Rick Perry Still in This Thing, Because Governing Texas Is So Last Summer

The night after finishing fifth place in Iowa, ahead of now-quitter Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, one of the most subdued dudes (subdudes!) ever, was up running around a lake in serious winter running gear, his hair as unkempt and fluffy as a lamb's. He tweeted something about training for a marathon? And it included this photo, complete with a thumbs-up sign, which is what people do when things aren't good enough that they can just stand there looking cocksure. Actually the marathon is the race for the Republican presidential nomination, which he is still running in, get ittttttttt. The lieutenant governor of Texas must be thrilled.

But anything to keep the poll numbers dispersed enough to keep everyone feeling dejected about their chances. As lots of people have been noting today, Santorum's one-state approach is super trendy right now, never mind that, arriving in the state today, Rick Perry will only have 17 days to charm South Carolina into googling him for the first time, not the seeming eons that Santorum has spent pandering around Iowa.

Not to mention that in Iowa Tuesday night, Perry decided again   to remind us in his post-caucus speech that "this" -- the presidential race -- "wa'int my purpose in life." WE GET IT. And it's not like you don't have a JOB. Your job even has a website with a lot of business-y looking stock photos.

But now that the Santorum Approach is here, the typers of the Internet (and at least one member of Team Perry) are having a hard time believing that the Santorum Approach will not work for Huntsman in New Hampshire and Perry in South Carolina and Buddy Roemer in Fiji. All we know for sure right now is that the only thing we can truly count on for words of all persuasions is Twitter -- "Phone messages left with [Perry's] campaign were not immediately returned Wednesday." [CS Monitor]