Can Perry overcome regional hostilities?

George Will:

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Obama will not win another term stressing his accomplishments, which consist of an unpopular health-care law, a failed stimulus and an anemic recovery. So Obama’s campaign must be relentlessly negative, decrying the Republican nominee’s “extremism.” Democrats have worked that pedal on the political organ frequently — successfully against Barry Goldwater, futilely against Ronald Reagan.

Supposed examples of Perry’s extremism evaporate in sunlight. One is that he intimated support for Texas’s secession from the Union. After people shouted “Secede!” at a rally, he said that he understood their frustration but added: “We’ve got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it.” He signed a law requiring women seeking abortions to be shown sonograms of their babies. Do people objecting to this mandatory provision of information object to the new graphic warnings on cigarette packs?

The Republican contest probably will become a binary choice — Romney and the Not Romney candidate. If Perry becomes the latter, he will do so by his visceral appeal to social conservatives, and by trumping Romney’s economic expertise with “Texas exceptionalism”:

Between 2001 and last June, Texas — a right-to-work state that taxes neither personal income nor capital gains — added more jobs than the other 49 states combined. And since the recovery began two Junes ago, Texas has created 37 percent of America’s net new jobs.

Perry would rather not run, but his wife, who has a nursing background and is alarmed by Obamacare, says that sometimes desires are secondary to duties. Perry, who sensibly did not watch the Republicans’ recent New Hampshire debate because the Aggies were on ESPN playing Florida State in the NCAA baseball tournament, says, “I’m a long way from being a candidate.” But he did not finish the hamburger. Perhaps he is in training for something strenuous.

He also seems to be the anti Daniels, at least when it comes to the support of his wife for the grueling campaign. The liberals will throw things at Perry that will make a difference to other liberals, if not to the rest of the world. The problem for liberals is they can't tell the difference.