Despite Rick Perry sticking to his guns, Rush says that the Texas Dream Act is an albatross around his neck. Citing a popular tweet, he asks why give instate tuition fees to students who can’t legally work in the United States? It just doesn’t make sense.
He also mentions Perry’s answer to Bachmann when she hit him for the conflict of interest with Merck. He doesn’t believe Perry meant it this way, but given his answer that he couldn’t be bought for five thousand, Rush says it could be interpreted to mean that Perry does have a price much higher than five or six thousand dollars. In other words it was a bad answer.
***
Related to the five thousand dollars Perry said he received from Merck, National Review Online notes this:
When Rick Perry joked last night that the $5,000 he had received from Merck wasn’t enough to buy him off, the line failed to charm the audience as he’d expected. Turns out, the line also significantly low-balled how much he’d received from Merck. “Merck PAC—the company’s D.C.-based political action committee—has given Perry $28,500 since 2001, according to Texas Ethics Commission filings. The bulk of that money came prior to 2007,” the Los Angeles Times reports today. Even so, that doesn’t make Merck one of Perry’s top donors: the LA Times notes that he’s received over the years donations totaling more than six figures from over 200 sources.
—