The Rick ‘n’ Kay letters

It’s always sad to see a relationship go down the tubes, isn’t it?

Long before the campaigns of Kay Bailey Hutchison and Rick Perry started calling each other “Kay Bailout” and “Tricky Ricky,” the senator and governor exchanged handwritten birthday notes and congratulatory letters.

The Republican political heavyweights have never been close. But Perry and Hutchison have maintained a professional, cordial and sometimes friendly relationship over the years, according to interviews with former aides and political observers and a Dallas Morning News review of official correspondence.

As their GOP primary brawl nears, the senator and governor are blasting each other daily in news releases, Web videos and ads. But in the past, they worked together when need be and thanked each other for their civic service.

[…]

The letters and notes show a gradual disintegration of the relationship, with warm, personal notes after Perry became governor in 2000. More recent letters are stiff and formal, with the occasional political barb.

Mere words cannot adequately convey the pathos here. We need a video for that.

I think that about sums it up.

On a (slightly) more serious note:

The campaign battle only figures to get fiercer as the March primary approaches, but some Republicans close to both politicians hope the passions will eventually subside.

“If they got to know each other,” said Royal Masset, a Republican strategist not working for either Perry or Hutchison, “they actually would very much like each other.”

Doesn’t matter. This is the nature of primaries. Starting out with a close relationship is no buffer against nastiness as the campaign goes on. Quite the reverse, in my experience. The one thing the Republicans will have going for them is the same thing the Democrats had going for them in 2008, which is that there’s a long time between the primary and the general. People will mostly forget about what happened in March once it’s time to join together and fight against the other guy.

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