For those of you who’ve been reading my diaries on Texas Secessionist-in-Chief Rick Perry and wondering whether I’ve just been spending a little too much time dehydrated in the Texas heat and drought, here’s a real expose for you, from Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: Best Little Whore in Texas
If anything, you can see that my little diatribes were only skimming the surface of the Perry empire of evil. Now that Matt’s laid this out in stunning detail, perhaps our “lamestream” media will get the idea that this is one scary hombre. His GOP opponents will certainly find a massive arsenal of smoking guns in Matt’s article. No wonder Rick has decided that it might be time to skip future debates. There’s a lot to answer for, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to have to face the music. Better he should keep spending his time at deep-pocket donor events and avoid his opponents, his constituents, and the press.
Matt's expose is v-e-r-y long, so for those of you pressed for time, the Houston Chronicle Blog has provided this nice summary
On Perry’s personal characteristics:
• “Exceedingly well-groomed, but also ashen and exhausted, like a funeral director with a hangover.”
• “Tall, perma-tanned, Bible-clutching Southerner with front-runner hair and the build of a retired underwear model.”
• “On the human level he is a nonpersonality, an almost perfect cipher – a man whose only discernible passion is his extreme willingness to be whatever someone will pay him to be, or vote for him to be.”
• “Rick Perry brings shallow to a new level. He is very gifted in that regard. He could be the Adolf Hitler of shallow.”
Hey, don't mince words, Matt... tell us how you really feel about the guy.
On Perry’s ethics:
• “The candidate who is exponentially more willing than we’ve ever seen before to whore himself out for that money.”
• “A human price tag.”
• “Rick Perry has managed to set a scary new low in the annals of opportunism, turning Texas into a swamp of political incest and backroom dealing on a scale not often seen this side of the Congo or Sierra Leone.”
Texas is just the laboratory where Rick has concocted his plan to turn America into a massive pay-to-play empire, where everything - and everyone - has its price. Remember: he told the national debate audience that he'd be "insulted" if someone offered him $5,000. Now you can see why. That's just the price for getting his aide to return your phone call.
On Perry’s ups and downs in the presidential campaign:
• “The governor went from presumptive front-runner to stammering talk-show punch line seemingly in the speed of a single tweet.”
• “Perry has mainly distinguished himself with a kind of bipolar wildness in the debates: sullen and reserved one moment, strident and inarticulate the next. He sweats profusely. He can’t stand still. When he does manage to get off a zinger, he cracks a smug grin, looking like he’s just sewn up the blue ribbon in a frat-house dong-measuring contest.”
• “One of the all-time great marketing scams, a breathtaking high-wire act by a man who if nothing else certainly has the gigantic balls required for the most powerful job in the world.”
If you've read my diaries, and Matt's article, you can see that Rick has plenty to be nervous about. That closet full of skeletons, for one. So far, he's been successful in doling out hush money or otherwise keeping that giant Texas walk-in closet locked down tight, but with Halloween around the corner...
On Perry’s rise to power:
• “The descriptions of Perry’s early political career all sound like the early chapters of true-crime books about serial killers, where nobody notices anything special about the protagonist until the bodies start piling up along the local riverbank.”
• “Favors are the one consistent thread running through Perry’s political career. Throughout his time as governor, whenever his ideology or his religion comes into conflict with the need to give a handout to a major campaign donor, ideology and religion lose every single time.”
You really must take a look at Matt's article. If nothing else, you'll realize that I wasn't kidding about Rick Perry. It really is that bad... and probably worse.
11:26 AM PT: Thanks for getting this onto the "rec" list! I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am blessed with the most intelligent, insightful, witty, literate, and good-looking commenters on DailyKOS!