Perry: oops?
The blogosphere is agog with talk about how Perry’s gaffe in the debate last night has finished him.
And it did look bad, although it’s the sort of senior moment (or semi-senior moment) many of us of a certain age are quite familiar with, unfortunately.
Now, what was I saying?
Oh yes…
That sort of lapse is just not okay in a presidential candidate, especially one who’s not doing so well in the first place. Just think what the Obama campaign could do with this clip:
let they who have never had a brain freeze cast the first stone.
When I saw the headlines, “Worst gaffe in history” etc. I couldn’t image what he might have done. Then I watched the video and couldn’t believe what a hoopla was being made over nothing. I don’t know a person alive who hasn’t forgotten a word or phrase. And if the Obama campaign tried to use it, Perry could counter with the many Obama gaffes, which were not simple memory lapses, but errors in speeches that were written ahead of time and presumably rehearsed.
Gaffe is clearly in the eye of the beholder. In the grand scheme of things, much worse has been said and will be said. With the ‘correct’ outlook and/or party network, it could be laughed off or even overlooked.
I remember when Roger Mudd asked Ted Kennedy why he wanted to be president. Kennedy looked like a deer in the headlights. After a long, uncomfortable pause he gave a long, rambling answer. That pretty much sunk him.
If you can’t answer why you want to be president, or what three government agencies you want to shut down if you do become president, you haven’t thought enough about it. I think this was Perry’s Kennedy moment.
Here’s a little expose on CBS’s famous interview with Kennedy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5TkhNWPspM
We are allowing the left/media to convince us that each of our candidates is unelectable. We are fools for buying into it.
Palin = unelectable
Pawlenty = unelectable due to lack of pizzaz
Bachmann = unelectable nut
Perry = unelectable fool
Cain = unelectable attempted philanderer
Romney = what could Obama campaign do with video of Romney contradicting Romney on every position Romney has ever taken? Unelectable.
Paul = unelectable nut
Santorum = unelectable nut
Therefore: Jon Huntsman, gentleman Repub Nominee and loser.
If we buy into the left/media horse manure, we deserve another 4 years of the Barack and Michelle Show.
There is not one Repub candidate who would be an inferior POTUS to Barack. Repub candidates are not unelectable. The meme is spin from a left/media which promoted an incompetent Barack as a savior.
The problem is how much disproportionate weight we give to articulateness. Which i think is really an inherited craft like drawing or dancing. But we’d never consider a candidate drawing an awful stick figure horse to be lacking in any meaningful abilities.
I forgot Gingrich = unelectable b/c he was demonized in the 1990s.
Left/media desperately need to focus on a PERSON whom they can demonize. Whomever rises to the top is targeted: Gingrich in the 1990s, then GWB, Cheney, Rumsfeld, .. then Palin, when she looked like she was the most powerful/dangerous Repub.
Whomever is a candidate, the left/media assure us, is unelectable. Cast the candidate aside! Unelectable.
Left/media are, for now, rooting for Romney. However, if Romney becomes the nominee, they will immediately declare him an unelectable flip flopper; will immediately open the big guns on him. Immediately. Full force. Romney will be unelectable.
Let’s put this error into better terms. How many votes will it cost Perry?
Anyone who was O.K. with him will still be O.K. with him. Yes, it was a costly slip, but it doesn’t change the man or his ideas.
Anyone who dislikes Perry got a sweet dose of confirmation bias. It doesn’t change the man or his ideas.
So we’re calculating how many people are too weak-minded or overworked to look past the error. It is the opinion of those folks who determine if any of these people are elected. Calculations about electability are at their root estimate of the breadth and depth of American stupidity.
Because we, who are paying attention in primary season, are clearly more curious and discerning than the rubes who show up and decide in October 2012. If we’re so smart, why are we always at the mercy of the feebleminded faction who elects our government?
They will elect who we give them. The power is now, in primary season. “Electability” is a tactic the Ruling Class uses to keep the Country Class in line.
“Left/media desperately need to focus on a PERSON whom they can demonize.”
They even do this internally; Obama’s failures are because of him, not because the leftist philosophy is broken.
Much like Nixon’s five o’clock shadow hurt him in TV comparisons with JFK, Perry’s repeated poor performance is a predictor of a poor showing in debates with Obama. People expect glibness in their politicians. Obama uses his teleprompter for that reason.
I do believe Cain has survived the damage and will continue to gain more credibility as the accusers continue to slink away like the lowly rats they are. The rat handlers, them, the media, lowlife scum sucking puss faces, they, the puke puking on our American cherished institutions, continue to be marginalized.
It’s one thing to have a “senior moment” during a lunchtime conversation about random topics.
