NUGENT: Run, Rick, Run

Good friend and Texas Gov. Rick Perry should remember that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

Now is that time, Rick. Run for president.

Indeed, the other GOP candidates are good men and women. Many thoughtful Americans have confidence that each of them would set a new, critically needed, much improved and responsible direction for America - the opposite of President Obama's course.

Though it's still very early in the campaign season, no one in the field of candidates is electrifying GOP voters. There is little buzz or excitement.

Candidate Perry would provide campaign electricity. In the words of the Gipper, it would be morning in America once again with Rick Perry running for president.

Rick is a true conservative, and a powerful and popular one. He has never lost an election and remains the only person to have won the Texas governorship three times in landslide elections.

He is appropriately critical of the federal government's expanding control and reckless spending and thinks much of the power Washington politicians and power brokers wield should be returned to the states. Rick is a strong supporter of the 10th Amendment. Borrowing again from the Gipper, he inherently knows the federal government is not the solution to our problems; it is the problem.

With Rick at the helm, Texas is business-friendly, resulting in a booming economy compared with most other states. Texas has created more jobs over the past couple of years than any other state. If you want a job, come to Texas.

There would be stark differences between Rick and Mr. Obama.

Like other true conservatives, Rick does not support the economy-killing and energy-strangling "cap-and-trade" sham that Mr. Obama advocates. He thinks America should be energy-independent and that we have ample energy resources if we are allowed to mine them instead of restricting access to them.

He does not support Obamacare, knowing that more federal control over our health care will lead ultimately to higher deficits, fewer doctors and fewer options. Socialized medicine has failed around the world, and it will fail here, too.

Rick knows that we must get our financial house in order and that it is immoral to borrow and spend the tax dollars of Americans who have not yet been born. He knows that continuing down this kamikaze borrowing and spending path, along which both political parties have gleefully galloped, will destroy the nation.

America has reached a tipping point. We cannot continue to ignore deep, festering financial wounds incurred as a result of an addiction to federal spending. Too many Americans look to the federal government for answers to problems that the Washington bureaucracy has either created or exacerbated. Rick looks to the states, to local governments and to you to solve these problems. That is not hollow hope-and-change rhetoric but real power to the people.

Tough times call for tough people willing to make tough choices. That's you, Rick.

Run for president, Rick. Now is your time to come to the aid of your country.

My governor shoots coyotes. What does yours do?

Ted Nugent is an American rock 'n' roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is the author of "Ted, White and Blue: The "Nugent Manifesto" and "God, Guns & Rock 'N' Roll" (Regnery Publishing).