RiNO ALERT!:

Can Rick Perry maintain his good ties with Muslims as a GOP candidate?: As governor of Texas, Rick Perry has a long record of warm relations with Muslims. Could that be a liability in a GOP presidential field in which several candidates question US Muslims' loyalty? (CS Monitor, 8/15/11)

An evangelical Christian and self-described social conservative who recently led a Christian prayer rally in Texas, Perry has had a surprisingly warm relationship with Muslims as governor, says Mohamed Elbiary, founder of the Freedom and Justice Foundation, a Muslim public policy organization in Texas.

"We've seen him for 20 years at state level, as lieutenant governor and state governor," Mr. Elbiary says. "Throughout that whole history, he's never taken an anti-Muslim or anti-Islam position. He's a live-and-let-live type of Texan, and relations have been good."

In fact, Perry's relations with Ismailis, a Shia sect of Islam whose adherents number between 30,000 and 40,000 in Texas, have been particularly positive, says Mahmoud Eboo, President of the Ismaili Council for the USA.

Conservatives Begin to Fret About Rick Perry (Elspeth Reeve, 8/15/11, Atlantic Wire)

A 14-point memo detailing the flaws in Texas Gov. Rick Perry's record is circulating among conservatives in Iowa, Politico's Molly Ball reports. Just a couple days after Perry declared he's 2012 candidacy, he sat down for an interview with a Des Moines radio station, during which the host said he'd been "deluged" with more than 150 copies of the memo. So had the station's callers.

Callers to the program confronted Perry with aggressive, statistic-filled queries about his support of an anti-cancer vaccine, his push for toll roads, conspiracy theories about a Nafta superhighway and a pan-American currency, and his attendance at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group.

It's almost as if he takes his Christianity seriously.

Posted by oj at August 15, 2011 7:25 PM
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