Since Texas Gov. Rick Perry entered the contest for the Republican presidential nomination one month ago, he has rocketed to the lead in the polls. But that doesn’t impress MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough in the least.
On Tuesday’s broadcast of “Morning Joe,” Scarborough offered his analysis of why Rick Perry won’t be viable in six months, starting with his position on Social Security.
“[A]fter listening to him talk last night in detail, I do not know how many levels there are to Rick Perry,” Scarborough said. “But I do know this … The phrase ‘Ponzi scheme’ is not Rick Perry’s biggest problem. The word that he’s going to have to wrestle with during Republican primaries, let alone a general election, is the word ‘unconstitutional,’ because when you call Social Security … unconstitutional … this is about as funny as anything I’ve heard on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’” (RELATED: Rivals knock Perry over HPV vaccine order)
Scarborough added that Perry’s plan to hand Social Security off to the states wouldn’t work because the states are ill-equipped to handle it.
“But to say he is going to take Social Security back to the states — the states that are bankrupt, the states that can’t handle Medicaid, the states that are not set up to handle Social Security — defies all logic.”
Scarborough said the political magic of Perry would wear off and he wouldn’t last beyond next March in the primary contest. And the “Morning Joe” host cautioned against reading too much into polling this early in the election season.
“These [pollsters] are the people that polled at the same time four years ago and told us Rudy Giuliani would beat Hillary Clinton.”