WI: Rick Perry Presidency

Assuming that Rick Perry's campaign doesn't implode during the Republican Primaries and he goes on to win the Republican nomination and narrowly beat Obama in November of 2012. What would the effects have been and what would a Perry Presidency look like?
 
Perry has long said that United States should send troops to Mexico fighting against drug lords. Could he do this? But probably he might be least so bad president as George W. Bush.
 
There are 3 things he would do differently

1. Try to repeal Obama care
2. Cut taxes on the rich
3....Umh, Umh.. I forget the 3rd thing:eek:
 
Unless the election also causes the Senate to flip (Need to get 52/53 R too so they can pressure Red State Democrats to vote their way.), you are not going to see any major legislative actions like actually changing the tax code or re-working our un-economically viable entitlement commitments (just more can kicking; which will probably happen OTL anyway). At most the Bush tax cuts would probably we extended again (instead of being made permanent for 99.3% of Americans). You would not have a debt ceiling or Sequestration fight as the Republican House would instantly cave in the face of a Republican President. You might see a lowering of the corporate tax; since we do have the highest corporate tax in the OECD. Payroll tax would revert back just like OTL. Unemployment length would return to Clinton era levels, and the work rules (i.e. one has to actually look for work to get unemployment) would be added back in. You might see something about immigration reform (Perry is similar to Bush in wanting some sort of Amnesty), but both parties are split on this subject (Yes, not all democrats are keen on Amnesty; if they were then Amnesty would of happened in the first 2 years under Obama when they had total control). Without Senate control Obamacare still happens (so raising insurance rates & changing of hourly worker hours still happens like OTL). It would actually be interesting to see a Perry administration trying to implement a national exchange (about half the states opted out of creating a state exchange) for a law they do not even support.

The US Oil/Energy policy will be very different. Keystone would be approved first week (Keystone might still get approved OTL; though doubtful). Your going to see expanded usage of fracking in Federal lands. I doubt you would see any off shore drilling. The furthest you would go is authorizing individual states control of their waters. So, Virginia & the Carolinas “might” (doubtful) gain a few platforms but nothing really major. At the end of 4 years we probably would not be energy independent, but we would most likely be much closer than OTL. Alaska might get something in the way of energy like opening up some Federal lands, but probably not since it is not worth the political capitol.

LNG exports (I am fairly confident it will happen OTL; but it could still be stopped for a variety of business & environmental reasons) would get the go ahead for sure. This will help lessen the drastic price difference between the US & Asia for natural gas. This also will be a big export boon for the U.S.

Manufacturing turn around; though many people miss the correlation. Greater natural gas production means cheaper energy costs. This starts to lower the price difference, which will allow more manufacturing in the U.S. However, the total number of new jobs produced will be lower than many estimate. The U.S. has a highly efficient manufacturing process, basically we use capital investments like robotics to raise total worker productivity. This means we basically need less workers than a similar factory anywhere else in the world.

EPA regulations will become actually useful and not just a means to attempt to radically over haul America’s power generation capacity regardless of the actual price to the consumer.

On the Supreme Court end, there really is no telling. The justices have a habit of doing the unexpected when it comes to stepping down. So, I am going to just play it safe and say no one on the Court changes.

The press will actually do their job again and question/investigate what the government is actually doing. In fact, for the first year or so the Press will probably go full aggressive against anything a Perry Administration does. This might cause Perry to have a less aggressive drone program compared to Obama’s very aggressive one OTL. Only time can tell if that helps or hurts.

Outside of that a lot of other things will depend on what happens elsewhere. Both Perry & Obama OTL will probably face a crisis in Asia between Japan and China or North Korea vs well anyone but China or China vs every nation they share a sea border with. To be honest both would probably act the same in regards to foreign policy. Obama's policies are very similar to Bush's; in regards to outlook & wants with the actual differences being only in tone. Does Europe go into recession or not? If it does China will suffer a little, and even the U.S. would have slow growth. I am not sure America’s demographics will rebound (another thing many people miss); if they do not it will not per say hurt a Perry or even Obama presidency (OTL). However, it definitely will hurt the U.S. long term.

I think that covers the major areas, but I am probably missing a few things....
 
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much like GWB's third term I think. Efforts to further cut taxes, deregulate whatever isn't strapped down, turning over policy more to corporations, etc. A return to a more hawkish, posturing foreign policy, and efforts to repeal the ACA. A Democratic senate would do what it could to slow him down but progressives would be pretty demoralized.
 
