in new jersey, kind of the defacto leader the republican party nationwide and making the case against government emplayieemac and mons and overspending and i think there s disstation that we re not seeing the republican rearty s field right now. paul: the a-team. do yod ithink that either christy or r3 tn could get in at this stage, dan, and really have a shot at the nominationry yeah, i think they could both compete. i think that ryan more so than but ann isty and relates to th but ontributor. they ve got two attributes. they re fighters and they really want to fight and fancy them avenues as policy wonks, they do pay attention to poli3 i and in the candidates weage,e got now, they see neither one of those things. mitt romney for whatever reason isousind of gliding forward. and so, if you ve got a fighter like perry, theristre going to wait and they lbachmae that, but wait to see what his policies are. with ryan, you get both a fighter and a guy who can talk policy the way that th
welcome to the journal, editorial report, i m paul giggo. first up this week, who is rick perry, the three term texas governor jumped into the g.o.p. presidential race last weekend and quickly established himself as a front runner. and those ten years in the governor s mansion, they ve given his critics plenty to dislike, supporters plenty to make and texas insiders, plenty to fight about. here to sort it out. deputy editor, dan henninger. and editorial board member, jason riley. so, dan, the texas governor got in, saying, looking, look at my jobs record. i can bring this texas record to washington to the rest of the country, the left is saying, it s all a mirage. sort it out for us, who is right? well, i think governor perry gets the best of this one, paul. in june, the net job increase
over the last 24 months in texas was about 261,000, 700 jobs, which is about half of the new jobs created in the united states over that period. now, the criticism is, there are some that are great jobs or so forth. paul: a lot in energy, or expect texas to grow because the population is growing. that s the point, in the last ten years, texas population increased 21%, which is new york, has a low unemployment rate has been losing hundreds, tens of thousands of people over that time. so, new york has the greatest welfare system in the united states, and texas is criticized for its social services, but people are pouring into texas for jobs, so if the issue right now at this point in the campaign is can i get a job, then i think rick perry has a pretty good story to tell, jason. yes, and this argument that this job growth has nothing to do with the tax or the regulatory structure in place in texas that perry helped to
jumps out. and i think they re going to throw the religious right thing at him big time. he leads the prayer meetings and prayer rally and if you re going to try to disturbing independents you re going to try to attach him to the religious right label which hasn t been around for quite a while. paul: what about the crony capitalism issue, james, an episode involving an issue involving the hpv virus, when one of his staffers was linked to the gardasil and that s a crony capitalism problem and a problem with the religious right and i think that won t be an issue for him on the campaign. and basically, goes to sort of his philosophy of governing what he s doing with the vaccine is basically trying to dictate that all teenage girls would get the vaccine that really is only applicable to ones that are sexually active and the idea that the government was doing this was offensive to a lot of people and he backed off. you have the same issue with the crony capitalism charge,
gruel. i mean, we re going to attract more doctors to rural counties and stuff. this is the sort of thing a congressman runs on, not a president. paul: let s step back and look at the big picture. you wrote this week in the journal in 1970 when you started following some of the american politics for a book you wrote, that the economic model in the midwest that was involved, big companies and big unions really seem to be the future of america s political economy, but it hasn t turned out that way. what s happened? well, the michigan model, as i called it, a name for my home state, which is sort of an extreme example where you had the big three auto companies that were behemoths in the american economy and they can sell as many cars as they want to, they can do manipulative. and nearly 2 million members and they thought they d have a lock on the economy and this is the progressive way to run a country and you have to have high taxes and you have to have high government spending on sc