Randi Rhodes: Perry Retreats

Rick Perry announced today that he is leaving the race. You know what that means—tomorrow Rick Perry will announce that he is staying in the race. Rick Perry’s campaign has been so full of mistakes and flubs that, frankly, I’m a little worried about whether or not he’s going to be able to find his way home. We’re going to miss you, Rick. If dead campaigns had gravestones, this one’s would just read “Oops!”

Perry has endorsed Newt Gingrich. Newt stands a good chance of picking up Rick Perry’s supporters... both of them, if he’s lucky. The amazing thing when you look at it is that Gingrich seems to be in big trouble... and Romney also seems to be in big trouble. The candidates can’t ALL be in big trouble. I mean, somebody has to win, right? Well, maybe not...

The Republicans have finally picked their winner in Iowa... and they say that it’s nobody. I think they got it right—given what we’ve seen of the candidates in the Republican field, the only truly correct choice is to throw your hands in the air and give up. Republican officials in Iowa have announced that they can’t determine an actual winner because results from eight precincts cannot be located. Cannot be located? Rule number one in counting votes—when you’re done, keep the votes, at least for a little while. Oh, and it’s nice if you make a note of where you put them.

After counting the votes that they managed to hang on to, it turns out that Rick Santorum is 34 votes ahead. Rick Santorum moved quickly to declare victory. Can you blame him? It’s the only chance he’s going to have to declare victory for the rest of his life. But there is no official winner in Iowa. That’s appropriate. In the long run, it was just an election to choose a loser anyway. Bottom line—Iowans can’t count for crap, and Republicans don’t count for crap.

As a Floridian, I’m gratified that somebody finally showed they can screw up an election even worse than we did. Yes, we had those crazy butterfly ballots. But we did manage to hang on to them, even after election night. At least in Florida in 2000, after all the fuss, we had a clear cut winner—and then the Supreme Court picked the other guy. But that wasn’t our doing.

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A good day for Newt; a bad day for Romney - which makes it even a better day for Newt! And then this happened...

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