PERRIN WITHDRAWS FROM THE RACE

In a stunning eleventh hour development, Family Values candidate Dr. Carl Perrin has withdrawn from the presidential election.

Perrin admitted that he had known for a long time that he didn’t have much chance to win the election. Why, then, bother even to withdraw at this late date?

“Although I knew I couldn’t win,” the candidate told our reporter, “I do have a big following. I was afraid that my supporters would draw votes away from Obama and throw the election to McCain and the moose lady.” I didn’t want to the American people what Ralph Nader did in 2000. I didn’t want to have that on my conscience.

“I want to thank all the people who supported my campaign, especially all those Mainers who raised money for me by picking up returnable cans and bottles. I hope I will be able to work with President Obama to keep cheap beer flowing to American men and women.

“I wish Obama well, and I have confidence that he will be an outstanding president. But if I am disappointed, I will be around for the next election. I will be only 82 in 2012. Don’t forget Konrad Adenauer was Chancellor of Germany until the age 87.”

EBEN DANFORTH ENDORSES OBAMA

Former supporters of Family Values candidate Dr. Carl Perrin are deserting him in large numbers and switching their allegiance to Barack Obama. Even longtime friends and family are leaving him in the lurch.

On in-law who refused to be named said, “Carl never had a chance. He thinks he’s such a smarty pants, but when you get right down to it, he don’t know shit.”

A former Perrin supporter from Madawaska told us, “He made a mistake in choosing Rosie Thibideau for a running mate. I mean Rosie’s a great gal, and she’s the best damn mechanic in Madawaska, but she shouldn’t be a heart beat away from a 78-year-old president.”

Even Eben Danforth from Grangely, Maine, told us he was going to vote for Obama. Perrin was flabbergasted when he learned this. “Eben Danforth!” he said. “He’s a literary character. I invented him. He can’t vote for Barack Obama!”

At this point things look grim for the Family Values candidate.

THIBIDEAU WANTS MONEY FOR NEW CLOTHES

Family Values Vice Presidential candidate Rosie Thibdeau wants the party to spend some money for new clothes for her. Noting that the Republican campaign spent $150,000 for fancy new duds for Sarah Palin, Thibeau says, “If the Family Values party wants to win, they have to look like winners.”

Rosie acknowledges that the FV campaign is way behind in the polls, even behind Ralph Nader. “But if we have any hope of winning,” she says, “we have to look like winners.”

Ms Thibideau does not plan to spend her clothing allowance at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue like the Republican VP candidate, nor does she does she expect or even want $150,000 to spend on clothes. “If I could get a couple of thousand, I could get me a real fancy wardrobe. I’d get the clothes at Walmart, just like I always do.”

LET’S HEAR IT FOR FAMILY VALUES

Florida congressman Tim Mahoney was elected in 2006 to replace disgraced congressman Mark Foley. Foley gave up his reelection campaign and resigned his seat after his naughty messages to male congressional pages were made public. In his campaign for the congress, Mahoney promised that no one would catch him doing what Foley had done.

True to his word, Congressman Mahoney kept his escapades strictly heterosexual. A few days ago news of his affair with a campaign aide became public. While he was running on a family values campaign to replace Mark Foley, he was conducting a little extra-curricular thing with campaign aide Patricia Allen. Later he spent over $140,000 to keep Allen from blabbing about their activities.

Now it comes out that his wife and Ms Allen were not enough to keep him satisfied. It seems that Mahoney had an affair with a “high-ranking Martin County official” in 2007. This was while he was lobbying FEMA to reimburse Martin County for damage caused by hurricanes. Obviously Mahoney is a man who knows how to mix business with pleasure.

The congressman says that his wife has known about the affairs for several months, the payoff money did not come from campaign contributions, and he did nothing illegal. That’s reassuring. For while we thought that the family values crusader had done something wrong.

Mahoney admits that he had "multiple" other affairs, though he couldn't say how many, because he had lost count. "You're asking me over a lifetime?” he asked. “I'm just saying I've been unfaithful and I'm sorry for that.”