It’s another thing to be unable to give an answer to a fairly predictable debate question.
Lack of study?
Perry is 61. A youthful and vigorous looking man for 61. That said, he has had these several moments in the debates when his brain seemed to freeze up on him. Last night was the worst. As we get older we all get a bit more forgetful, but when you have studied and rehearsed for a “perfomance” like a debate, it is not a good sign that he can’t remember something he undoubtedly rehearsed.
I like Perry as a person. He has a good record as the Texas governor. I had hoped he would be the one. However, with the MSM solidly in Obama’s corner, IMO, he has no chance.
This Texan thinks Perry has pretty much had it. It’s too bad…I like his strong advocacy of states rights and common sense about financial matters.
The Cain problem with sexual harassment doesn’t bother me. His accusers have little credibility in my opinion…bimbos, whiners, and gold diggers. However I am concerned about his lack of depth in analysis of foreign affairs and his 9-9-9 plan. As a person I like him.
I’m becoming convinced that Romney will win the nomination and perhaps the presidency. His business experience and success with the Salt Lake Olympics convince me he is competent even though he isn’t a pure conservative.
And last but not least, he ain’t Obama.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/282765/real-cain-scandal-thomas-sowell
A good man to give the last word!
One of the things the tea party is guilty of not doing:
Killing people.
The occupiers, those darlings of Obama, are stealing, raping and murdering. Not the bulk of them, no, and most have good intentions. But the poor fools! Some of them, the better part, will create the nucleas of the apocolyptic generation, the generation who bitterly learned not to trust the professional agitators.
Obama, your day is coming. It won’t be re-election. It won’t be apotheosis.
It will be an atonement for your wrongs.
Remember Romney I? Brainwashed?. One word. Campaign over per the media.
He said he originally had a different position on Vietnam because when he visited the place he was brainwashed by his tour guides.
While that may have been an ill-chosen word, he was probably presented a well-produced one-act play when he was there.
A friend of mine, a crew chief on a Marine chopper, told me that for a fact-findingvisit by Hubert Humphrey they were issued new uniforms, new sidearms, and choppers without large holes in them.
Humphrey visited.
Then they had to give the new stuff back, including the undamaged helicopters, so it could be used for Humphrey’s next stop.
Perspective, from Dr. Jerry Pournelle …
The Michigan Debate: Candidates 9, Moderators 0; The Cain Affair
But when all is said and done, while the incident was embarrassing, it was hardly definitive. It doesn’t show Perry more or less qualified to be President. We know that Perry has been an effective and re-elected governor of a prosperous state. We know that candidates can be dependent on a teleprompter and get elected. We know that Perry’s lapse of memory was both temporary and unimportant. We all, or certainly I, can cheer for a man who will eliminate those three Departments. I have reservations about getting rid of Commerce, and I doubt that he can do that one; but certainly Education has to go!
…
but my conclusion from the debate is that all the candidates are alive and well, any one of them would be capable of beating Obama, and any one of the would be infinitely superior to the current president.
–
Widely widespread chatter about ‘brain freeze’, which is a lay diagnosis rooted in ignorance. As a doc, given Perry’s 61 years, I would urge he get a neurologist and brain MRI ASAP.
He may be having some vascular events.
Couple random thoughts.
1. I’m disappointed, because I had high hopes for Perry, and hope he can somehow shake this off. I’m still strongly for President Not Obama, and considering throwing my golden retriever’s hat … er … collar into the ring, if need be. Better educated, better breath, and undoubtedly an American down to his paws.
2. I have a lot of sympathy for Perry in this situation. In my work I periodically have to recite five items to clients, and damned if I don’t typically rattle off four of the five and then often struggle to remember the one I’ve forgotten (which one varies between occasions).
Further, when I was lecturing, once in a while I’d get confused about something I’d lectured about for decades. Rather like when one stares at a word long enough that its spelling looks peculiar, I’d get to a state when all possibilities looked odd. And that was in front of 300 or so people; I can’t imagine how it must be to do this on TV. (The joke used to be that you lose 50 IQ points when you stand up in front of a lecture theater. It’s true.)
So I cut Perry some slack. I certainly hope his boo-boo isn’t evidence of pathology, because if it is, my brain must look like Swiss cheese.
3. As pointed out above, the media are the problem, and are complicit in imposing socialism on us. We really need a revived HUAC to investigate the media and JournoList, both of which I hate with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns.
Elect Perry we need another TOTUS POTUS and he’s the man for the job!
The WaPo today quotes two ‘cognitive neuroscientists’ in their Perry story. Sounds high-falutin’ good, no? But they are both PhD psychologists, one by his bio a PTSD wizard. “How was that for you?” types.
No medical folks asked or quoted, none.