Chris Cilizza of WaPo put together his list and awarded the Worst Candidate in the World (actually, they call it the Fixy) to one of the GOP’s professional whakos — Rick Perry.
Remember back to the late summer of 2011. Perry entered the race with what looked like a straight path to frontrunner status. He was a conservative’s conservative with a proven record of doing what he said in Texas. He was a fundraising powerhouse. He had a charisma that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney lacked. It was all there for the taking.
Until, it became clear that the idea of Rick Perry running for president was very different than the reality of Rick Perry running for president. While Perry began strong with a much-touted appearance in Waterloo, Iowa, that single event wound up being the best moment of a campaign whose trajectory was almost entirely downward.
Perry *was* pretty bad, but for my money the worst of them was Herman Cain. A chief executive of one of the worst pizza companies on the planet whose appeal to the wingnuts he was courting was that he could sing gospel music and he was a black man repeating conservative gospel. Gospel nicely represented by that 999 plan — not tethered to either reality or math, it was hugely popular among the GOP base without a good acquaintance with either. Never mind that the man didn’t know a thing about governing, foreign affairs, laws, the Constitution. For a hot minute, the GOP thought they found their blackface to save them.
So what do you think? Who was the Worst Candidate in the World in 2012? Be sure to tell us why in the comments.