On Tuesday, at a rail yard hobo-camp near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, not far from where old Zebulon Romney sold loads of defective beans to Union Army quarter-masters during the Civil War, news spread like cholera or wildfire or some other fast-spreading thing that Richard “Shoeless Dick” Santorum, the hobo senator, was ending his presidential campaign. The senator, wearing his trademark overalls and clutching a Big Gulp cup full of gin and Sprite, spoke before a small crowd of hobos, tramps, pimps, train-whores, steampunks, and blood plasma merchants. Tears and gin streaked his grimy face.
“Shit,” Santorum told the crowd. “I’ve got seven goddamned kids. That’s a lot of goddamned kids. And that’s why I started running. All those goddamned kids. At first it was mostly to get AWAY from all those goddamn kids. Especially the middle one. Whatshername. Just turned fourteen, started dressing all what the kids call ‘goth’ and looks like Edward Goddamned Scissorhands. Which is stupid, because the Goths didn’t look like that! They were like Germans or Vikings or something! They sacked Rome! They looked like that sword dude that was in that Rings movie and the HBO throne thing, not Edward Goddamned Scissorhands!” [A Santorum spokesman later clarified that the senator was referring to actor Sean Bean, who played Boromir in “Lord of the Rings” and Eddard Stark in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” ] “Anyway, goddamned kids. That Motel Six in Des Moines looks mighty peaceful compared to a house with seven goddamned kids. But you know what? ” He paused for dramatic effect and slurped at his gin and Sprite.
“People started listening! People like YOU!” Santorum cried, pointing at a startled rail-pimp heating up stew over a can of Sterno. “I wasn’t just the guy you shouldn’t google! I was the guy with the message about important stuff! I was the only candidate with a conservative message! Well, the only one that wasn’t a tard.” [A Santorum spokesmen later apologized for use of the word ‘tard’ but insisted it was short for ‘tardy,’ and referred to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s chronic lateness due to his inability to tell time or recognize numbers]. “I was the only one who spoke out about important issues, like turtle marriage and lady-parts!”
“Now, I’ve hitch-hiked from one end of this country to the other. I’ve seen a thing or two. I saw the Overpig of the Iowa pig-men rise from his shit-lagoon and bemoan the direction this country is taking. ‘Senator,’ he said to me, ‘we need to change things. Fight for us, senator!’ I saw maple-miners in New Hampshire who couldn’t afford bear grease to cook their food, because beaver pelts are so expensive. I saw a merman roast a manatee. In Maine, I saw a lobster eat a man whole! [A Santorum spokesperson later clarified that the senator had not actually seen any of these things]. Maybe I ain’t a gold-plated man-bot or a space-pig or a dried up old mummy, but I care about America! I believe in an America where people are safe from giant sea bugs, and pig men can live their lives in peace! An America where God-fearing people are safe from blahs and guhs! An America where gin is plentiful and mustard is yellow! Not brown and French! An America where pregnant ladies have to stay pregnant no matter how much they might want to end being pregnant! Where they have to finish what they start! And so I am ending my campaign. Well, ‘suspending,’ which Stinky Pete’s lawyers tell me is campaign-lawyer-speak for quittin’ but keeping the money you raised. You know I hate aborting things, but I’m a man and sometimes men have to do that. I’m quitting. Suspending. Whatever. But I’ll be back! Twenty Sixteen, bitches! Thank you! God bless America! Gimme some of that stew!” With that, he wandered into the small crowd, shaking hands, eating stew, and asking various hobos if they’d like to be precinct captains in Iowa in 2016. He was last seen strumming chords from “The Times They Are A’changing.” The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast. The first one now will later be last.
And so, the primary season all but came to an end. In an empty boxcar on a west-bound freight headed for Iowa, a shoeless former senator picked at a pawnshop guitar, working out the chord changes to “Desolation Row.” At an exclusive resort, a corpulent former House Speaker floated listlessly in an empty pool. He is surprisingly graceful in the water. In a cavernous room in a cavernous mansion a former governor practices making human facial expressions in a mirror that once belonged to a French king. In the wastes of west Texas, a wraith that cannot die seeks gold and a solace he cannot find.
Santorum was once a serious threat to Willard Milburn Drysdale Romney. Back in February, in a room in the north tower of Castle Romney, hewn from the very living rock in the Utah Alps, depressed programmers listlessly ran futile debugging routines, cursing Santorum’s name. Romney had lost three contests to Santorum — Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado — on the terrible night his supporters called Romnarok. Top RomneyCorp cyberneticists were struggling to figure out why. Lowering the gaffe impedance caused unexpected spikes in unlikeability subroutines. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get Romney to stop sucking. Their science just wasn’t working.
In the castle’s chapel, under the soft glow of stained-glass windows depicting Zebulon Romney cavorting with the angel Mehoona, cheating Chinese railroad workers, and dancing with Chester Allen Arthur, sad-eyed Romney retainers shoveled money into ceremonial bronze money-burning urns and hoarsely croaked prayers to Mehoona, Zebulon Romney, and Ronald Reagan. The faintly creepy statue of Mehoona stared down on them reprovingly. The golden cask containing one of Reagan’s toe-bones sat inertly on the ornate altar. Magic wasn’t really working either. Their only hope was that Romney’s most dangerous opponent — Shoeless Dick — would somehow screw himself. After all, this had happened — let’s see, two, three, carry the one — about six times already. Fortunately for America’s most hapless aristodroid, that’s exactly what happened. After Super Tuesday, Santorum, presumably whacked out of his mind on gin and trucker-meth, told wee George Stephanopoulos on ABC that John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion and politics made him “want to throw up.” It was all down hill from there.
Romney would crush him like he had crushed serial adulterer and moon-colony fetishist Newton Leroy Gingrich. The disgraced former Speaker has gone from being God-Emperor of South Carolina to being the guy who tag-teams Ron Paul for last place. Dick Santorum’s potent message of shoelessness, folk songs, dog-whistles and gin-fueled claptrap had stolen the corpulent space-beast’s thunder. Gingrich hasn’t officially dropped out, but he’s not really in it to win it, any more. Gingrich is mostly staying in it to sample the nation’s regional delicacies, float in hotel pools, and sell cookbooks. And because he has a white-hot hatred of Willard Romney. Eventually more of his checks will start bouncing and he’ll have to slither home, too.
But for now, it’s time to say farewell to Dick Santorum. Rest in peace, Prince of Hobos. The nation’s gin-soaked drifters weep. May flights of contraceptive-free angels sing thee to thy rest. See you in four years, Shoeless Dick.
