Perry Watch - "Bum Steer" Edition

Dec 16th, 2011

As much as I am still trying to come to grips with the lunatic display that was last night's GOP "debate" (we live-blogged it HERE), it was more than clear that Perry is done.

I don't merely think that his political career is over nationally, I have been increasingly convinced that Texas is preparing to wash its hands of him altogether.

Apparent confirmation of this has arrived in the form of a humorous and rather popular annual dishonor bestowed by Texas Monthly. Yes, Perry was this year's recipient of their "Bum Steer Award." What makes it particularly notable is the fact that that TM spent a lot of this year not just reporting on but, also defending, their colorfully cashllenged governor. They address this:

"... when Perry launched his presidential campaign four and a half months ago, we felt compelled to defend him (a little) from the slings and arrows of a national press corps incapable of seeing a boot-wearing Texas governor as anything other than George W. Bush II. We’d had our differences with Perry, about whom senior executive editor Paul Burka wrote, back in May: “He excels at consolidating and maintaining power but not at using it to move Texas forward.” But now that the Texas-mocking Yankee press was approaching, what Texan did not want to circle the wagons?"

Much has changed.

"The end came swiftly, in a matter of seconds. Fifty-three of them, to be exact: the time it took the governor to go from trying in vain to name the third agency of government he would shutter as president to giving up and muttering—in a phrase that will surely go down, should his campaign expire, as its perfect epitaph—“Oops.” In that moment all our resistance melted away, and we rushed, shaking our heads in disbelief, into the arms of our unquestionable 2012 Bum Steer of the Year. We didn’t want to, but we had to."

If one has a heart, one has to feel at least some empathy for the Texans who mistaked Perry for a better man than he is