Rick Perry/Nikki Haley ’12 (this is a draft)

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 7/15/11

By the end of August there will be a slingshot effect; a rapid rise in cultural and political velocity like that they used to swing the astronauts around the earth to pitch them to the moon. The budget ceiling bickering will be over but more than that football will be back, brought to a fever pitch after the recent threats of cancellation. And one candidate will ride that American energy forward as Pecos Bill rode the cyclone: Rick Perry, governor of Texas. There may be another, Sarah Palin and maybe a third, Rudy Giuliani.

But the one long awaited and the one in my opinion likely to ride the new conservative energy to the Republican nomination will be Rick Perry. His choice for vice president might look back to the “establishment” to bring continuity; best for that would be Rob Portman from Ohio. Better would be Jon Huntsman, Jr. in an all western ticket to follow the contours of the demographics heading west and the new economy travelling across the Pacific. And he needs someone young and someone new to the national field. But don’t overlook Nikki Haley, the exciting new governor of South Carolina. Perry and Haley have signed together an op ed in the Washington Post today titled “Break the spend-and-borrow cycle.”

The new governors movement which became a forerunner to the Tea Party to challenge spending of the fed in bailing out banks began in December, 2009, in opposition to the W. Bush administration’s initial bailouts. Perry and then governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford then challenged other governors to join them in opposition. It is interesting that Haley, who replaced Sanford, has picked up the thread and tagged teamed again with Perry. She repeats again and again that she does not want to be selected for Vice President; that she is only now the “flavor of the month” but she is an extraordinary individual from a strong family and it is hard to imagine a more perfect candidate.

The lead from their essay:

As governors of states whose residents, like all Americans, are desperate for the restoration of fiscal responsibility in Washington, we are proud to have signed the “Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge” amid the debate over once again raising the federal debt ceiling.

We oppose an increase in the federal debt limit unless three common-sense conditions are met: substantial cuts in spending; enforceable spending caps to put the country on a path to a balanced budget; and congressional passage of a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment should include a requirement for a congressional supermajority to approve any raises in taxes.