All is quiet. Every eye in the house is on you. You’re on the spot. You start talking, and talking, and then….it all stops. You’ve totally lost your train of thought. You can’t for the life of you remember what the hell it was you were going to say. You grasp onto any slight vestige of that thing you were supposed to remember. Just got to remember! What is it? Holy Inert Brain Function…JUST WHAT THE HELL IS IT?! It’s over. You never remembered. Instead you just stammered and stumbled like an idiot, as if your brain just leapt out of your head, hit the wall, sunk to the floor and then drooled on itself while screaming MARIGOLDS AND MUSTACHES! BOY THESE TWINKIES TASTE LIKE PAELLA!
This is what happened to Rick Perry.
Last night during Republican debate 4,748 with 72,000 more to go in the election year, Rick Perry had one ginormous brain fart. Hell, it was more of a brain “shit the bed” if you ask most of us. In an almost dramatic moment, Perry attempted to name the three agencies of government he would cut once named President.
He started rather strongly with the Departments of Commerce and Education and then things took an unexpected turn and Mitt Romney got his second boner of the night. The first was when debate moderator Maria Bartiromo asked Herman Cain if this whole sexual harassment scandal could, you know, damage his chances at being the CEO of the country. The crowd booed and hissed. We laughed so very much at home. But it was this unexpected gift to Mittens that stole the night away. On naming the third agency, Rick Perry dissolved into some sort of doddering John McCain senior moment of glacial insanity where he fumbled and couldn’t pull that third agency from under the moose head hanging on the wall of dumbness that serves as Perry’s thought machine. He hemmed and hawed, and looked to Ron Paul for help. Paul, seeking the opportunity, shouted “five” the number he’s said he would cut if named President. So crafty, old Dr.”Pull the Plug” Paul.
In seeing his frustration someone, perhaps Romney, shouted out the EPA. Perry thought about it for a second and then said, “No.” and ended with this gem, “I can’t think of the third one. I can’t. Sorry. Oops.” WHAT?! Never before, nope not ever, can this blogger remember any presidential candidate saying “I can’t. Oops.” That’s got to be one for the record books. This is history making, my friends. This is better than McCain’s “That One.” I can just imagine the meme machine, the slogans, everything! Oops! Priceless. Does this top that New Hampshire video last week when Perry was shown slurry, giddy, and hugging a bottle of maple syrup a bit too tightly? Yes. Is it more sad? Yes. This guy is a serious presidential candidate. He’s third in the polls behind Romney and Cain. Yet this is the GOP’s answer to Mitt Romney? Sarah Palin just choked on comeuppance.
After telling Politico, that he “stepped in it” shortly after his bungle, the Rick Perry machine went into full recovery mode. This morning he made the rounds on five, count ’em five! morning shows to do some damage control including “Today,” Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” CBS’ “The Early Show,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and CNN’s “American Morning.”
“I stepped in it last night. But I think I’m kind of like most Americans and there are so many agencies of government that they’d like to forget, that the Department of Energy was one of those,” he said on NBC’s “Today.” He added, “I’m human like everyone else.”
He added that he has no intention of quitting despite his poor debate performance. Of President Obama he says, “We’ve got a debater-in-chief right now, and you gotta ask yourself: ‘How’s that working out for America?'” As he has in the past, Perry admits to not being a debater, or the “slickest” politician, but that the campaign is about “ideas.”
So, um, yawr, Ricky. It’s no good to have “ideas” if you can’t voice them because your old bean doesn’t seem to work. That’s a bit of a problem most of us would say. We’re pretty sure we don’t want a president who can’t remember the names of agencies, can’t speak a coherent sentence, and just basically walks around sounding like an idiot. That guy already FUBARed this country enough, don’t ya think?!
So, is Rick Perry done?
The next Republican Presidential Debate is this Saturday, Nov. 12, 8 p.m. ET. CBS News and National Journal are hosting. The debate at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C will be moderated by CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Scott Pelley and will focus on National security and Foreign policy. It will be the first debate thus far on broadcast television.
