Rick Perry Strides Off Into the Sunset

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Rick, we hardly knew ye:

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas will end his bid for the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday and endorse Newt Gingrich, two campaign officials confirmed, a decision that could influence the South Carolina primary on Saturday.

….Mr. Perry will not participate in the debate here on Thursday evening, an aide said, and will make the announcement to supporters and contributors in South Carolina at an 11 a.m. news conference. He had been aggressively campaigning across the state, hoping that the first Southern primary would revive his candidacy.

Actually, it turns out we knew ye all too well. I will now use this occasion to take a victory jog for my early and prescient blog post, “Why Rick Perry Won’t Win,” because, honestly, I don’t get the chance all that often. The truth, though, is that Perry turned out to be even more of a moron than I ever suspected. At the very least, I figured he was a canny politician, even if he needed to make the transition from Texas canny to national canny, and he turned out not to be. I’m not sure we’ve ever quite seen the combination of debate flubs (“oops” etc.) and debate gaffes (Gardasil, immigration) from another candidate that we saw from Perry.

Back to Texas, Rick, though I’m not sure even they want you back at this point.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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