Rick Perry and the torture of conservatives

Did Rick Perry’s new tax plan include a provision about the president’s
birth certificate and his college grades? Actually not, I assume, but
Perry’s bungling of his tax announcement made him look like a buffoon
and illustrates the crisis of conservatives in the 2012 campaign. Only
Ron Paul is a serious conservative with serious ideas. Trump, Gingrich,
Perry, and Herman (“I was pro-choice on Friday and pro-life on
Saturday”) Cain look like revolving-door class clowns.

It is torture time for conservatives in the presidential campaign. They
do not have one serious candidate on the conservative side except for
Paul, whom the rest of them, in truth, have contempt for and find
threatening.

In the end, the party will force-feed Mitt Romney to the conservatives and they will be stuck with him. True conservatives would rather be tortured by waterboarding than be forced to tell voters how much they admire Mitt Romney.

Rick Perry looked ridiculous trapping himself in birther talk, which drowned out his tax plan, while the new CBS poll had him at only 6 percent. Perry reminded me of the movie producer in “The Godfather” shortly before he woke up to the horse’s head, who said: “A man in my position cannot afford to look ridiculous.” Perry looked ridiculous. Again.

Perhaps it is time for a conservative movement to draft Dick Cheney for president.

It would be poetic justice if America’s chief advocate for torture was asked to save conservatives from being tortured by having to pretend they want Mitt Romney to be president.