Tales From The Bunkhouse

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Suddenly, all that crap flinty Rick Perry's been spewing on his roundabout way to the White House seems irrelevant, like the noisy crowing of a rooster without a henhouse, like the bluster of a rancher with no cattle, like the bragging of a closeted Gay man still talking about sexy, well-hipped babes.

Rick Perry has dropped dramatically from the short list of serious contenders for the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination. In one fell swoop during last Thursday's candidate debate in Orlando, Florida, Perry went from Darling to Dumbass of the GOP. What happened?

This was the candidate so many Republicans felt was "The One," that savior who could not only arrive with the confidence of a big, fat thug showing up at a Quinceanera, but could articulate all that is wrong with America and the governing Democratic Party.

Now, barely 44 days after he entered the contest, Perry looks like a rural chump who dared to want inclusion in a club for elites. Perry, a low-achieving graduate of Texas A&M, has made a mini-fortune as governor of Texas, but nowhere near the cash principal opponent Mitt Romney has in his personal wallet. Same for brains, apparently.

Perry stumbled and stammered his way through semi-tough questions asked of him during the debate about immigration and foreign policy. He is simply out of his mental element, a man able to dress the part, but never complete the spiffy image of a wordly gentleman. He is a farm boy from Paint Rock, Texas now clearly exhibiting his desire to be the poster boy for the Peter Principle, the one that says you rise to your level of incompetency. Perry couldn't carry a public school teacher's lunch pail, much less hope to gauge classroom competency, as he and his so-called conservative bunch like to do when looking for crap to throw on the state's public schools system. Sadly, or perhaps providentially, Perry has been exposed.

So much for an Aggie in the White House. My feeling on that is that if we were to ever consider an Aggie for president, that Aggie would have been John David Crow, the school's legendary halfback. Perry, a cheerleader at A&M, is no John David Crow.

It'll be interesting to see where he goes after his horrible performance at Thursday's debate. He simply blew it. An exploding balloon has not seen air sucked out of it as fast as air has been sucked out of Rick Perry's campaign. That money he's been attracting as a frontrunner for the nomination will dry-up faster than a brisket fart in a West Texas summer when his backers realize that they have bet on a losing horse.

But, well, he's an Aggie.

We're sure there are many good Aggies in Texas, but, dang it, I can't help but know that Texas A&M has just seceded from the Big 12 Conference and thrown its lot with the Southeastern Conference. What is it about that word and these Aggies? Secession is something Rick Perry threw out liberally during his Summer of Tea Party loving. He teased them with the idea that Texas could leave the United States. Or was he teasing? A&M wasn't teasing; they're gone from the Big 12. I dunno, I dunno. Maybe it is as some say; that, well, Perry started out as a Democrat and still retains a taste for that party, what with his support of the Dream Act and lower college tuition for children of undocumented Americans and his opposition to a border fence along the Mexican border.

It could be that Perry is perhaps seeking the wrong party's nomination.

But, then, he'd have had to take on another Harvard graduate in that one in President Obama.

Man, oh, man. Maybe it's true: Some cowboys can only dream of getting the gal and the horse at the end of the movie...

- 30 -