Ponzi Scheme.

Rick Perry's Ponzi Scheme comment was an extremely well played move in the game that this election has turned into, and it worked.  It wasn't a statement of conviction or belief; it was just a statement like politicians make.  It served a purpose in getting him elected, though it really gave no indication of how he intends to govern as president.  It was a controversial enough statement that everyone could pitch in and give their opinion on it, and he knew that the majority of his base would agree with him.                

The fact that it is controversial would, and did, cause it to be picked out as the line of the debate that everyone discussed afterwards, and the fact that most of the GOP base was united in his favor, against people who will not have much say in the outcome of the primary, but who will in the general election, would cause everyone to feel that they were on his side, though we know very little about him as a candidate (those who have read his book, Fed Up, excepted).  We do know that in the last debate, he defended in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, and rejected the notion of a border fence and protection as impossible.  We know that he abused executive orders in the Gardasil case.  These are two big, and one (the illegal immigrant issues) huge problems with Perry, and there could easily be many more, but by making one statement that people can really get behind him on, he's able to draw attention away from all of those issues and problems and gain support.                               

The primary is not a game, the election is not a game.  It is the future of this country.  Perry is standing so precariously on the edge of so many cliffs it's scary.  There is little reason to think he can win an election, and there's little reason to think he would govern well if he did.  Speaking as someone who's seen it happen (in Colorado, and talk of it in the last presidential election), the Democrats will try to pull out some corruption issue too near to the election for the GOP candidate to overcome it, and Perry could easily fall in that trap.  He could lose a lot of the GOP base and he won't appeal very strongly to people outside of it.  If nothing else, we just don't know him well enough to get behind him this early on.  We as a people have a tendency to project what we want to see on candidates we know little enough about that we can, but that doesn't make them the person we see them as, it just makes them more likely to be something we would not have imagined, and if we don't find out before it's too late, the country will be in serious trouble.  This kind of talk and manipulative behavior is how we wind up with the kind of politicians we wind up with, egotistical and ideologically weak who see themselves as our masters and the people they work for as the elite, Washington, and special interests, rather than ones with ideological purity and conviction, who see themselves as the founding fathers envisioned them, the servants of the people and nothing more.                                  

On the other hand, Thaddeus McCotter has actually introduced legislation to try to fix Social Security, substance over style, but the MSM has taken every opportunity it could to shut him out of the debate, discussion, and election itself.  We have the chance and ability to choose the right candidate, but will we?  Or will we continue to let those who see themselves as the "elite" choose for us?