Rick Perry Accuses Bernanke of Treason
Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry spoke in Iowa Monday night at a Republican fundraiser at the end of his last full day of campaigning in the state. A spectator in the audience asked him what he would do with the Federal Reserve, and his answer wasn't what anyone would expect from a presidential candidate. Think Progress first reported Perry's strong words Ben Bernanke. Perry told supporters he wasn't a big fan of the head of the Fed, and said he would "pass" on it at this time. He then suggested, in so many words, that Texans would get pretty violent with Bernanke if he prints more money before the next election:
“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion.”
As TP points out, the punishment for treason is capital punishment. Therefore, as Gawker's Max Read puts it, "Rick Perry Wants to Execute Ben Bernanke." ABC News has an expanded answer, with a little more economic analysis and fewer physical threats, as pointed out by Politico's Maggie Habberman.
“We’ve already tried this. All it’s going to be doing is devaluing the dollar in your pocket and we cannot afford that. We have to learn the lessons of the past three years that they’ve been devastating. The President of the United States has conducted an experiment on the American economy for almost the last three years, and it has gone tragically wrong and we need to send him a clear message in November of 2012 that new leadership is coming.”
The new quotable comes right on the back of the new Rick Perry backlash occurring in Iowa. Conservatives forwarded a 14 point memo highlighting the candidate's problems before a radio interview Monday. Karl Rove warned about his "electability." New York Times Washington correspondant Binyamin Appelbaum tweeted that Perry's comments were "horrifying," and asked the question, "This is a major party presidential candidate??
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