SAVE US FROM McCAIN’S ECONOMIC PLAN

We talked with Maxine Pelletier of Westbrook, ME, a single working Mom. Ms Pelletier is a lifelong Republican who plans to vote for John McCain. The main reason for her voting decision, she says, is that Obama is going to raise taxes, and McCain isn’t. “We don’t need anymore taxes,” she says.

“You must be doing pretty well at your job waiting on table at the Westbrook Diner,” we said. "The taxes will be raised on people making over a quarter of a million dollars a year.”

She conceded that she wouldn’t come anyway near that much money, but there are other parts of McCain’s tax plan, she insisted.

“You mean like cutting the tax on capital gains. You must have done pretty well in the stock market.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “Where would I get money to put in the stock market? But I like what Senator McCain says about eliminating burdensome regulations on business?”

“The country wouldn’t be in the mess it is today if the Bush administration had applied more regulation on the4 housing and credit businesses.”

“Well, McCain is going to give us a $5,000 medical tax credit.”

“He’s also going to tax the cost of the medical insurance your company pays. It will end up costing you more for insurance.”

“Anyway, I trust his judgment.”:

“Sarah Palin.”

PERRIN DEFENDS RUNNING MATE

Detractors have criticized Family Values candidate Dr Carl Perrin’s choice of running mate, Rosie Thibideau of Madawaska, ME. Yesterday Perrin came out with a strong defense of Thibideau.

While conceding that Ms Thibideau did not go to college, he pointed out that she earned a GED from Madawaska High School. Until her deadbeat husband abandoned her, she home schooled her three children. After that she was elected to the Madawaska School Board, where she served for two years. “She knows a lot more about education than a lot of college graduates,” the former English professor asserted.

Thibideau is a single mom, working as a mechanic to support her three children. Many Madawaskans insist, doggone it, that she is the best mechanic in town.

Living right on the border of Canada, Rosie has first-hand insights to foreign relations. In fact she has relatives in Canada. She even does a lot of her shopping in Canada, so she understands currency exchanges.

Her brother-in-law is a noncommissioned officer in the Maine National Guard, so she can get the straight dope from him about military matters.

“Is Rosie Thibideau ready to serve as president if the need arises?” Perrin asks rhetorically. “You betcha, she is,” he answers.

CHENEY: SARAH GOES TOO FAR

According to Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin has the stuff to be a great vice president. “She knows how to hit those Democrats where it hurts,” Cheney chuckled. I really like some of the things she has said like, ‘As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border.’ We need people who think like that,” the VP added.

“She had some good things to say how much we’re doing for children in our neighboring country of Afghanistan. And she hit it right on the head about the Supreme Court when Katie Couric asked her to name a court decision other than Rode v. Wade: ‘Well, let's see. There's -- of course -- in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings.’ -- “She really put Couric in her place.

“I think she went too far, though when she said Obama was palling with terrorists who target their own country. I don’t mind her throwing out wild charges like that, but you have to be careful or the liberal media will jump all over you, and that doesn’t help us at all.”

REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTS

You have to hand it to those Republican presidents. Since Reagan they really know how to pick a vice president. George H W Bush chose Dan Quayle as his running mate. What better insurance could he have against assassination? Who would be wacky enough to try to murder Bush if that left Quayle in charge of the country? The guy isn’t smart enough to run a lemonade stand, to say nothing of the country.

Then Bush junior went dad one better in choosing Dick Cheney as his vice president. Anyone who hated Bush the younger enough to contemplate assassination would have to consider what the country would be like with Cheney at the helm in name as well as in deed.

We might have thought that this weird kind of assassination insurance was just something that the Bushes practiced, but John McCain evidently thinks it’s a great idea too. He chose a running mate who combines Quayle’s cluelessness with Cheney’s ruthlessness. God help the country if she ever had to replace the 72-year-old John McCain.