URBANDALE, Iowa – My new piece is based on a lively day following around Rick Perry, as he tours Iowa looking for some swath of conservative voters that can forgive him and make him, not Santorum or somebody, the new evangelical hope. The basics: He might be too laconic, and the whole effort too obvious, for it to work. But who knows?
It’s buried in the piece, but I wanted to point out this oddity.
Perry closes out the day in Denison, a short drive up the road. On the way, I hear a radio version of the “values” ad with an awkward change. It omits the line “when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school,” separating Perry’s dialogue with an audible cut.
It was strange! I haven’t heard the ad since then, but 1) there was an extra audio intro to make it fit the time and 2) it’s so easy to cut radio ads, so easy to swap them in and out, that some experimentation like this is not that strange.
