COMMENTARY | Appearing on the Greta Van Sustren show on Fox News immediately after the CNN/Tea Party Republican debate Monday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin criticized Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s controversial vaccination program.
Perry had initiated a program to vaccinate prepubescent girls in Texas against cervical cancer. While there was an opt-out provision, the default was for the girls to get the vaccination. Perry has been criticized for this program, now defunct, because it seemed to abrogate parental authority. Perry was attacked for the program by Rep. Michele Bachmann during the debate.
Palin, noting that a former Perry chief of staff had become a lobbyist for Merck, the manufacturer of the vaccine, tied the controversy in with her campaign issue of crony capitalism. The idea was that Perry’s program was motivated less by a desire to protect young girls from a disease than to enrich a corporate ally of the governor’s. Perry would argue against that conclusion, but the appearance is there for the attacking.
Naturally, observers of Palin’s political career are wondering what she really means by this.
Most people think Palin has a binary solution set for her immediate political future. Either she will jump in the race as a candidate or she will decline to do so and throw her support behind one of the existing candidates — likely Perry, whose views tend to coincide more with her own.
Naturally, Palin’s criticism of Perry is being taken as a sign that she intends to enter the race for president. Perry would be her immediate obstacle for winning the Republican nomination, the reasoning goes, and therefore cutting him down to size is good battlefield preparation.
There is, however, another explanation. Palin may be attacking Perry out of conviction and not as a calculated attempt to weaken a potential rival. While it may seem strange that any politician would do something merely because she thinks it’s right, Palin has a history of doing just that. There was certainly no obvious political upside for her attacking some of the corrupt Republican officeholders in Alaska when she did so as an oil regulator and then governor. Of course, because she succeeded, her popularity soared in Alaska.
Thus, even if Palin does not enter the race, she seems prepared to do what she has always done: seek out and destroy unseemly behavior wherever she finds it. That, ironically, will make her a more appealing candidate should she decide to run.
Source: Sarah Palin: Rick Perry Has Participated In “Crony Capitalism”, Real Clear Politics, Sept 12, 2011