GROVER’S GULCH, TEXAS — Former Texas governor and 2012 failed Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry thought his days of touring the countryside in his bus, pressing flesh, kissing babies, shaking hands, and forgetting the third agency of government he’d shut down if given the chance were behind him. “I was just milling around outside and I saw this big line of people I knew — Carly was there, the other Ricky was there, Teddy was standing there, and I even saw Lindsey and Hucky chuckling to themselves about something that weird son of Ron Paul’s had said. I assumed everyone was there for a sandwich, since that’s what most long lines I’ve ever encountered are for — sandwiches — so I got in line,” Perry told reporters later.
“But then, oops,” said Perry, “I found out it was actually a line to get on a bus — there were like 120 of them waiting for everyone to get on — that would take us to Shel Adelson’s place in Vegas, where we would line-up again.” Perry said that the bus travelers would then “get sixty seconds to tell Shel why he should give them butt loads of cash” and then “kiss his ring and hail his supremacy.”
Perry says that initially he wasn’t sure whether to stay on the bus once he found out where he and all 2,354 Republican contenders were headed. “I just wasn’t sure I wanted to go through all that hassle of running for president,” the Texan said. “I mean, you have to get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and remember not to sound stupid or uninformed the whole day. I’m a Texas Republican. Making stupid, ill-informed and hasty statements about stuff I should think about a little more first is just what I do!”
It was with the help of God and his financial advisers that convinced him that maybe 2016 could be better than 2012. “I spoke to the Almighty One True American God and do you know what he said to me,” Perry asked. “He said, ‘Ricky my man, do it! The country needs you to save it from the forces of equal love, equal opportunity, and equal treatment under the law for all. What kind of hippy-dippy bullshit is that?'” Then, Perry says, “my fiscal advisers told me that money is cool and stuff, and that if I kept running and running for the rest of my life I’d get this free money all the time, and all I have to do is pretend that the stuff I spend it on is for my super-serious presidential campaign.”
“So I decided, screw it, I’ll run for president again,” Perry told the press. “I went out and bought these fancy seein’ eye glasses, and I practiced my debating extra hard. I’ve slimmed down my choices of government agencies I’d shut down to two. The Department of Educationalism and…um…oh shucks! I did it again! Oops!” Perry told reporters that he was surprised once he got into the buses, “How many people could fit inside, even though from the outside the buses didn’t appear to be big enough to hold everyone but “once [he] got on, I saw there was plenty of room for everyone to put their makeup, rubber noses and big giant shoes on.”
Rick Perry was governor of the State of Texas from 2000-2015, having succeeded America’s most successful wartime and economics president, George W. Bush in that role. This will be Perry’s second presidential campaign, though he says he may have run a third time, but he just can’t remember when that was.
