Video: Perry’s call to prayer: A not-great presidential campaign commercial

Election politics analysts have been watching for signs that Texas Governor Rick Perry will jump into the GOP presidential primary. Some have argued he could replace Mitt Romney as clear frontrunner. Perry has good hair and is charismatic, like Romney, but he has never even lightly endorsed gay rights and will not have to defend an indefensible effort to socialize health care. On August 6th Perry is hosting a big right-wing evangelical Christian prayerfest in Texas. That might win him the write-in vote in the evangelical Iowa presidential caucuses even if he doesn’t declare himself as a candidate, but to non-evangelical America– the America beyond Republican Iowa and Focus-on-the-Family Colorado Springs– this event might permanently disqualify Perry for national office. It marks him as a magical-thinking provincial governor who believes Jesus concerns himself with solving problems like the debt ceiling.

Put Perry’s policy stances aside for a moment and ask if what the man is saying in this video looks at all like the kind of thing political leaders say anywhere beyond the borders of the most theocratic countries of the Middle East. Could independents, libertarians or socially liberal Republicans, like most of those who live on the coasts, honestly be expected to pull the lever for Lone Star state Christian warrior Rick Perry in 2012?

Read more about the planned Gov. Perry-American Family Association prayer gathering, which has been covered extensively by the American Independent News Network’s Mary Tuma.

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