The Washington Examiner’s Byron York picked up on a rather stunning statement from Texas Gov. Rick Perry last night that should raise a few eyebrows among supporters of limited government.

In an interview with Larry Kudlow on CNBC, Perry was asked about his somewhat tepid reponse to Romneycare in Tuesday’s debate. After defending the health care policies in Texas, at about the 6:30 mark Perry said

The states have the decisions to make on whether or not they’re going to have wide, sweeping insurance programs. Certainly Governor Romney made sure that everybody in Massachusetts was covered. And it also cost 18,000 jobs, and it cost $8 billion. Now, that’s his idea.

[snip]

Well, the issue — the issue is that the state of Texas takes care of these young people. And that should be the state’s — don’t try to force from Washington, D.C. how to deliver health care.

[snip]

And as the president of the United States having been a governor having to deal with this, I will promise you one thing: we will have flexibility and let the states come up with the best way they see fit. If a state wants to have a huge, expensive all-encompassing Cadillac plan, that ought to be their call. But if a state like Texas decides we want to have a program that is less costly, has less coverage out there, but everyone in our state has access to health care, that ought to be our call, not somebody in Washington, D.C.

People who have followed Perry closely know of his affinity for the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. In April, National Review‘s Kevin Williamson wrote a fascinating, often amusing profile of Perry’s attitudes about federalism.

What I find more than a little unsettling is that, in that interview, Perry never challenged the ways a state-based universal health care system like Romneycare would violate individual rights. So long as the plan is not mandated from Washington, D.C., it seems, that’s OK.

He expresses a similar attitude throughout the Williamson profile, particularly for programs like state-based “enterprise funds” similar to the economic development boondoggles underwritten here by Golden LEAF and other incentive-related slush funds.

Perry may have an admirable respect for the limits of federal power. But until he shows more caution about the potential abuse of government at the state and local level, it’s hard to call him much of a conservative.