Maine has spoken! Across the lobster-ravaged wastes of frozen Maine, residents donned their colorful voting costumes and emerged from their moose-fur yurts to vote in the Republican caucus. Unlikeable Massachusetts protocol droid Willard “10K” Romney eked out a narrow win over accursed 3000-year-old gold-wraith Ron Paul for the fickle loyalty of the crustacean-worshipping Maineacs. Hobo-busker “Shoeless Dick” Santorum, fresh off his triple victories in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado, came in third. Grumpy and irrelevant space-beast Newton Leroy Gingrich came in fourth.
Gingrich had waged a half-hearted campaign in Maine. He went there largely to fill his maw with seafood, not out of any anticipation of victory. “My friends,” the disgraced former House Speaker told the disinterested Saturday lunch crowd at Kap’n Klaws in Houlton, engaging in a bit of hyperbole, since he did not actually like any of the patrons, “we face a choice. A choice between democracy and tyranny, a choice between cocktail sauce and tarter sauce, a choice between a Taxachusetts liberal secular robot, and a REAL conservative Reaganite leader…”
“Like Ron Paul!” shouted out a Birkenstock salesman with a mouth full of lobster roll.
“Ron Paul! Praise unto his name!” cried a potato farmer who liked weed. Other diners who liked weed started chanting “Ron Paul! Ron Paul!”
“BLEEARGH!” shrieked the vile space-gangster, waving his fore-appendages in rage. His mighty jowls trembled in fury, spraying the crowded diner with chowder and loser-froth. “SILENCE! Only I, Newton Leroy Gingrich am fit to lead! A leader who KNOWS how to eat a LOBSTER! KNEEL BEFORE ME! CHURLS! BAH!” He heaved his bulk out of the diner and into the snowy street. The cold makes him wince. His victory sacs are dried up and painful, exuding a stench of failure and partially digested seafood. He is a miserable space slug. He came in last.
“Shoeless Dick” Santorum, the hobo senator, had had a wild week. He had hitch-hiked into Colorado with a battered pawn-shop guitar, wearing only a stolen hotel towel and a scratchy Salvation Army blanket. Using a combination of pluck, conservative clap-trap, folk songs, and America’s natural revulsion of Willard Romney, “Shoeless Dick” scored the first trifecta of the campaign season, winning Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota. He was a winner again! Of course, then the campaign moved to Maine, a caucus state that Ron Paul had been harassing relentlessly as part of his strategy to lose do well in every caucus, and that’s in the Northeast, Romney’s back yard. (Romney has many houses, so a surprising amount of the country is in his back yard). Shoeless Dick busked for votes, but it was not to be. He came in third. “Shit,” he told a crowd of supporters outside a coffee house near Portland, “it’s all good. Let Willard have his little victories. He paid enough for ’em! We’re doing good, though. It’s a two man race, now, me and Willard! And he’s getting desperate! We’re getting to him! He’s telling people I’m not conservative enough! What a laugh! Ol’ Willard wouldn’t know a real conservative if one bit him on his shiny golden ass! SCREW HIM IN THE FACE! First they laugh at you, then they throw shit at you, then you get drunk, and THEN YOU WIN!”
Like a cold, dark wind, the undying spirit of torment stoner-hobos call Ron Paul blew across the lobster-ravaged wastes of Maine, summoning all who would heed his call of gibberish and gold. Gold drives him, drives him, drives him ever onward. Cursed by Osiris, doomed to wander the earth until the lost temple gold is recovered, he addressed his followers at a cavernous lobster containment facility in Bangor. “My children!” he croaked, mandibles clacking optimistically, “our message of gold and freedom is spreading!” His skeletal fingers moved rhythmically, casting eldritch charms in the frigid air. “With your help, we can recover the lost gold and keep the Old Dark Ones at bay! To victory, and death!” The crowd, redolent of patchouli and gun-oil, clapped enthusiastically. He came in second. He has yet to win one of these.
Romney claimed victory Saturday evening, and greeted supporters in Bangor via a live feed from Castle Romney, high in the Utah Alps. His terrifyingly large visage on the jumbotron in the Bangor Hyatt filled the hall full of superstitious crustacean-worshipers with dread. Wearing a freshly-oiled human-skin mask, the charmless former governor initiated standard victory protocols, while the seafood-fearing rubes gaped in horror. You can tell when he wins because he wears a tie and his hair has been freshly Rogained. With herky-jerky Threepio gestures, Romney tossed a word-salad of random Obama criticism. “Socialist welfare Europe! Military so strong no one et cetera!” he droned. He’s inspiring, unless you’ve heard any other person give a speech. You know that thing Bill Clinton could do, where he seemed to be talking right AT YOU? Romney is the opposite of that. He’s talking to the Evil Universe version of you, in some parallel dimension you can’t see. Don’t turn around, there’s nothing there.
The next clown show is Feb. 28, when the squatters in Michigan’s post-apocalyptic ruins vote, along with the venom-addled rattlesnake merchants of Arizona. “Shoeless Dick” Santorum is practicing some new numbers, including, sources say, covers of “Norwegian Wood” and “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Previous primary recaps are here: Missouri/Minnesota/Colorado, Nevada, Florida, South Carolina, New Hampshire
