from stimulus plan." The stimulus plan being disparaged by Perry is providing an additional $25 per week in benefits to Texans who have lost their jobs. Perhaps the next time Rick Perry sends an email to his base criticizing federal bailouts for carmakers in Michigan, he'll rally them to take up their pitchforks and torches and march to their local unemployment offices, too, and take back that $25 from the unemployed workers in Texas, too.

The best part of the story was hearing Tom Pauken, Chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission, brag about the increased benefits. Pauken said, "The $100 million for increased unemployment benefits supplied by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is being pumped back into the Texas economy." Yes, that Tom Pauken, the former chairman of the Texas GOP, the founder of the knee-jerk conservative Dallas Blog, the champion of smaller government, the foe of all things socialist, taking credit for Barack Obama's stimulus plan and its benefits for Texas unemployed workers. The irony would be delicious if it didn't leave such a sour aftertaste.