It all started with fireworks and a massive fundamentalist prayer rally in Houston’s Reliant Stadium — but by the time Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race today, he didn’t stand a prayer. Perry talked a lot about Jesus and the second coming, but who knew that he would turn out to be the second coming of Fred Thompson?
When Perry entered the race the pundits hyperventilated and immediately declared him the frontrunner. Then misfortune struck the campaign: Rick Perry spoke.
When people actually saw the man behind the myth they were so disappointment that they returned to Mitt Romney’s fold, then embraced a pizza guy who knew so little about foreign relations that he had nothing to say about Libya and was unsure if China had nuclear weapons. Once Cain’s campaign was hit with allegations of serial sexual harassment, the “family values” electorate flexed their moral muscle by lining up behind a serial adulterer in Newt Gingrich.
Once Gingrich petered out (he could still come back to life like a horror movie villain) the fickle GOP voters tricked with Rick Santorum, the admitted last man standing alone at the dance. When the voters woke up with a hangover, they turned over in bed, looked at who they were sleeping with and realized why Santorum had been jilted and standing by himself on the dance floor.
During the long, grueling campaign of clowns, the voters never returned to Rick Perry — even as he invoked Jesus more often that Pat Robertson. While the Texas governor looked great on paper, he was revealed to be a paper tiger. Now he joins Michele Bachmann as a Christian conservative candidate who bit the dust.
Oops.
