WTF?

Rick Perry's latest ad:



There are a couple of things I find entertaining. One is the football player kneeling, Tebow-style, in pouring rain, backlit, with nothing else around. I just don't get that. Second, WTF is up with the Gadsden flag flying above the South Carolina flag in this ad? Is this some crazy South Carolina thing (Gadsden being from South Carolina)? Or is this what I thought it was, a ludicrous appeal to Tea Party loons, who love to self-identify by flying the Gadsden flag (which I appreciate, so that I know never to take anything someone flying the flag says seriously)?

My main takeaway from this ad is how absolutely moronic does a politician have to be to become irrelevant in the current GOP field when he is the governor of a state which has created at least 1/3 of all the jobs created in the entire country during the recession? The only logical Republican attack of the president was on jobs and the economy, and the candidate with the best record on that is too stupid for an anti-intellectual crowd of flat Earth loons is quite a statement.