On this date in 2014, 2015, as well as 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of former Texas Governor and two-time failed 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 (eventually overturned by courts as unconstitutional), causing mass protests by women 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. In the interests of staying relevant, and perhaps softening his image a bit, Rick Perry appeared on 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 because… well, he was a terrible dancer, but you’re gonna fail miserably if you try to dance to “God Bless Texas” when you’re supposed to be performing a cha-cha.
There was, for a time, speculation about Rick Perry being a primary challenger for Ted Cruz in the 2018 mid-term elections, but instead, Rick Perry inexplicably took a job of the Secretary of the Department of Energy in Donald Trump’s “Cabinet of Horrors”. He had no qualifications for the job, and was going to be running a department of our government that he advocated should be eliminated completely (well, after Ron Paul reminded him). Now, we’ve established that Perry is quite the dumbass, but get this…
Perry advocated for eliminating the Dept. of Energy. He then took the job running it. Perry eventually admitted his surprise in that he had no idea what his job was when he accepted it, and was surprised at what the Department of Energy does.
So what has Perry been doing when he hasn’t used his position to help coal barons get rich? Well, he’s stupid enough to get crank-called by Russian pranksters. Which… is for the Trump administration, nowhere near being the worst scandal they have with the Russians.
Honestly, we’re torn on whether we hope Rick Perry actually does us the favor of ridding the Senate of Ted Cruz, or if he continues to bumble about in a role that includes the security of the American power grids and nuclear arsenal. It’s hard to decide where he’ll do less damage.