Chad’s Morning Brief: Rick Perry Looks for Redemption, What Is In the GOP Spending Bill, and Other Top Stories

Here is your Morning Brief for December 10, 2014.

Rick Perry Looks to the Future

The Washington Post is taking a look at Governor Rick Perry and his chances for 2016 and even they admit, Perry seems to be a different candidate.

The man who could be president is ambling through the Texas governor’s mansion on his own, whistling “Frosty the Snowman” as he approaches the parlor room to greet a reporter.

Gov. Rick Perry (R) leads a tour and points out a historically inaccurate depiction of frontiersman Davy Crockett in an oil painting in the foyer (“His coonskin cap — that’s a myth”). In Sam Houston’s bedroom upstairs, Perry lifts an antique upholstered settee, a gift from the French, to read an engraving signifying Texas’s early-1800s ties to France. He shows off a Civil War-era saber that belonged to a Union general and mentions having just read a thesis that his friend’s black father wrote in 1970 on race in America.

Rick Perry is trying to show that he’s not the Rick Perry you remember. Gone, it seems, is the blustery bravado, the empty rhetoric, the cowboy boots — and, yes, the “Oops” moments. This Perry comes across as studious, contemplative and humble. He said he is at peace with his 2012 presidential campaign, in which his shoot-first-aim-later approach proved catastrophic, but is hungry to redeem himself.

As Perry packs up his belongings at the governor’s mansion after 14 years in office, he is undergoing exhaustive preparations to run again for president in 2016. He is striving to make a better second impression than his first one.

“We are a substantially different, versed candidate,” he said. He noted that other politicians who endure such humiliation might “scurry off to the quietness and the comfort of some obscure place and I wasn’t interested in doing that. I think that this country is begging for leadership.”

Perry sat down with The Washington Post for a wide-ranging 90-minute interview over lunch here Monday. He discussed his political rehabilitation, which this month includes day-long tutorial sessions with conservative scholars.

Perry also is hosting seven dinners at the mansion this month for about 600 potential campaign donors from around the country. At each dinner — funded by Texans for Rick Perry — he plays a three-minute, amped-up video promoting his economic legacy of transforming Texas into “a haven of opportunity” with “unparalleled prosperity.”

Perry insists that he has not decided whether to run, and said he won’t announce a decision until May or June, but nonetheless offered a rationale for his candidacy.

“You want the guy in the front left seat to be more than a low-time, private pilot,” he said. “You’d like to have the person in the front left seat of your aircraft being a rather high-time, experienced aviator.”

Perry, who served as an Air Force pilot before becoming the longest-serving governor in his state’s history, said he sees himself as this metaphorical aviator.

“If you’re looking for that steady hand that’s going to make a clean break with the administration’s policies that are in place today, I am a very clear and compelling individual to support,” said Perry, 64.

You can read the entire article by clicking on the link above. Perry will be a better candidate than he was in 2012 and could find himself in just the right spot in the GOP race.

Republican Spending

Republican leadership has talked a big game about opposing President Obama's amnesty, but in reality they haven't done much. Now Republicans and many conservatives are upset about the secrecy surrounding the spending bill. As the Daily Caller reports, some money being spent is sure to make many fume.

The GOP’s draft 2015 “omnibus” spending bill reportedly includes $948 million to help poor and unskilled Central American migrants establish themselves in the United States, but includes no effective restrictions on President Barack Obama’s plan to provide work permits and tax payments to millions of resident illegal immigrants.

That new spending works out to $16,928 for each of the 56,000 youths, young adults and children who crossed the border during the 12 months up to October 2014.

Prior to October, Obama’s officials sent only 1,901 of the migrants back home to Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, according to a federal report.

Much of the $948 million may also be used to care for the next wave of illegals who could flood across the border during the summer. The influx in the summer of 2015 is expected to be large, because Obama is offering work permits and social security numbers to at least five million illegals already in the country.

The $948 million fund is part of the one-year, $1 trillion 2015 spending plan described in a late-night report from The New York Times.

You can read the whole article by clicking on the link above.

Other Must Read Links:

CIA Torture

Obama Administration Seeks to Expand War Against Islamic State

Bank of America Sees $50 dollars a Barrel Oil

Iowa Testing Smartphone Driver's Licenses

These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard on our KFYO YouTube page after the show and online at kfyo.com.