I’ll admit to a letting out a chuckle when I heard the report.
It dealt with whether former Texas Gov. Rick Perry cast a vote in the March 1 Texas Republican Party primary election.
He made a big show of his endorsement of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a fellow Texan, for the GOP presidential nomination. He joined other political leaders in urging other Texans to get out and vote for their candidate.
Then, lo and behold, it turns out no record of “James Richard Perry” voting has turned up in Fayette County, where Rick and Anita Perry now reside.
My first instinct was to think the worst: The former governor was upset at having to drop out of the race a second time because Republican voters around the country didn’t love him as much as Texas Republicans have shown they do. He became governor in 2000 and served longer in that office than anyone in state history.
Then he endorsed Cruz, one of the nemeses on this year’s GOP campaign trail.
Maybe, I figured, he just said “Aww, to heck with it. No one’ll know the difference.”
Then my more compassionate side kicked in.
Perhaps the ballot was simply lost in the mail. Stuff happens, right?
But why this ballot? Why this man’s ballot? Of all the ballots to lose in the mail, it just had to be the one belonging to the Pride of Paint Creek, the state’s record-setting former governor and two-time Republican presidential candidate.
Is the mail carrier a mole for the Democratic Party? Might he have tossed the ballot when no one was looking?
Well, of course not. It’s just kind of fun to speculate on the absurd.
I am now prepared to give Gov. Perry the benefit of the doubt. He voted. The ballot got lost.
Someone, somewhere within the U.S. Postal Service probably should be offering up a contrite “oops.”