Turns out, Rick Perry still can’t remember the three government departments—commerce, education, and energy—he wants to shut down:
“Three right off the bat, you know, commerce, interior and energy are three that you think,” Perry said during a radio interview with Bill Edwards on WTKS Radio in Savannah.
Perry made no mention of the Department of Education, one of the agencies he consistently rails against on the campaign trail, until Edwards asked Perry later in the interview if he’d eliminate that department as well.
Again, we should note: It’s remarkable that Perry is held up for ridicule not because he wants to shut down three or four essential government departments, but rather because he can’t remember which three or four he wants to cut. Welcome to American politics in 2012.
Interior. Awesome, dude. You want to eliminate the national parks. That’s brilliant. Way to revive your super-fantastic campaign.
I take your point – extremism is in any nobody’s thinking about actual consequences, just ideological rhetoric – but I think it is in fact a pretty important point about the guy’s incompetence and utter insincerity that he can’t even be bothered to remember something so central to his platform.
He also tried to call on a mannequin during Q&A:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/0…
@4: I’m tempted to speculate that it was our own dear Catalina Vel Du-Ray – it happened in Iowa at about the time she was visiting the Vel Du-Ray homestead there – but she wouldn’t be caught dead in a “squat and gobble” t-shirt.
“It’s remarkable that Perry is held up for ridicule not because he wants to shut down three or four essential government departments, but rather because he can’t remember which three or four he wants to cut.”
Paul, I wonder the extent to which that is the point.
Given the huge amounts of resources the monied interests behind Perry, Cain, etc., wield, I’d think that the could by a competent puppet if that was their goal, so I am left wondering what the point would be to run these jokers.
I have often thought that a big part of it is by taking such ridiculously extreme positions seriously simply shifts the center, but I can see how having these arguments get into the public discourse without being examined, because we’re busy with the bozo espousing them, could certainly pay off in a long game.
Four! Four departments! Commerce, Interior, Energy, Education and the EPA. Five! Five departments! Wait, I’ll come in again…
I am ROFLing at ‘Oopsening’.
Perry is such an incredibly inept public speaker that I have to wonder how he ever made it into elective office. Not everyone has to be a grand orator, but he can’t even make simple, coherent declarative sentences.
@9, he’s extremely skilled at invoking Jesus and being a Bush family crony. He can read and sometimes even memorize prepared, horrid, deeply cynical speeches. He just can’t think on his feet, or at all.