Colorado has spoken! Oh, and so has Minnesota. Missouri also had a thing, but it’s meaningless yet important. A threefer! So, the Republican race so far — sweater-fetishist Dick Santorum won the near-worthless support of the foul pig-men of Iowa, Massachusetts fancy-lad man-bot Willard “10k” Romney won over the skeptical maple-miners of New Hampshire, loathsome space-beast Newton Leroy Gingrich bamboozled the bog-people and shrimp-herders of South Carolina, and the Massachusetts man-bot broke the tie by winning over the addled elders, ex-pat New Yorkers, and suspicious mer-people of Florida.
Santorum and Gingrich hoped to regain their lost momentum in the radioactive wastes of Nevada, but it was not to be. Romney’s Galactus-sized wallet was unstoppable. Now, matters get worse for people who do not sign their checks “Willard Mittens Romney.” We’re at the point where multiple states are voting in a single day, which is difficult for poorly-funded candidates like “Shoeless Dick” Santorum. But, amazingly — at least for this one night — Republicans’ revulsion with Romney was more powerful than his mighty wallet. Santorum won all three contests.
He needed a win. Nevada was just a disaster for Santorum. He was reduced to busking for dollars outside casinos, but his mixture of plaintive folk-tunes and strong conservative rhetoric translated to few votes. His clothes were stolen by street-toughs, and he finally gave up on the state, took his pawn-shop guitar and hitch-hiked to Colorado. The shabby former senator wandered from town to town, busking for dollars and gin, railing against Obamacare and hoping for a miracle from a god that seemed increasingly disinterested in him. He was later joined by campaign advisor Stinky Pete Johnson, whose whore-money super-PAC had financed Santorum’s ad campaign in Nevada. Fortified by Stinky Pete’s hardtack, salt-pork, whiskey, and ATM card, the two set out across Colorado’s craggy landscape looking for voters who hated Romney as much as they did. “Hell,” Santorum told a group of buffalo-skin-clad mountain-man re-enactors selling fake furs to tourists in Cripple Creek, “that shit-poke Mitt Romney is a goddamned socialist. You want that soggy piece of French toast to be president? Hell no! America needs a real conservative who won’t compromise his crazy-ass conservative ideals!”
After touring Colorado, Santorum hopped a freight bound for Kansas City, Missouri. He repeated his anti-Romney rhetoric to a group of sleepy-eyed hobos at a dawn rally in the Kansas City Freightyards. It was the first visit by a major presidential candidate to this hobo encampment since Joey “Stink Eye” Smiles’ unsuccessful bid for the 1948 Democratic nomination. Missouri was fertile ground for Santorum’s campaign, with its high hobo population, coupled with comically incompetent space-beast Newt Gingrich forgetting to get on the Missouri ballot. Outside of Branson, Santorum spoke to enthusiastic crowds of Ozark hillbillies, who greeted the shoeless overall-clad senator as one of their own. Romney, meanwhile, was blanketing the airways with ads that the cable-less hillbilly hollers could not see. Shoeless Dick Santorum stunned the Massachusetts Man-bot, winning Missouri by more than 30 points. Missouri mule-farmers turned out in overwhelming numbers for the barefoot senator. Romney didn’t win a single county in Missouri.
The hobo-senator was ecstatic, raising his gin-filled Big Gulp cup and swinging his Caesar’s Palace towel over his head before a raucous crowd at a Chuck-E-Cheese south of St. Louis . “Shit!” he exclaimed. “Goddamn, Missouri! Way to Go! And way to go, Minnesota! Conservatism is alive and well! Screw you, Mitt Romney! And screw you. too, Barack Obama! Screw you right in the face!” His face glowing with gin, imitation mozzarella cheese, and victory, the one-time vagabond basked in the crowd’s adulation. “Goddamn, Missouri! I’m gonna go to the factory outlet mall tomorrow and buy me some Missouri SHOES! And then I’m gonna use those shoes and STOMP BARACK OBAMA!”
Undead 3000-year-old Bronze Age warrior-mage Ron Paul ignored the meaningless-yet-important Missouri primary, focusing, as is his wont, on the caucuses. Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes, is a place of horror for creature-of-the-desert Ron Paul, and he spent much of his time in Colorado. Doomed to walk the earth until the lost gold of Osiris is recovered, he was drawn to the peace of the high desert, and his undead soul communed with the dark quiet of Colorado’s ghost towns. Ghost towns, however, do not have many voters. The eldritch congressman has lost eight contests in a row.
Gingrich was sort of at a loss as to what to do after his disappointing showing in Nevada. He released a comically complex mathematical plan for racking up delegates in upcoming Southern contests, but he made little effort in the three states that voted Tuesday. The sad space-beast, his victory sacs dried-up and chafing, listlessly dragged his bulk to and fro, muttering “Massachusetts moderate” to random passersby. That was not a winning strategy. The disgraced former House Speaker was 0 and 3 for the night. He emerged briefly on Tuesday night, wincing from the pain in his now-shriveled victory sacs. He shook his great head slowly, his mighty wattles spraying the podium with a fine mist of word-froth and Hearty Seaman brand gin. “Bah,” he ejected from his word sacs. “These results are inconsequential. INCONSEQUENTIAL! MEANINGLESS! WITHOUT MEANING! BAH! FOODSTAMP PAYCHECK BAH!” He waved his fore-appendages in rude gestures, and fled.
At one of Romney’s palatial pleasure-domes, his handlers frantically tried to reboot his crashing FrontRunner 3.1 software. In a mahogany-paneled room graced by priceless-yet-kitschy paintings depicting old Zebulon Romney buying railroads or meeting the angel Mehoona, they yanked out the victory chip and hurriedly tried to initialize Romney’s humility emulators. Victory Romney typically makes jerky, Threepio-like arm gestures. This Romney’s arms just hung limply at his sides. Willard apparently doesn’t bother to put on a tie if he’s not giving a victory speech, either. Romney told a pointless story about his father selling paint out of his car. Why he would want to remind people of a man chiefly known for driving American Motors into the ground and getting his ass handed to him by Nixon is something of a mystery. As the jillionaire droned on about his heretofore never-mentioned humble beginnings, the crowd clapped tentatively. Are we supposed to clap for humble beginnings? They looked at each other, confused. This was a strange tactic, too. This is not a battle he can win. He can’t use his dad to out-humble-beginnings Santorum’s dad, or Obama’s dad. Old Man Santorum was an organ-grinder who lived in a hut made out of olive-oil crates. Obama’s father was from a VILLAGE IN AFRICA.
Romney lost all three contests. He may not have a lot of friends, but at least he still has a lot of money.
The next event is the Maine caucus, on February 11.
I’ll close with another one of Speaker Gingrich’s delicious recipes.
Uncle Newt’s Kansas City Style Barbecue
- One oak tree
- One cow
- Five gallons of ketchup
- One pint of vinegar
Chop up oak tree and set on fire.
Throw cow on fire and cook thoroughly–about eight hours. Add more flaming trees if you need to.
Dismember cow with axe or chainsaw, and douse with ketchup and vinegar.
Insert cow into your maw, and enjoy!
Serves one
Previous primary recaps are here: Nevada, Florida, South Carolina, New Hampshire
