On this day in both 2014, and in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted its first two profiles of former Texas Governor and 2016 Presidential candidate, Rick Perry, pictured above accidentally cosplaying Heath Ledger in a homophobic campaign ad from his 2012 Presidential campaign. All joking aside, Rick Perry does love him some guns, even going jogging and stopping from his cardio workout to add extra orifices via lead projectiles to coyotes that offend him. He’s equally callous about ending the lives of human beings, apparently, having executed over 250 people, more than any governor in U.S. History, including Todd Willingham, who after his death, was later proved innocent of the crime of which he was convicted. Perry, however, has no regrets. But don’t worry, he does love life. At least if the life in question has yet to be born. In his last term as governor, Rick Perry signed some of the harshest anti-abortion legislation into law (it’s still being decided by higher courts if it’s constitutional or not), causing mass protests at the state capitol. This is a man, while governor, who openly discussed having Texas secede from the union, and also backed anti-government tax scofflaw Cliven Bundy in his fight against the Bureau of Land Management in 2014. His 2012 campaign for president was supposed to be him riding to the Republicans’ rescue to deny Barack Obama a second term, but it was an unmitigated disaster, and included the revelation that his family’s vacation ranch was named with a racial slur, several campaign stops where he rambled on incoherently and made people speculate he was high on painkillers, and even how he forgot what the three government offices he wanted to shut down in a GOP primary debate, offering a meager, “OOPS” after his brain fart. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Perry claimed the unemployment number given by the Bureau of Labor Statistics every month is “doctored”, talked with Glenn Beck about the Jade Helm 15 Conspiracy Theory, claimed that the shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina was not a race-motivated hate crime, but an “accident” motivated by drug use, recommended people start carrying firearms in dark movie theatres to shoot back blindly at any potential mass shooters who might attack them there, and compared himself to Jesus at a campaign rally in South Carolina. As a result, Perry’s second presidential campaign only lasted 92 days before he ran out of money.
We had thought last year’s update on Rick Perry could potentially be our last look at him after he’s reached his term limit for being Governor of Texas, and has had two failed campaigns for president. Our only moments where we heard from this goober over the past 52 weeks were when Perry turned up in May of 2016 to encourage Republicans to vote for Donald Trump, because they needed him to pack the Supreme Court full of conservative justices, and the week before the Republican National Convention in July of 2016 to try and help clarify Donald Trump’s idea of building a border wall, trying to explain that it would really be a “virtual wall”,and not a 1,200 mile, 30 foot high border wall. Unfortunately, Donald Trump is a stubborn ***hole, and contradicted Perry in interviews, so there’s that.
Perry also was one of the few high profile Republicans to speak at the 2016 RNC, getting to take the spotlight with a speech on the first night, which, interestingly enough, he spoke without making any mention of Donald Trump, the actual GOP candidate for the Oval Office. And then, everyone forgot he was there because Melania Trump plagiarized the s*** out of Michelle Obama.
In the interests of staying relevant, and perhaps softening his image a bit, Rick Perry appeared on the past season of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, where he hoped to learn enough footwork to not embarrass himself at his daughter’s wedding later on in the year. He was eliminated very early on, but that will happen when you try to dance to “God Bless Texas” when you’re supposed to be performing a cha-cha.
Anyhow, the speculation about Rick Perry being a primary challenger for Ted Cruz in the 2018 mid-term elections continues to spread, particularly after Sen. Cruz’s weaselly antics went into overdrive at the 2016 RNC, and he refused to endorse Donald Trump for president. That is, until Cruz finally caved like a craven putz and started doing telephone calls to likely voters on Trump’s behalf… one day before the tape of Trump boasting of committing sexual assault and getting away with it emerged. Even prior to Ted Cruz being bent to Trump’s will, polls showed Rick Perry would win a potential matchup against Cruz by 9 whole points. So for now, we’re still keeping a close eye on Rick Perry, because he could become quite relevant politically again in the next election cycle.