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Texas 'Bird-Hunting Rule' May Help Governor Perry Launch White House Bid

Rick Perry built his career as the longest-serving U.S. governor using the “bird-hunting rule of Texas politics,” fellow Republican Bill Ratliff said.

“You shoot at anything that flies,” said Ratliff, who has known the governor since Perry was in the state Legislature in the 1980s. “And you claim anything that falls.”

Perry, 61, who once gunned down a coyote with his .380 Ruger while jogging, has said he’s “thinking about” a bid for the Republican nomination for the White House. A former Democrat who ran Al Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign in Texas, Perry has never lost a race in the second most-populous U.S. state. Re- elected three times, he has been governor for a record 10 years.

“Of all the people likely to jump in, he could have an effect,” said David P. Redlawsk, Rutgers University politics professor in New Brunswick , New Jersey . “Polling shows there is unhappiness with the Republican field,” he said. “He could pull them together.”

Perry, who in April 2009 didn’t dismiss a suggestion that Texas could secede from the union to escape U.S. mandates, may rally followers of the Tea Party movement to his side. He based his 2010 re-election campaign partly on anti-Washington themes.

“I am proud to call myself a conservative, not just because I’m from Texas, but because conservatives have won the war of ideas,” Perry told a political gathering in New York City this month. His stances have attracted followers including Ted Nugent, the guitarist and gun-rights advocate, who played at Perry’s 2007 inaugural celebration. The performance drew criticism from Republicans because of a Confederate flag adorning the musician’s shirt and Nugent’s coarse language.

The governor’s 2010 book, “Fed Up,” attacks expanding federal power. In a Fox News interview with Neil Cavuto this month, Perry suggested that he regards himself as a visionary.

“A prophet generally is not loved in their hometown,” Perry said when asked why he is sometimes unpopular in Texas. “That’s both biblical and practical.”

Perry declined a request for an interview through Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman.

Raised on a West Texas farm that lacked running water, Perry followed his father, Ray, into politics in 1984, winning a seat in the state House of Representatives as a Democrat. Switching parties in 1989, he rose to lieutenant governor and succeeded George W. Bush when Bush was elected president in 2000.

ETSU releases documentary about Cuban survival ... - Tennessee Jobs

The Associated Press The Associated Press JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. East Tennessee State University has released a documentary film about the experience of a former Spanish teacher at the school who spent a year in a Cuban prison. "Mountain Mojo: A Cuban Pig Roast in East Tennessee" is a half-hour documentary produced by ETSU's Office of University Relations and Center for Appalachian Studies and ...

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