Rick Perry can't name the Supreme Court justices no matter how many there are

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it:

During a meeting with the Des Moines Register editorial board on Friday, Rick Perry asserted there were eight justices on the Supreme Court and mispronounced Sonia Sotomayor's name.

Perry defended his error on Fox News [yesterday] morning, telling host Chris Wallace that he hasn't "memorized" the names of all nine Supreme Court justices. He went on to claim that voters "are not looking for a robot that can spit out the name of every Supreme Court justice, someone that is going to be perfect in every way."

Voters aren't looking for a robot, to be sure, and don't expect perfection, but most of them do expect their elected leaders, and particularly the president, to be on the ball, to have fairly broad knowledge of political things, and, yes, to know who sits on the Supreme Court.

And don't Republicans love that joke about how President Obama can't speak without a teleprompter? (A ridiculous joke with no basis in reality, of course, but it makes Republicans' sides split, and Newt has been using it to help make the case that he's the best Republican candidate to debate Obama, as he's supposedly knowledgeable where the president needs to read from a script.)

Once upon a time, such an embarrassing uh-oh moment for Perry would have been significant. But he's had so many of these moments over the past several months that really nothing he says now can lower his image even among conservatives. He's just not relevant anymore, and hasn't been for some time. No one seriously thinks he's going to win the Republican presidential nomination, let alone the presidency, and no one is taking him at all seriously anymore, at least outside of his inner circle and delusional hardcore support base, as small as that is.

So he's an idiot. We just keep getting more and more confirmation of that basic fact. Otherwise, who cares

(Still, it's all fairly amusing, not least because he used to be the frontrunner, and even the likely nominee given his right-wing cred. Remember?)