Rick Perry flubbed the CNBC debate when he forgot his own talking points. He had campaigned on abolishing the Commerce, Education and Energy Departments. But he could only remember the first two at the debate.
Me, I think it was a bad conscience that produced the gaffe. Perry is in the back pocket of Big Oil, which is on the verge of making our planet if not uninhabitable then at least extremely dangerous for human beings. If the nations of the world don’t get serious about curbing carbon emissions immediately, then by 2017 the chance to keep warming to 2 degrees C. will be lost altogether. Likely the world is head for a 5 degree C. increase over the next couple of centuries, and within a few centuries there will be no land ice and sea levels will rise 10-20 meters/ yards for every degree C. of increased temperature.
Perry knows that he is advocating abolition of the Department of Energy for pure greed, and that his politics threaten the lives of his grandchildren (and of the grandchildren of us all) and deep down inside is embarrassed by his motivation. Hence, the suppression of that memory.
Video from Youtube:
Wait, he froze on a softball question asking him to repeat part of his stump speech? And then couldn’t come up with EPA or Federal Reserve as a designated hitter?
Man, you know people in D.C. are looking at Kay Bailey Hutchison sideways these days…
Outside the US, we are wondering how the largest first world nation with an enormous pool of talented individuals and an election which takes up eighteen months every four years can consistently came up with such a bunch of incompetents.
Even worse, you elect one of them and ten declare him to be the ‘leader of the free world.
Yes. If America’s candidates are its ‘best of the best’, there’s no hope for the survival of America. The ranks of popular public dimwits are growing. Listen to the cheers.
And the World gives a him a Nobel – go figure
Dear Professor Cole
Possibly just going Gaga.
link to priorygroup.com
Oh well bring back Sarah Palin
No Gaga is great link to youtube.com
Governor Goodhair (as the late Molly Ivins always called Perry, meaning there’s no substance to the man) has been in Big Oil’s hip pocket since he ran for Agriculture Commissioner. That he’s been governor for so long says as much about Texans as it does about Perry.
Juan:
Good post, but I believe the debate took place in Michigan, not Florida. :/
Frank
That’s generous of you, Juan. But me?–I think he has a lousy memory coupled with not knowing what he’s talking about most of the time.
Alice
Don’t forget Occam’s razor Professor. Simplest explanation that fits the facts — the man is a moron.
No, Dr Cole, I must respectfully disagree. To do otherwise would be to supposit he in fact has a morally compass and something known as a “conscience”, both utterly impossible for members of the Jew/”Christian”/Muslim/Mormon Cult of Male Domination.
I think he just drank a little too much Kool-Aid.
Do you really think Rick Perry has enough brains in his head to be fully conscious, much less have a conscience?
Really, it’s like expecting a nematode to have an opinion, or thinking a spider capable of empathy for flies.
“I think it was a bad conscience that produced the gaffe.”
The thought does you credit, but you give Perry entirely too much credit, and you do so in the face of far too much evidence which contradicts your position.
That proves it! Perry is a Bush clone.
I think you give him too much credit. To the extent he has a conscience, I doubt it would be troubled by something like this. I imagine his big money owners, particularly in the energy bidness have convinced him that climate change is a hoax.
Most of what the Energy Dept. does is mind the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons and related research labs. A relatively small part of the budget goes to research into alternative energy technologies, although that does seem to be a major interest of Sec. Chu. It seems unlikely that Perry knows any of this. It just makes good fodder for conservative voters because Carter created the Energy Dept. and OBVIOUSLY the government has no business mucking around in the energy industry’s business. So off with their heads!
By the way, the debate was in Michigan, not Florida.
Thanks for pointing out the DOE/nukes connection, Kelly! It seems to be something that very few Americans are aware of – least of all Republicans and the reactionary right.
“Well, I’m out of ammunition on that one.” -Admiral Stockdale
Next debate is in Myrtle Beach, SC, only about 10 miles from me. Being a red state, there will be some tea party members and GWBush holdovers who will be excited to see The Herminator, Magic underwear Romney and Rick (hic) Perry, try to top one another on how badly they want to attack Iran.
I think it was the EPA’s revenge.
