Et Tu, Rick Perry?

"Oops..."

Rick Perry announced today that he's suspending his campaign for the GOP nomination and throwing his support behind the current popular "Not Mitt", Newt Gingrich.

This has to be a rough day for Rick Perry, a guy who is famous for refusing to give up and fighting to win at all costs from his brutal campaign for Governor of Texas.  For a guy who's known for being a poor loser and who has a personality that is even more over-the-top GW Bush-like than James Brolin's impression of him in the movie "W", the knowledge that this election started off being his to lose the minute he threw his hat in the ring and that... well... he lost it... has to sting pretty badly.  For all intents and purposes, Perry was supposed to be the knight in shining armor who rescued the GOP from Romney's flip-flopping, disingenuous inconsistency and the general battiness and self-promotional hucksterism of the rest of the field.  He was supposed to swagger in with his cowboy confidence and "If you thought Bush was annoying, wait till you get a load of me!" gleeful ignorance, talk about how amazing Texas is, all the great jobs they were creating and how his state should be a model for the rest of the country and then just walk away with the nomination.  He even entered the race much later than the rest of the field, making it even less likely that he would say or do something to screw up his chances of securing the nomination.

Oops...

So now we're down to Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney.  Or, basically, the almost certain guarantee that I'm going to vote for Obama.  I mean, unless I catch Obama giving my grandmother rough anal on her dining room table or something.  Actually, I don't even think that would cause me to not vote for Obama, in fact, it would be pretty awesome because I know I would be guaranteed a pretty sweet cabinet position or something if I walked in on the president giving it to my grandma where we eat Thanksgiving dinner.  Really, I can't think of any circumstance where I would cast my vote for any of the current GOP candidates over Obama.

There's no way in hell I'm voting for Rick Santorum, that's not even debatable.  This guy is so socially conservative (i.e. ignorant and hatefully bigoted) that it's like he's parodying the far-left stereotype of conservative intolerance, only he's serious.  If your solution to our economic problems is to ban gay marriage, if you think making contraception illegal is a smart move, if you want to impose Christian Law as an alternative to the completely fabricated fear of Sharia Law - as if that would be any better - then you fail.  In fact, all of these social conservatives are hypocrites and just frustratingly ridiculous in their views. I can't stand listening to all these GOP guys rail against "big government interfering in our lives" while simultaneously proposing expanding the size and scope of government when it comes to invading our privacy and legislating morality upon us.  Apparently, they only want less "big government intrusion" when it comes to the balance sheets and bank accounts of big businesses, but women's vaginas and people's bedrooms are still fair game.

Likewise, I'm not voting for Ron Paul.  Sure, he gets some Libertarian points with me for his support of legalizing drugs and getting government out of the business of banning vices and victimless "crimes" like getting high, visiting a prostitute, gambling, etc., but he's also an extreme social conservative who wants to ban abortion, ban gay marriage, impose his own Christian morality on the rest of the country and who honestly thinks that big corporation and Wall St. will just magically regulate themselves if we get rid of all government regulatory agencies, and not only that, but if we get rid of all their taxes, they'll just voluntarily spend all that money on creating jobs and helping the rest of the country out anyway out of the innate goodness of their hearts.  Unrestricted capitalism is not unlike Marxist communism - it looks great on paper, but the reality of human nature means it would never work in reality.  Of course, then there's the newsletters that he signed his name to and contributed content to, but never actually read...

As for Newt Gingrich...  I mean, wtf?  This guy is as shady, scandalous and unethical as they come.  He was carrying on an extra-marital affair while trying to impeach Bill Clinton for getting a BJ.  He was forced out of office for ethics violations that resulted in him paying over $300,000 in fines.  He's almost as big of a flip-flopping "say whatever people want to hear at the moment" opportunist as Romney and to top it off, he's got an arrogant ego that makes Rick Perry look downright humble.  He's condescending and abrasive and he's been doubling down lately on some incredibly ignorant and racially-charged statements, including calling Obama the "food stamp president", implying in no uncertain terms that black kids don't understand the value of working for a living because they have no examples of working for an honest living at all in the black community.  He also said that black people in general should want paychecks rather than food stamps, even though 76% of all food stamp recipients in the country are white.  That kind of dog whistle rhetoric might fly with the rednecks in South Carolina, but it doesn't score points with people who have any actual intelligence.

So, this is the field - an ignorant, homophobic Christian conservative (Santorum); an ignorant, homophobic Christian conservative (Paul); an ignorant, homophobic, hypocritical Christian conservative (Gingrich) and a fake, plastic, flip-flopping political chameleon (Romney).  I mean, damn, why not just hand Obama the re-election on a silver platter?