Texas governor's stance on economy and global warming may play well with the US right, but it turns off independents

There are not many contenders to be president of the United States who consider it an asset to be called unpresidential.

But then Rick Perry is not looking for the support of those seeking a president like any other. At least not for now.

The Texas governor entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination less than a week ago and he has already drawn stinging criticism for calling the head of the US central bank a traitor, for describing evolution as "a theory that's out there" and for once again questioning the existence of global warming.

His views have drawn a barrage of derision and condemnation, and raised questions as to whether he has blown his shot as a likely Republican frontrunner before his candidacy has even got off the ground.

Perry, who portrays the government in Washington as an anti-American conspiracy and has promised to make it mostly "inconsequential" to people's lives, even drew criticism from within his own party after he suggested that Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a traitor for flooding the economy with trillions of dollars in stimulus money.

Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who set Perry on his path to the Texas governor's office and who put George Bush in the White House, derided the comments as "not a presidential statement".

But Perry didn't back down; instead, the very next day, he called on the Federal Reserve to open its books to prove it hasn't been up to no good.

It's a stance that delights the crowd Perry is playing to – fiscal conservatives and the anti-government evangelical right who are dedicated Republican primary voters. But it may be a harder sell to those Republicans who are more interested in a candidate who can beat an increasingly vulnerable looking Barack Obama and who fear that Perry only alienates more moderate and independent voters.

'Pile of Bad News Bears-esque misfits'

Within days of announcing his run for president, Perry moved rapidly to the front of the Republican pack, pushing ahead of the former leader, Mitt Romney, and a rival for the affections of Tea Party supporters, Michele Bachmann.

The Rasmussen poll released on Tuesday gave Perry 29% of support among Republicans to 18% for Romney and 13% for Bachmann. At least one other poll has also seen Perry leap to the front of the race.

It's a position likely to have been strengthened, not damaged, by the uproar over Perry's recent comments.

Harold Cook, a Democratic party strategist and trenchant observer of Perry on his Letters from Texas blog, says that criticism by Rove and other Republicans plays into the Texas governor's hands.

"Don't you imagine that all those wing nuts whose support Perry is after like that there is now a candidate in the race who is 'un-Presidential'? They believe that people being 'Presidential', ironically including George W Bush, is what got us in this mess to begin with," wrote Cook. "The fact that those who intend to be unflattering to Governor Perry are calling him precisely what best positions him in this whacked-out race for the Republican nomination only helps propel him to the top of this pile of Bad News Bears-esque misfits running for the Republican Presidential nomination."

That's a view shared by other critics of Perry, who say that Tea Party supporters and others on the right likely to support him dismiss the criticism as driven by the liberal media or Washington insiders.

But while Perry is hitting all the right buttons on the Republican right, he may at the same time be alienating more moderate voters.

"Obviously there are some things that will not hurt him in a Republican primary that will be very detrimental in a general election," said Chris Bell, a former congressman who ran against Perry for governor five years ago. "What wins elections in this day and age, whether you're talking about Texas or the race for the presidency, is not only being able to get the base of your own party excited but also draw those people in who see themselves as moderates and independents. I think those are the folks who, if they take a close look at Rick Perry, will not like what they see."

With Barack Obama's approval rating for his handling of the economy sinking to a new low of 26%, Perry is seeking to build his campaign on his oversight of what he describes as his state's relative prosperity.

He makes much of the fact that Texas added more jobs last year than any other state and, depending on who is doing the calculating, can claim to have created about 40% of all new jobs in the US over the past two years.

Perry attributes that to minimal regulation and lower taxes which plays to his broader claims about the iniquities of the federal government and the need to shift control back to individual states. It is also the platform on which he is constructing opposition to Obama's economic stimulus programme.

All of which goes down very well with many Republicans but on closer scrutiny, it may not play so well with mainstream voters.

Jobs narrative has 'ginormous' holes

Texas's unemployment rate is still above 8%, which means that half the other states in the US have lower unemployment. A high number of the new jobs Perry boasts about are minimum wage. One of the consequences of that is that Texas has the highest proportion of people in any state without health insurance – one in four – while "liberal, tax and spend" Massachusetts has both lower unemployment and near universal healthcare.

