http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2015/02/perry-warns-gop-against-picking-critic-in-chief-in-2016/AUSTIN — Former Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday night cautioned Americans against electing a “critic-in-chief” in 2016, sharpening a contrast between himself and a bevy of fellow Republicans whom he could face in the 2016 presidential race.
Perry’s speech to conservative activists in Washington, D.C., offered the most full-throated articulation yet of a theme he has been building as he prepares for a second bid for the White House: Can-do governors like himself are better positioned than members of a dysfunction-riddled Congress to turn the page on the Obama years.
It’s a message Perry rolled out in earnest during his farewell address in Austin, spruced up with some fiery rhetoric in Iowa and brought full circle Tuesday night in remarks at the American Principles Project’s Red, White and Blue Gala. He framed the message with a warning he has been repeating for months: Republicans should not take for granted the power they overwhelmingly won during the midterm elections.
“It is not good enough to state what we’re just against,” Perry said of his party. “We must articulate what we are for, and in that respect, we look at 2016. We got to remember we’re not electing a critic-in-chief. We are electing a commander-in-chief.”
Like he did at the Iowa Freedom Summit last month in Des Moines, Perry likened Congress to a “debating society” unable to solve problems, whereas the chief executives of states “have to make choices and take action.” Similarly, he expressed skepticism that an “agent of change can come from Washington.”
The anti-Congress riffs seemed like a natural extension of interviews Perry gave earlier Thursday, when he dismissed the presidential chances of “another untested, inexperienced, young United States senator.” Such remarks are widely seen as thinly veiled criticism of another Texan thinking about running for president in 2016, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
The rest of Perry’s address sought to burnish the more conciliatory, moderate image he has been cultivating in the run-up to a likely 2016 campaign. He sounded a few more populist notes than usual, emphatically contrasting life on Main Street with life Wall Street, raising the specter of the “wealthiest 1 percent” and lamenting a middle class forced to “tread water” rather than pursue the American Dream.
“The next two years are about hope and revival, about a vision to restore America’s place in the world,” Perry said in closing before reiterating his prescription for long-term Republican success: “We must again be the voice of ideas, of opportunity, of optimism, and not merely the voice of opposition.”
