I’m hoping to write a bit more about this shortly. But for now I’d just like to flag what strikes me as one of the more interesting developments out of Gov. Rick Perry’s entry into the campaign. And that’s the reemergence with a passion of the culture war. But with a difference. In recent decades ‘culture war’ politics has been deeply sexual in character. Gays, abortion, out of control women, etc. But Perry’s — overwhelmingly deployed now against Romney — seems light on the sexual side. It’s much more farm-bred, military-serving, patriotic, anti-Wall Street, maybe anti-city in general.

Real man with his boots on the ranch up against the archetypal girlie-man (okay, a bit sexualized) in the form of Mitt Romney.

A new poll suggests Wisconsin voters are souring on the idea of recalling Gov. Scott Walker (R). And a successful campaign for Walker’s ouster may rest on recruiting former Sen. Russ Feingold as the Democratic contender.

Gingrich says Republicans will have a hard time resisting President Obama’s demand for a continuation of the payroll tax holiday.

Rick Perry came into the Texas governorship as George W. Bush’s Lt.Gov. But the relationship between Team Perry and Team Bush is not close. Now Karl Rove is piling on Perry’s ‘treason’ swipe at Fed Chair Ben Bernanke.

President Obama is getting some ribbing today for telegraphing that he’s going to release his ‘jobs plan’ in September. What took so long? The country has been in the grip of historic, catastrophic levels of unemployment for going on three years. All good points. And count me among those who wish he would have come forward with something like this in 2010 rather than 2011. But let’s get real. The President’s mistake is not coming forward with a plan when he — quite rightly — believed that the Congress would refuse to do anything to help create jobs — because of ideology and a desire to see President Obama defeated. Read More

People are rightly arrested by the image of a top presidential candidate calling the Fed Chair a traitor. But as Brian Beutler explains, what’s even more telling is why Perry’s calling him that. Not, apparently, because he has zealous beliefs in hard money like Ron Paul. It’s because it would make it harder for him to become President.

If you get beyond the Banana Republic nature of Rick Perry calling the Fed Chair a traitor, you see that this is dangerous ground for Mitt Romney. Romney, who’s generally been supportive of Bernanke’s chairmanship, won’t be able to follow Perry into Paul-like Fed-bashing territory.

Here’s key context on the impact of Rick Perry’s entry into the GOP primary contest.

The key thing in my book is that Romney, so far, has been able to leverage the weak GOP field to spin up an inevitability narrative, mainly by ignoring the other candidates and focusing his attacks on President Obama. Perry knocks that whole house down.

Last week, we compiled a list of all the prominent and elected Republicans who dismissed default by the U.S. government as not that big of a deal — a shocking stance that Standard & Poor’s says contributed to its downgrade of U.S. debt.

We asked for help from TPM readers in fleshing out the list and keeping it from vanishing down the memory hole– and you delivered. Here’s the updated and expanded list.

Thanks for your help.

I guess this is going to be a pretty interesting election. Rick Perry is now saying that any more emergency efforts by Ben Bernanke to resuscitate the economy would be “almost treasonous.” Watch.