Ron Paul Blasts Rick Perry as “Al Gore’s Texas Cheerleader”

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Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/5449859622/sizes/m/in/photostream/">Gage Skidmore</a>/Flickr

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Is there a harder slam in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination than accusing a fellow GOPer of being a “cheerleader” for climate change guru Al Gore?

That’s the charge leveled at Texas governor and GOP frontrunner Rick Perry in a new ad from the campaign of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), the libertarian favorite and long-shot GOP candidate. Paul’s ad, “Trust,” revisits Perry’s stint working for Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign in Texas. At the time, Gore was an up-and-coming US senator from Tennessee, campaigning on the issues of global warming and AIDS prevention; Perry was a centrist Democrat in the Texas legislature. (He switched parties in 1990.)

Paul’s ad slams Perry for serving as Gore’s Texas chairman, labeling him “Al Gore’s Texas cheerleader.” “Rick Perry helped lead Al Gore’s campaign to undo the Reagan revolution,” the ad’s narrator says, “fighting to elect Al Gore president of the United States.”

Here’s the ad:

Perry, it’s worth noting, wasn’t the only unlikely supporter of Gore’s ’88 campaign. Fred Phelps, the patriarch of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., housed campaign workers for Gore’s presidential bid in 1988. And in 1989 Phelps’ son, Fred Jr., threw a fundraiser for Gore’s Senate run at his home.