Moral legitimacy
by digby
So Rick Perry is saying that Republicans lost “moral legitimacy” when it stopped caring about getting votes from black people. Yeah, whatever. Keep your (confederate) freak flag flying Governor.
I’ll just point out that Rick Perry lost all moral legitimacy with the human race when he blithely signed more death warrants than any governor in history:
As someone who has personally signed off on killing 278 people, his enthusiasm for the death penalty is unparalleled. (That’s literally true, he’s signed more death warrants than anyone in American history.) He vetoed a bill to spare the mentally retarded and is all for killing juvenile offenders, which is a position that’s not even held by the conservative Roberts court. He’s the most likely governor to have knowingly executed an innocent man.
Texas has killed 527 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. More than half of them were under Rick Perry’s watch.
According to the ACLU, Texas also holds the highest number of DNA exonerations with 44 since 1994 (and 36 since 2001); this includes non-capital cases. Twelve people have been released from death row in Texas due to evidence of their wrongful conviction.
Also too: African Americans comprise only 12% of the population of Texas, but they comprise 39.8% of death row inmates.
There is some good news in all this, executions are down in Texas. Of course, Rick Perry is no longer the governor. Correlation isn’t causation but correlation is good enough to tell Perry to shut up about “morality.” He has no standing to even say the word.
But don’t kid yourself. This is one of his big selling points with the faithful: