Will Bunch, HuffPo: Rick Perry's Glenn Beck Problem

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-bunch/rick-perrys-glenn-beck-pr_b_928868.html

Talk about irony. The summer of 2011 will be remembered as a moment that Glenn Beck left the national stage -- or moved to its fringe, anyway -- and Texas Gov. Rick Perry stepped up front and center, becoming the instant frontrunner in a muddled GOP primary field for the right to challenge President Obama.

What's the irony? For most of the last two-and-and-a-half years, the rise of Perry and Beck in the national conversation, along with the Tea Party Movement that both men helped spawn, were all about as intertwined as fishing lines on a boatload of first-time anglers. Beck's ability to book the governor of America's second-largest state gave the former "Morning zoo" jock some cred as a political host, but quickly it was clear that the Texas Republican needed Beck and his at-the-time-growing influence even more.

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It should be noted that Beck gave a tentative endorsement of Michele Bachmann on his radio show last week, but he was very quick to add that he was only covering announced candidates, a list that did not include Perry at that time. Already just today, Beck has taken to his radio show to defend Perry's comments on secession and back up the Texas governor's disturbing comments about the Fed and its chairman Ben Bernanke. Clearly, with Beck's radio show still listened to by millions of conservatives of the kind who vote in GOP primaries, their relationship should help Perry in the coming months.

So why does Rick Perry have a Glenn Beck problem? Because in flying in tandem so far to the right, Beck has helped to take an unremarkably conservative Texas governor who might once have had a story to tell (albeit a misleading one) on the real issue in America, which is jobs, and render him all but unelectable in a general election. Yes, it's true that hitching his star to Beck and extreme right-wing views on the Fed, the 10th Amendment and the Fed that have been incubated in the toxic labs of talk radio helped Perry win re-election and could well carry him to the 2012 nomination. But Perry is going to have a lot of explaining to do when moderate voters emerge from their political cocoon in about 13 months or so. If Obama becomes the first president to win re-election with 9 percent employment, he might actually want to thank Glenn Beck!

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Beck's defense of Perry today:

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201108160014

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201108160007


Bunch's HuffPo piece also explains how Beck ambushed Debra Medina, Perry's right-wing rival in the 2010 primary, at a time when she was surging in the polls.

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