Assuming that Rick Perry's campaign doesn't implode during the Republican Primaries and he goes on to win the Republican nomination and narrowly beat Obama in November of 2012. What would the effects have been and what would a Perry Presidency look like?

Zombie Lloyd Bentsen rises from the grave and issues a fulsome and sincere apology to Dan Quayle for insinuating that Quayle was too stupid to be President. "You may not be able to spell 'potato,' Dan, but at least you could count to three. I'm sorry."
 
DanF, I'm interested in what the lowering of the price differential in Asian and US gas prices would mean for manufacturing. As things stand now, I know, several companies are moving manufacturing back to the US (or in the case of some Chinese firms, outsourcing!) because of our low energy costs. Would exporting LNG mean that we lose that advantage?
 
Parterre,

Depending how much and how quick exporting comes on line, but overall yes it would hurt some manufacturing from returning to the U.S. That is the "business" interest I mentioned before in the previous post. A lot of businesses like the fact Natural Gas prices are so low in the U.S., cause it helps the bottom line. It also is aiding in offsetting the coal mandidate the Obama adminsitration passed last year. Because you can switch from coal to gas affordably; which definitely is helping prevent consumers suffering a spike in thier electricity billls (OTL).

For reference sake to give you an idea of the spreads: in Oct 2012 --> US $3.90; Europe $11.58 (Import price); Japan $15.30 (Import price). So, there is room to play there. Also, the U.S. is approaching a storage problem, i.e. we are pumping it out of the ground so fast we have no where to put it.

In the reverse most States would prefer higher prices, because they get a cut of the revenue.

There is one export terminal opening in LA around 2015. Right now I am pretty sure they are limited to only exporting to nations we have a FTA with. So, the customers expected for it are U.K., Spain, South Korea, and Japan. There is also an unused import terminal in MD, where there is some talk about converting it to exports instead.

The terminal I would be talking about would be an non-FTA limited Asia focused one, so probably would go up in OR or WA. Though, it would most likley not be built within the first term of a Perry Presidency and just be approved. It takes a while to find the right location, privately finance, and build these things.

In regards to China they actually are at the tip of a giant demographic problem (I am not talking about the shortage of girls either, which is another issue). The Chinese workforce topped out like this year or last year. Eash following year the total number of workers available will actually start shrinking. Since the Chinese export model is built on cheap labor, that is not a good sign. This is why many companies are moving to other nations like Vietnam, because wages have been rising in China due to the slowly shrinking workforce. This will get worse over time, and slow/dilute China's export advantage. Germany uses a different export model, so the fact it has a shrinking demographics as well really does not affect it.

In comparision the U.S. future demographic problem (that I mentioned above) is not quite the same. Thanks to our capitol investments (mostly technology) we are very good at raising worker productivity, so a shortage of future workers is not our issue. We most likely be able to keep ahead of the curve there. Our issue in our collapsing birth rate (not quite European levels but trending that way), is the loss of future consumers. Technology can give you productivity, but there is no force that will create new consumption (especially considering we already are one of the largest per capita consumption nations on the planet).
 
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Now that we have the gift of six years of hindsight, I want to resurrect a what if that I posted in 2013.

How do we think a Rick Perry victory in 2012 would look?

I’m assuming Democrats make Congressional gains in 2014 just in time for Scalia to die in 2015 and make the SCOTUS a major issue.

Do they block a nomination?

What about the gay marriage cases that occurred in the second Obama term?

What does 2016 look like?
 
Now that we have the gift of six years of hindsight, I want to resurrect a what if that I posted in 2013.

How do we think a Rick Perry victory in 2012 would look?

I’m assuming Democrats make Congressional gains in 2014 just in time for Scalia to die in 2015 and make the SCOTUS a major issue.

Do they block a nomination?

What about the gay marriage cases that occurred in the second Obama term?

What does 2016 look like?

Kudos for taking a risk and commenting on a 5 year old thread. Perry's loss in the primaries was due to his own essential weaknesses as a politician (too much style and not enough attention to substance, poor communicator, etc.), so that's on him and I don't think he had the talents necessary to win the nomination in 2012. If he somehow were nominated, he'd very easily lose to Obama. Obama wasn't even very popular in 2012 and that race was pretty close for a while, but he still managed to pull through against Romney. That was in part due to Obama outspending Romney (who spent most of his money in the primaries and didn't have enough to effectively respond to Democratic attacks) as well as Romney's multiple gaffes. I could imagine that those advantages over the GOP would be increased if the bumbling, arch-conservative Perry were nominated instead. If Obama could beat Romney, and if Romney could easily beat Perry, then Obama could easily beat him too.
 
