CSM: Why some tea partyers are skeptical of Rick Perry

[pampango]

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2011/0816/Why-some-tea-partyers-are-skeptical-of-Rick-Perry/(page)/2

But not all tea party leaders are sold. Take Katrina Pierson, a top member of the Dallas Tea Party. She told Reuters recently she thinks the Texas budget is balanced only on paper. And she’s fielding phone calls from tea party activists around the country who want to know if Perry is “for real.”

“With Perry, there are a lot of concerns, including his stance on illegal immigration,” wrote Judson Phillips, head of the social networking site Tea Party Nation, on his website before Perry announced.

-In 2001, he signed Texas’s version of the DREAM Act, which allows some illegal immigrants to pay in-state college tuition. To conservatives, the DREAM Act is anathema; Perry opposes the federal version of the act. If Perry wins the nomination, he will have to walk a fine line as he woos the Latino vote.

-Not only was Perry once a Democrat, he was the Texas chairman of then-Sen. Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 1988. At that point, Senator Gore was already a crusader on climate change, though a Perry spokesman says the governor didn’t agree with him on everything.