The longest running governor of Texas, Rick Perry sure knows how to tighten a government for  the second largest state in the U.S.  He’s also had a few dealings with giving tax breaks, but, because all money has to come from somewhere, devastating decreases in government spending on vital programs like education have resulted.

Perry would be an unrewarding choice for president come 2012.

Like a few other GOP favorites, Perry fails to recognize the separation of church and state as a rule that strengthens citizens through their differences.  The “National Prayer Day,” a rally of evangelical praise and fasting for America’s downslide into a black abyss of economical failure, was a blatant violation of this doctrine.  There is a reason why our nation’s leaders deny political connection to any particular church, and it can be fully explained by the events that called for a Declaration of Independence in the first place.  Americans know how to revolt and they know how to get their voices heard.  The implications of “National Prayer Days” for political downfalls suggest greater leniency for leaders to use their religious beliefs to get what they want in the future. 

Rick Perry may have the highest job creation track record of all the candidates, yet Texas’ unemployment rate is actually rising.  Texas is large; our population is rising, too.  The job creation still can’t keep up with the migration rate and thus, while this is one of the most overly stated points in his campaign, the numbers are still far from remarkable.  Job creation will not save an entire nation.  It sure hasn’t saved the state yet.

Can we just give Obamacare a break already?  Seriously, it already passed.  Both the liberals and conservatives in Congress gave their two cents and it’s done and now we owe it to the people who put taxpayer time and funds into it to see if it is effective or just a socialistic program created to bring more power to the hands of the federal government.  Perry’s answer for better healthcare, of course, is to create more jobs.   How job creation and healthcare are related, he probably couldn’t even answer.

Of course, we cannot pretend some of Perry’s accomplishments in Texas are not outstanding–his policies have cushioned the economic hits on Capitol Hill, and he can be thanked for all that job creation.  However, Texas is not the United States.  A country cannot be saved if taxes and programs are cut simultaneously: the state is in a fragile position at the moment as is.

Ultimately, the questions most voters are going to ask are probably going to come down to the underlying issues such as abortion and gay rights, but until such circular problems are solved, our nation is in a crisis and voters may want to consider how much a decrease in taxes will matter if critical federal programs are underfunded to the point of loss.