Kudos for taking a risk and commenting on a 5 year old thread. Perry's loss in the primaries was due to his own essential weaknesses as a politician (too much style and not enough attention to substance, poor communicator, etc.), so that's on him and I don't think he had the talents necessary to win the nomination in 2012. If he somehow were nominated, he'd very easily lose to Obama. Obama wasn't even very popular in 2012 and that race was pretty close for a while, but he still managed to pull through against Romney. That was in part due to Obama outspending Romney (who spent most of his money in the primaries and didn't have enough to effectively respond to Democratic attacks) as well as Romney's multiple gaffes. I could imagine that those advantages over the GOP would be increased if the bumbling, arch-conservative Perry were nominated instead. If Obama could beat Romney, and if Romney could easily beat Perry, then Obama could easily beat him too.

If Perry hadn’t had the major gaffe that he did, I think he wouldn’t have lost his early lead in the polls.

At any rate, this thread presumes he wins and focuses on the after effects of a narrow Perry win.
 
If Perry hadn’t had the major gaffe that he did, I think he wouldn’t have lost his early lead in the polls.

At any rate, this thread presumes he wins and focuses on the after effects of a narrow Perry win.

He definitely tries to repeal Obama care, but even if the Republicans won the White House the Dems could maintain control of the Senate. But provided that the GOP narrowly takes back the Senate (which is possible that 3-4% of the vote is swung their way in a handful of key races), it would be a bare majority unlikely to accomplish much as we see now under Trump.

Given how unpopular Perry's arch-conservatism is on social issues, I don't think he would be reelected in 2016. He would probably make gay marriage a major campaign issue and try to repeal the decision. That wouldn't go well in swing states like Ohio and Florida; he might as well write off the entire country besides the plains states and the deep South.

Depending upon their showing in 2012, the Dems either retake or increase their majority in the Senate in 2014. Due to gerrymandering the House is a much bigger mountain to climb (as we will see in the upcoming midterms and 2020).
 
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It'd probably be what the worst critics of the Bush Presidency exaggerated his administration was like. It wouldn't go well i wouldnt think.
 
Perry makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero so we'd have another Republican goofball as president and lots of fodder for late night comedians. 2014 might see minor Democratic Party gains but Perry wouldn't necessarily be as hated as Bush was since the bar will be set pretty low there. In other words Perry needs to not do something stupid like invade Iran or North Korea and just keep a lid on issues like Syria and ISIS. If he does that he's immediately more popular than Bush ever was post 2004.

I'm curious what 2016 would like for the Democrats. Hillary would be eager to run and she will likely do better with a Republican in the White House to run against. She might managed to brush off a Bernie Sanders insurgency challenge better than she did OTL so we get a Democratic Party less divided on ideological lines. It might not be enough to beat Perry if things are going well but it could forestall a left-wing shift in the Democratic Party that we're seeing today.
 
Perry makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero so we'd have another Republican goofball as president and lots of fodder for late night comedians. 2014 might see minor Democratic Party gains but Perry wouldn't necessarily be as hated as Bush was since the bar will be set pretty low there. In other words Perry needs to not do something stupid like invade Iran or North Korea and just keep a lid on issues like Syria and ISIS. If he does that he's immediately more popular than Bush ever was post 2004.

I'm curious what 2016 would like for the Democrats. Hillary would be eager to run and she will likely do better with a Republican in the White House to run against. She might managed to brush off a Bernie Sanders insurgency challenge better than she did OTL so we get a Democratic Party less divided on ideological lines. It might not be enough to beat Perry if things are going well but it could forestall a left-wing shift in the Democratic Party that we're seeing today.

But we would have a president who knows Hillary will be coming for him and try to discredit her with Benghazi and eventually emails once those are uncovered?
 
But we would have a president who knows Hillary will be coming for him and try to discredit her with Benghazi and eventually emails once those are uncovered?

Benghazi would be a cudgel to hit her with for sure but that's more to fire up the GOP base than to hurt her with swing voters. By 2016 Benghazi is really done to death as an issue and everyone is pretty much made up their mind about it.

The secret server debacle will damage her but how much depends on how that FBI investigation plays out. There's a slight benefit to having a Republican run DoJ since Democrats can cry witch hunt if the Republicans make it an issue but ultimately it might be her undoing if everything else about the country is going well, as in good economy that's growing, no foreign misadventures, Perry avoids any personal scandals, etc.
 
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