Texas is also an oil state, which helped it ride out much of the recession on the back of high petroleum prices. Perry's critics say that offers no lessons for dealing with the US economy as a whole.

"Perry's narrative about jobs in Texas looks great at first blush, but it has ginormous holes upon closer scrutiny," Cook said. "Yup, Texas has jobs. Texas is a pro-business state. So what? Texas has always been pro-business, and we've almost always been near the top of the heap in job growth, and were long before Perry was around to take credit for it. And under his 'leadership', those jobs he brags about are crappy jobs – we have twice as many minimum wage jobs as anybody else in the country."

Texas also has one of the worst education systems in the country and a notorious environmental record while Perry continues to say that there is not sufficient scientific evidence to prove the existence of global warming and promises to scrap much of the US's environmental legislation including regulation of pollutants.

The challenge facing Perry in winning over independents and even moderate Republicans to beat Obama was on display as he campaigned in New Hampshire this week. A nine-year-old boy was put up by his mother to ask the Texas governor whether he believes in evolution.

"It's a theory that's out there, and it's got some gaps in it," said Perry.

A few hours later, another Republican presidential contender, Jon Huntsman, took a pot shot at Perry on Twitter: "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me Crazy," he wrote.

Perry also suggested this week that Texas schools teach creationism, a move which would be illegal under the constitutional separation of church and state. That legal obstacle is got around by the state requiring the teaching of "intelligent design", which does not go so far as to say a Christian God created the universe.

Many ordinary Americans, whatever their religious views, firmly back the separation of church and state, and Perry's suggestion that creationism has a place in the classroom will jar with many independent voters.

The Texas governor may be vulnerable on closer scrutiny of other issues. Questions are still swirling around about his unusual decision to require all 12-year-old girls in Texas to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV). That decision flew in the face of Perry's professed opposition to governments telling citizens how to live their lives.

Surprise turned to scepticism when it was revealed that Perry's former chief of staff was the lobbyist for the firm making the drug.

'Gay marriage is not fine with me'

Perry also makes much of his attachment to what he describes as "American Values". He often wears a Boy Scout pin in his lapel and has written a book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For, which is mostly an attack on secular liberalism and attempts to force the Boy Scout movement in the US to accept openly gay members.

That is a sensitive issue for the Texas governor.

After New York state legalised gay marriage, Perry said: "That's New York, and that's their business, and that's fine with me."

Some misunderstood that to mean that Perry was comfortable with gay marriage when his view was actually a reiteration of the right of individual states, not the government in Washington, to decide such matters. He quickly clarified the matter.

"I probably needed to add a few words after that 'it's fine with me', and that it's fine with me that a state is using their sovereign rights to decide an issue. Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me. My stance hasn't changed," he said.

Perhaps not, but it may be an issue that comes to haunt him in other ways.

The Perry campaign has prepared for the re-airing of rumours about his private life that have been doing the rounds for years; at one point, they grew so pervasive he was forced to address them publicly. One is that Perry is a closet homosexual.

In 2004, the Texas governor was so concerned that he told the American-Statesman newspaper that they were an "obvious, orchestrated effort" by political opponents.

Politico reports that the Perry campaign expects the issue to re-emerge.

"This kind of nameless, faceless smear campaign is run against the Perry family in seemingly every campaign, with no basis, truth or success," a top Perry strategist, Dave Carney, told Politico. "Texas politics is a full contact sport, live hand grenades and all; unfortunately there are always going to be some people who feel the need to spread false and misleading rumours to advance their own political agenda."

The Perry campaign's concern is not misplaced.

A Republican activist who backs another primary candidate and anti-government libertarian, Ron Paul, has picked up on swirling rumours about Perry by placing an advertisement in a Texas newspaper that asks: "Have you ever had sex with Rick Perry?"

"Are you a stripper, an escort, or just a 'young hottie' impressed by an arrogant, entitled governor of Texas?" it says. "We will help you publicize your direct dealings with a Christian-buzzwords-spouting, 'family values' hypocrite and fraud."

The advert was placed by Robert Morrow, the man behind the Committee Against Sexual Hypocrisy. The last line of the advert says: "Note to gay people: If you know the truth about Rick, please QUIT covering for him."