another puzzling headline

“What doomed Rick Perry’s campaign?”

Not much ingenuity is needed to answer this. Perry made a repeated series of ridiculous gaffes so beyond the ordinary that he just never seemed like Presidential material, despite the vasts sums of money behind his campaign.

Seriously, it’s time for me to send a check to Dublin and finally open an Intrade account. In early summer last year, the price on Perry jumping in the race was far too low. Obviously he was going to run.

And just as obviously, his chances of winning the nomination were overrated once he jumped in. So there would have been a short-sell opportunity once Perry jumped in and his stock price skyrocketed.

But best of all– Rick Perry is out of the race. I don’t like him. “A moody frat boy” is how one long-term Texas resident described him to me, and I don’t like the idea of moody frat boys existing anywhere, let alone in the White House. I suppose W. was a bit of a moody frat boy himself.

Telling students they could only vote if they were 21 or older was one of his more ridiculous blunders. In fact, I think that was worse than the more famous “oops” gaffe when he couldn’t remember one of the three federal agencies he planned to cut, wasted 53 seconds thinking about it, then saying “oops.” That’s merely ineptitude at a rhetorical performance for which a good debate coach could have prepped him. But thinking that only 21-year-olds and older can vote shows a basic lack of familiarity with Constitutional principles known to all high school students, even in the USA’s mediocre high school system.