Perry Goofs Again...and Again

A candidate with a reputation for smarts can withstand the occasional gaffe. But once people start questioning the candidate's intelligence, each new mistake becomes another bit of evidence. CNN reports:

Rick Perry sought to defend a recent gaffe in an interview Wednesday, but in the same appearance made another.

On Tuesday, the Republican presidential candidate incorrectly said the voting age in the U.S. is 21 instead of 18 and that the 2012 presidential election is on Nov. 12 instead of Nov. 6, mistakes Perry characterized as human error.

"Look I'm a human being … I'm going to make some mistakes from time to time in my remarks," Perry said on Fox News.

He added that the focus on his missteps is an effort to distract from his policy proposals.

"When someone doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues, when they don't want to talk about the flat tax that I've laid out, when they don't want to talk about major overhaul of Washington, D.C. like going to a part-time Congress, which most of the states operate very well with, they want to find some little error that you've made and go talk about that," Perry said.

But in the same interview, in which Perry appeared from New Hampshire, the Texas governor incorrectly identified the state's early voting contest as "caucuses" instead of a "primary."

"Americans haven't decided yet at all who they want to lead the Republican nomination and we're going to be talking about that, we're going to be talking about it in harsh and strong terms over the course of the next four to five weeks are we get ready for those New Hampshire caucuses," Perry said.