Is Skipper Perry Not Taking His Medication?

SOUTH CAROLINA REPRESENTATIVE’S SUPPORTERS (ABOVE) WORRIED ABOUT HIS INCREASINGLY ERRATIC BEHAVIOR

FITSNews – February 1, 2007 - GOP State Rep. Skipper Perry is having a little trouble keeping it together these days, drawing the rebuke of the Republican leadership in his hometown and causing more than a few headaches for presidential candidate John McCain‘s South Carolina organization, which is closely affiliated with the Aiken County Republican.

Rep. Perry, the former liquor store owner turned sports consultant, started the week by mouthing off to the Aiken Standard about school choice advocacy group South Carolinians for Responsible Government (SCRG), an outfit which (for the moment, anyway) seems to be behaving itself and focusing on the issues this Legislative session.

Perry, who supported school choice tuition tax credits last year and even testified to that effect before a Legislative subcommittee, nonetheless called the group advancing them “scumbags” in the Standard article, saying he would no longer support identical legislation this year because he didn’t want to be “tainted by them.”

So much for making a decision on the issue based on its merits, Skipper. And way to sound more like liberal La Socialista editorial writer Cindi Scoppe than a Republican House member.

The following day, Perry offended a number of insurance industry representatives and coastal residents gathered at a subcommittee hearing when he appeared to dismiss the plight of coastal families who are facing skyrocketing home insurance premiums.

“I’ll put it this way,” one insurance industry advocate told FITSNews about Perry’s comments. “The way he made his point was more than a little abrupt.”

That’s putting it nicely, according to another insurance industry source who was present at the hearing.

“He was an a–hole, a rude, insensitive a–hole who had no business in the world speaking to people the way that he spoke to them,” the source told us. “It was more than the fact that he made a few remarks that should have been tempered, it was an outright uncalled for display of arrogance.”

“If the bomb plant blew up over there (in Perry’s Aiken County district), everybody in the whole state would be over there to help you,” Charleston homeowner Daniel Dickson told Perry at Tuesday’s subcommittee meeting.

Perry’s comments to the insurance subcommittee have already begun to generate blowback along the coast, but it’s his school choice comments that are stirring up a veritable hornet’s nest in his Aiken County backyard.

In fact, FITSNews has obtained a copy of a letter sent to Perry by Aiken County GOP Chairperson Ginny Allen , in which she criticizes the 66-year old legislator for his “sudden change of position” on the school choice issue.

“I was taken (a)back when I read your remarks,” Allen’s letter to Perry reads. “Speaking in such terms as you did does more damage to the Republican Party than it could ever do to SCRG. I trust that you will not let personal feelings cloud your judgment over what is best for South Carolina and that you will once again support meaningful school choice legislation to benefit all South Carolina families.”

The blowback from Perry’s “Meltdown Week” has also seeped into the 2008 presidential sweepstakes, given the close connection between Perry’s family and the campaign of U.S. Sen John McCain.

“There is a degree of scrambling underway as it concerns Skipper Perry’s various comments this week,” a source close to the S.C. Straight Talk Express told FITSNews. “We hope to get him back on the reservation.”