Does Perry have eyes for VP slot?
Dave McNeely

His recent endorsement of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is yet another sign that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is auditioning for the vicepresidential nomination.

Perry has traveled to the Middle East, has delivered scathingly partisan remarks to a Republican gathering in California, has castigated former Vice President Al Gore's crusade against global warming, and now has thrown his support behind the man who achieved hero status after terrorists flew airliners into the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Perry supports Giuliani even though they differ on several hot-button issues:

• Giuliani is pro-choice on abortion, which Perry opposes.

• Giuliani is for handgun control, while Perry is an ardent backer of right-to-carry laws.

• Giuliani is for civil unions for gay couples, though not for marriage. Perry has been outspoken in opposition to gay unions.

The strategic value for Giuliani of Perry's endorsement is validation by someone considered quite conservative, who could provide some help for Giuliani with the Republican right, particularly in the south and west.

The value for Perry is that in addition to his expected leadership role in the Republican Governors Association, he can make speeches as a stand-in for Giuliani in states outside Texas.

One puzzlement is that Perry seems to be eating his words. He told the California GOP group in September, for instance, that "it's a sad, sad state of affairs when liberals campaign like Republicans to get elected, and Republicans govern like liberals to be loved."

About his endorsement of Giuliani, the most moderate of the Republican presidential field, Perry likened his thought process to choosing a vehicle.

"I go to buy a pickup truck, if it's got one option on it I'm not particularly fond of or not looking for, it doesn't mean I disregard that pickup truck," Perry said.

Perry said he wants a Republican nominee who can be successful.

"The mayor knows how to lead," Perry said. "He knows how to get results, and he knows how to win."

Perry also justified the choice on Giuliani's assurance he would appoint strict constructionist judges to the U.S. Supreme Court, like the more conservative current justices Antonin Scalia, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

"Let me tell you, I can live with that," Perry said.

Although Perry seemed to indicate he isn't interested in a vice-presidential nomination, that's a standard stance of potential nominees for the number two slot.

Someone who has been mentioned more often as a potential Republican vice-presidential nominee than Perry, who got just 39 percent in his re-election last year, is Texas' senior United States senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison.

However, she is more moderate on abortion than Perry. That may make endorsement by the conservative Texas governor more valuable to Giuliani during the primary season.

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Perry and the Ozone Man . . . Perry in California also condemned the views of Gore, and thousands of scientists, that global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions really is a huge problem.

"I've heard Al Gore talk about man-made global warming so much that I'm starting to think that his mouth is the leading source of all that supposedly deadly carbon dioxide," Perry said.

Ironically, back when he was a Democratic state representative, Perry was a leader for Gore in Texas in his 1988 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Contact McNeely at dmcneely@austin. rr.com or (512) 323-0248.