The Rick Perry I Know

(By Ben Howe, RedState) - A little over a month ago, I had the opportunity to put together a video honoring Veterans Day to be shown at BlogCon 2011 in Denver, Colorado. In conjunction with FreedomWorks, I was able to get a handful of questions about Veterans Day over to a handful of politicians to have them say thank you to our troops. Because of technical difficulties, it wasn’t actually uploaded and shown to anyone until one day after Veterans Day much to my disappointment. You can view that video here and I hope you do.

But there was another part of this work that hasn’t been shown. When I sent the word out to these various politicians and policy makers that I wanted them to talk about veterans, I gave some very simple instructions: “Please be yourself, try not to do it scripted, and just basically tell me your thoughts on our troops.”

Out of those who responded, all but one sent me great videos that were about a minute and a half in length and mostly scripted. The one that sent me something different was Governor Rick Perry. His was a bit longer than a minute and a half. Eleven minutes actually. And I was so taken by how natural and patriotic he came across when he was off script and not trying to ‘zing’ another candidate that I immediately knew the footage had to be seen.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and that, if nothing else, it will give you an insight into a man that is much more complex than the narrative being put out by his opposition.