An unfair rant about Rick Perry before we all forget him

A white millionaire with normal-sized ears.

Despite its manifest limitations, Combat! blog strives to appear fair and reasonable. Our discussions here may be colored by liberal bias, occasional smug atheism and captions about seagulls swooping at Anne Coulter’s vagina, but we try to maintain at least a pose of circumspection. Nobody wants to read blog posts by a person who already knows what he thinks about everything. That being said: today I read about Rick Perry’s declaration that President Obama “grew up in a privileged way” and that “that mentality of ‘I’m the smartest guy in the room and therefore it couldn’t be my fault’ is really hurting America.” And I thought to myself, you craven little ponce. Only for once, I was thinking that about someone else. So today’s Combat! blog post is basically just a rant. Rick Perry is a mediocre man and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd. His campaign for the presidency is important only insofar as it warns us against the legions of men exactly like him who will come after, and who will also be too dishonest and stupid to do us any good.

Continue reading

Perry and Romney’s log cabin campaign

I've got Romney fever. I can tell because my temperature is 98.7 degrees.

Yesterday, Rick Perry told an audience in Jefferson, Iowa that “as the son of a tenant farmer, I can promise you I wasn’t born with four aces in my hand.” First of all, beware people who apply the word “promise” to statements of fact. Second, he was alluding to Mitt Romney’s remark in the Florida debate that “being dealt four aces doesn’t necessarily make you a great poker player,” meaning that job growth in Texas wasn’t necessarily Perry’s doing, and correlation does not amount to causation. That translation is why I’ll never be President, right there. The American people—even Republicans—don’t want to vote for someone too fancy. Contemporary conservatism is for rich people, but it’s not about rich people; it’s about the assumption, latent in every patriotic heart, that we will eventually become rich. The great contradiction of American politics is that the President should be an ordinary guy.

Continue reading