To all you commentors:
I don’t give a damn about any of the Republicans candidates.
Almost all the Democrats and Republicans are liars, puppets for the 1%’ers, the Dictators. Both Parties are dying.
What alternative parties and candidates would represent the 99%’ers?
You have to be crazy to listen to the childish debates.
Very Rough Draft of Intelligent Debate Format, the times are estimates.
1. Specific debate topics are given to candidates two or more weeks before debate. They can therefore prepare their succinct and complete answers with charts, etc. Number of topics would be on the order of three to five.
2. A three person referee team to turn off candidate’s microphone when “not staying on topic per their submitted answer”, not answering questions from other candidates”, being deceitful, rambling on or telling lies.
3. Perhaps to avoid rambling on, the candidates must submit their answers to the debate topics a week in advance of the debate to a committee to check that the answers are pertinent and not political crap.
4. Each candidate is given 5 minutes to present their prepared answers to the debate’s main subjects.
5. Each candidate is given 2 minutes to answer each live question from other candidates.
6. All candidates will be sitting down and have an assistant to facilitate live answers. The assistant would have communication with a group that works on answers, off stage.
7. The debate would be at least 2 hours long and maybe 3 hours. The American people deserve real, honest debates. Not the crap of most political parties..
Get the picture ?
Enough reality for the Day.
I personally think it was G_D that done it — sending us all a message that we better stop listening up to a bunch of false profits, prophets, whatever… You can be damn sure his campaign manager yelled “Jayzus Chrahst, Perry, what in the name of Holy He-ell came over you?”
Dr. Cole, I think you might be onto something here. I too am often tempted to deride the intelligence of Republicans like so many of the comments here. But I also know that human beings are rarely as simple as we often assume. I think we rarely know why we do what we do, in the moment that we do it… even those who appear to hold consistently retrograde political positions; maybe especially those folks – do things that are influenced by unconscious conflicts.
I remember how, when GWB was trying to appear ‘sincere’ was usually when he stumbled the worst, and telegraphed that he didn’t believe what he wanted us to believe he believed…
I like the notion of bad conscience regarding Perry’s DOE lapse. I do think he has a conscience, but that he thinks he is ITS master rather than the other way around. Ergo, it exerts itself in a very timely way (during the debate) in order to remind Perry that his stranglehold on his conscience is not as airtight as he thought.
Also, part of Perry’s mind thinks that eliminating the DOE “goes without saying”!
Perry doesn’t believe anything he says, and doesn’t say anything the same from one year to the next. His whole right-wing extremist act started after he had a hard time winning against novelty act Kinky Friedman, in an election that was all jokes, no ideology. He was a Democrat until he could no longer win that way. A True Believer would never had flubbed the recitation of his sacred enemies list.
Abolish Commerce? That was Hoover’s post before he became President. So Perry is to the right of Herbert Hoover?
I suspect he also doesn’t believe in anything he doesn’t say
The Freudian concept of suppressed memory and the more recent idea of multiple personality disorder, make great fodder for producing cheap TV and movie plots, but that’s about all. Unfortunately, memory really doesn’t work that way. The reason PTSD is so horrific is that we can’t suppress those memories; the way the mind really works is quite the opposite. (There’s some new work on PTSD memories in which drugs that suppress memory formation are given and the patient is asked to recall the stressor events. If the timing is right, the memory doesn’t get resaved, and recall is way less vivid.)
Besides, the idea of a conservative with a concience is even further out there in the outer limits of scifi.
I think I know who will appear on the cover of this year’s Texas Monthly “Bum Steer” awards.
Okay, watching Perry make a fool of himself (again) was all very entertaining, but it’s not like he had much of a chance before the debate either. Meanwhile, Europe is on the verge of imploding financially, and threatens to bring about global recession. Did this come up in the debates?
Republicans only talk about Europe to blame everything on socialism. Since the implosion was caused by the American-style financial excesses of countries that the Bush Administration praised as “the New Europe”, plus old capitalist stooge Britain, there will be no truths told on this subject.
That’s like trying to get anyone important to admit that China has been propping up the US with massive loans and becoming the engine of the global economy.