Gov. Rick Perry accepted the inevitable today and ended his inept run for the presidency.
A Perry-Mitt Romney battle royale for the Republican nomination stretching deep into the primary season seemed a real possibility when Perry joined the Republican race in August. Perry’s campaign was flush with cash. He had successfully wooed the tea party and conservative Christians. He had a conservative record as governor that contrasted well with Romney’s more moderate record as governor of Massachusetts.
Then, the debates.
Those Republican debates. Endless and relentless.
The debates were Perry’s Achilles heel, brain and mouth. He was inarticulate, nonsensical and very much out his league. He played defense from the get-go — on calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, on his push for an HPV vaccine. He started seriously falling in the polls after questioning whether opponents of Texas’ in-state college tuition program for children of illegal immigrants had a heart. He sealed his fate with an “oops” that tops presidential debate blooper history.
(“Energy. Energy,” I muttered to myself as Perry struggled to recall the third federal agency he’d eliminate. Promising to get rid of the Department of Energy, which was established in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter, is Republican boilerplate — has been for more than 30 years, ever since Ronald Reagan said he’d abolish it during the 1980 campaign.)
Perhaps if Perry had bothered to debate Bill White during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign he would have been better prepared for the Republican presidential debates. Perhaps if he had faced the press more often and newspaper editorial boards at all during his 2010 re-election campaign he would have been more practiced for the bigger race, sharper questions to come.
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Perry and his wife Anita thought the governor’s White House run was divinely inspired and blessed. Job knows, the righteous suffer. But maybe the Perrys heard only what they wanted to hear when they sought heavenly advice on whether to enter the Republican presidential race, or maybe well, let’s just say that God sometimes has a sense of humor and leave it at that.