Kinky Friedman Flip-Flops On Perry

I wrote a piece on August 19th about how Texas Governor Rick Perry may have changed his mind about certain issues over the years.  I now want to write about another Texan who appears to have changed his mind - Kinky Friedman.

For those readers who are unfamiliar with him, Kinky Friedman is a musician and humorist who is something of a minor celebrity in Texas, particularly among my fellow Texans who think that Western Civilization reached its apex in Austin sometime around 1977.  Friedman ran against Rick Perry as an independent candidate for Governor in 2006 and considered doing so in 2010, before he dropped out of that race and ran a losing campaign for the Democratic nomination for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.

Friedman was in the news this week because he came out in favor of the Presidential ambitions of his former nemesis in a piece published at The Daily Beast.  This is rather interesting, because as the Houston Press pointed out, Friedman had some choice words for Perry as recently as in 2009, namely:

And of course Rick Perry and Kay Bailey [Hutchison] are fresh out of ideas. They've been in politics the whole of their adult lives, they're in the hands of the big rich. They won't have any ideas. So I really see myself as more of somebody who can be a true populist, who can represent the people of Texas, and I think we're the ones getting left out by Rick Perry. He always says the state's in the black, but we're all in the red... Let's have term limits - exhibit A is Rick Perry.

While Friedman admits in The Daily Beast piece that he changed his mind about Perry, he makes it sound as though he came to admire Perry soon after the 2006 race.  The Houston Press interview cited above sounds like his opinions weren't so positive as recently as in 2009.

Obviously, this isn't earth-shaking stuff, but maybe someone should ask Friedman a few more questions about his change of opinion.  Friedman appears to have friends in the press (who seem to like contacting him for commentary about Texas politics, for little apparent reason), so maybe one of them can ask him.