From the “Term limits for thee, but not for me” department

Write down the date and time, kids, because this doesn’t happen very often: I agree with Rick Perry about term limits.

In seeking to retire the state’s longest-serving governor, Hutchison wants to limit Texas governors to eight years in office, asserting that Perry would be in power far too long if he won an unprecedented third four-year term.

In response, the Perry camp is accusing Hutchison of being disingenuous, saying she backtracked on early pledges to seek term limits for members of Congress and broke a campaign promise by winning re-election to a third six-year term in 2006.

While I find it hilarious to hear Senator Kay Bailey “Now Serving The Third Of My Two Promised Terms In The Senate” Hutchison babble about the need to term-limit someone, it’s also deeply funny to see Rick Perry get huffy about someone pandering to the Republican base. That’s his job, lady!

[Perry] is unequivocal in his opposition to term limits, saying that incumbents who aren’t doing the job can always be removed by voters at election time.

“I am a big supporter of the public making the decisions on whether or not they should send people back to office or not,” Perry told reporters last week. Term limits, he said, “may on the surface be an interesting concept but in actuality it does not work.”

When he’s right, he’s right, and Rick Perry is right about this. If one really wants to solve the problem of incumbents having too great an electoral advantage, the way to do it is via campaign finance reform, possibly including some kind of public financing. It’s the same thing with the ridiculous proposals for nonpartisan judicial elections that have cropped up lately – like term limits, they are an inferior solution to the stated problem. I daresay the Governor and I part ways right about here, and that will come as a relief to both of us. But on the matter of term limits, I agree with him.

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