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August 31, 2014      11:08 AM

Stanford: Perry gets his photo ops while National Guard begs for food

From the left: "It’s a cliché to work “oops” into any story about Rick Perry, but shouldn’t it tell us something that the word always fits so well"

Texas has a new refugee crisis on the border, and this time it’s not a bunch of kids. When Rick Perry deployed the National Guard to the border, he remembered to go on Fox News, pose with assault weapons, and brag to Republicans in Iowa. But he forgot to make sure that our National Guardsmen and women got paid and were fed. Now they are turning to food banks to eat, underscoring how Perry’s big fake invasion of south Texas is really just a political put-up job.

Responding to the humanitarian crisis, Perry called up the National Guard and ordered them to the Rio Grande Valley to help deter drug smugglers. In a much-touted foreign policy speech, he even warned that ISIS may very well have snuck over the border to kill us all.

And while he’s been getting a lot of attention he forgot about the troops he deployed. The guardsmen and women have been in the Valley since August 11 and won’t get their first paychecks until after Labor Day. Now our troops need to eat, so they’re turning to local charities set up to help the residents of one of the poorest areas in the United States.

The rest of Jason Stanford's weekly column can be found in today's R&D Department.

By Jason Stanford