Flap’s Links and Comments for September 12th on 20:22

These are my links for September 12th from 20:22 to 20:26:

• Perry doubles down on in-state tuition for illegals in Texas – Another clip via Breitbart TV, which did a bang-up job tonight of posting highlights almost as fast as they happened. Were these the only actual boos (or maybe they’re grumbles of dissent) that Perry got? My thinking on this subject has been that if we’re willing to vote for Bush and McCain, we’re willing to forgive any potential nominee their heresies on immigration — especially since Perry’s position here likely improves his electability by attracting Latino voters in the general. But maybe I’m wrong. None of tonight’s “problem” issues — Social Security, Gardasil, the Texas DREAM Act — is necessarily fatal on its own, but together I think they’ve raised enough doubts to erode some of the white-knight stature he enjoyed when he first declared. Ace’s co-blogger Drew said it well: “I want to like Perry but if you watched these things & didn’t know who was who, no one would ID Perry as the double digit frontrunner.” Indeed. And I think his biggest problem tonight may be less the substance of the attacks than the fact that they came from Bachmann, who’s probably back in the race (at least in Iowa) and may be able to keep Perry from breaking away. A good night for Romney.

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  Read it all

  Michele Bachmann is back into the race and maybe even Sarah Palin.

• Palin slams Perry on ‘crony capitalism’ – Sarah Palin took a hard swipe against her friend Rick Perry in a post-debate TV appearance, calling him out by name for “crony capitalism” for his effort to mandate an HPV vaccine for girls in Texas.
  Asked by Greta Van Susteren about someone in Perry's office going to work for a drug company that made the vaccine, Palin sought to put a finer point on it: “That someone, as Michele Bachmann pointed out, was Governor Perry’s former chief of staff.”
  She went on: “That’s crony capitalism. That’s part of the problem that we have in this country is that people are afraid, even in our own party, to call one another out on that. True reform and fighting the corruption and fighting the crony capitalism is a tough thing to do within your own party. You have to go up against the big guns and they will try to destroy you when you call them out on the mistakes that they have made. Believe me, I know that, I have the bumps and bruises to prove it because that’s what I have been doing for the last 20 years … calling out the corruption in government. Michele Bachmann tried to make that point tonight and she’s going to get potentially crucified.”
  Van Susteren asked another question, but Palin wasn’t done: “Let me go back to that issue with Governor Perry,” she said. She pointed out that at the time Perry was boosting the vaccine in Texas, she was opposing it in Alaska, and she thought Perry’s order was strange “because it just didn’t sound like Governor Perry,” who she thought was against big government.
  “I knew even at that time something was up with that issue. And now we’re finding out, yeah, something was up with that issue,” she said.

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  As she should. It is a weakness for Perry as is illegal immigration.