Who’s afraid of Eliot Spitzer? Perry berated.

In newly reelected Rick Perry’s first TV interview, he was given the same rough treatment Rand Paul was when he was berated by Rachel Maddow and as Sarah Palin was when she was attacked and mocked b y Tina Fey, David Letterman, Katie Couric and vast others. Welcome to the realm of the winged monkeys. It was a telling moment: The thing they instinctively feared in Sarah Palin and Rand Paul they find again now in Rick Perry. But it is much worse this time. This time it is real. Rick Perry is a master. Everything the Tea Party said and did these last two years takes shape and form in Perry’s reelection.

The new commentary show which teams up former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer with the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker has been called mediocrity incarnate. They had to teach Spitzer to smile, and it doesn’t work. Smiling brings out his dark side. He looks like someone just told him a dirty joke. It is also said that he is only there, propped up by the obsequious Parker, as rehabilitation.

Spitzer got his “Ekk! A mouse!” moment when Perry said he would like to see the states compete and that is what was intended by the Founding Fathers. He said with combined entitlements of $106 trillion his children, now in their 20s, no longer expect to social security to be there when they retire. Perry said he would like to have a national conversation on social security and state competition but Spitzer badgered him relentlessly on pointless details.

Spitzer’s antagonism, like Maddow’s with Rand Paul and the others with Palin, was visceral. When he started at Perry it was clear that this discussion could go no farther. Maybe Spitzer didn’t like Perry’s cowboy boots which say, “Come and take it.”

There is potentially a cage fight growing here with Palin and Perry vs. Parker and Spitzer. A converged Democrat (Spitzer)/Republican (Parker) team joined forces to fight new thinking and new people; old temple against new. Parker legitimized attacks on Palin when she wrote for the high brow National Review on Sept. 26, 2008, that Palin was “ . . . an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.” Spitzer left the governor’s chair in New York, a state that knows no shame, in personal disgrace and with an economic situation that led one WSJ reporter to call it “the worse government in the world.”

The key moment in this contention was Perry’s Republican primary last spring when the Republican traditionalists including George H.W. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Karen Hughes as proxy for George W. Bush and others lined up in opposition to Perry. Perry had only Palin for support but won in a landslide. But why would such a distinguished line of Republicans risk reputation by lining up in support of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson who was sure to lose? To establish a beachhead.

Now Democrats and Republicans tag team Perry. But who’s afraid of Eliot Spitzer?