Thursday, January 19, 2012

Lest We Furr-get: Another Clown Bites the Dust

By Sniffles

WOW! What a wild day in the 2012 Republican clown college! It has to be the craziest yet. Hot on the heels of the "I-only-pay-15-percent-in-taxes-and-$370,000-isn't-much-money" Romney gaffes, the Iowa caucuses are declared a draw, Rick Perry drops out of the race and endorses Newt Gingrich, and Wife Number Two tells ABC News that Gingrich wanted an "open marriage" (ugh).

Although we cats could write volumes about any one of these — for example, that the Iowa mess is just the latest proof of the Republicans' contempt for the democratic electoral process — we will focus on Rick Perry for the moment. We have a few questions:
  • Will anyone — we mean you, political pundits and so-called journalists — go back and look at the coverage in August 2011, when Perry was virtually handed the nomination?
  • Will anyone recall how the media covered his announcement as a victory tour that ran roughshod over Michele Bachmann's Iowa straw poll bounce?
  • Will anyone revisit the popular notion that Perry was going to clean up in the early primaries because his guru David Carney was the New Hampshire expert?
  • Is any reporter going to call up Perry's fellow Governors — Bobby Jindal, Brian Sandoval and Sam Brownback — and ask them if they regret their early endorsements?
  • Can Sheriff Joe Arpaio go back to Arizona now?
  • Will anyone bother to dredge up all those old stories about how much money Perry was going to raise, and how he was such a better retail campaigner than the last "Texan" elected to the White House?
Knowing the current state of political journalism, we cats are not holding our breaths about any of this. (Although we're looking forward to the money reports: Perry's and "Herb" Cain's.) In the meantime, until these answers present themselves, we can heartily recommend Paul Begala's Daily Beast indictment of all things Perry.

No comments: