Rick Perry's officially joined the cast of the 2012 Republican primary, which means it's time for national audiences to start reading up on his decade-plus tenure as Texas' longest serving governor. One word you're going to be hearing a lot about in the early running: Gardasil.
As in Gardasil, the vaccine developed several years ago to treat against HPV, a virus that can eventually lead to cervical cancer. An effort to introduce the drug into Texas schools turned into one of Perry's greatest defeats, an exceptional episode in that it pitted the governor, renowned for his ability to closely read his base, strongly against the religious right.
"He's pretty clearly a social conservative in the Michele Bachmann camp, but you just can't nail him down all of the time," Bob Stein, a professor of political science at Rice University, told TPM. "He will surprise you."
Texas conservatives screamed bloody murder at helping to protect women from cancer and using taxpayer dollars to do it, saying Perry was "usurping parental rights". Meanwhile, Texas liberals were pissed off that Perry's former chief of staff did lobbying work for Merck, the manufacturer of Gardasil. Perry's executive order went down as a total disaster.
In the end state lawmakers forced Perry's hand, passing a law overturning his decision with veto-proof majorities in both chambers. Perry acknowledged defeat and announced he would withdraw his efforts to implement the policy, but went down in spectacularly defiant form, lashing out at members of his own party. At a press conference, he played a video message from a 31-year old cervical cancer patient hooked to an oxygen tube, who was too sick to testify earlier at the statehouse.
"I challenge legislators to look these women in the eyes and tell them, `We could have prevented this disease for your daughters and granddaughters, but we just didn't have the gumption to address all the misguided and misleading political rhetoric,'" Perry said.
The episode has lingered in Texas politics. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) attacked Perry for "cronyism" on the vaccine issue in her 2010 primary challenge of the governor and an independent anti-Perry group aired ads as well.
The question now is whether the issue will gain traction again as national Republicans absorb Perry's record. There are some rumblings of discontent so far: a coalition of New Hampshire Tea Party groups recently published a blog post condemning Perry's "attack on parental rights."
And that's just one of the many giant red X's on Perry's record. One can't help but be reminded of another Texas governor who ran for the White House and did whatever he thought was right, the rest of the world -- and the consequences -- be damned.
It's just too easy.
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