Presidential campaigns, like syphilis, proceed in stages. You have the primaries, where a variety of dysfunctional clowns jostle with each other for the fickle favor of Iowa’s pig-men and New Hampshire’s maple miners, and march from state to state in a colorful pander-circus. Eventually, though, candidates start dropping out in various degrees of misery and humiliation, and one of the candidates rounds up enough pig-men and hill-folk and rodeo-clowns to secure the nomination. Then, you enter the next stage, where the ex-candidates, fetid in loser-stink, endorse the presumptive nominee with various degrees of faux-enthusiasm. Often, this involves some sort of half-assed speech in a hotel ball room, and some awkward hand-shaking between the endorsing loser and the smarmy winner. This is where we are now, with listless also-rans glumly pretending to rally around America’s least-beloved millionaire man-bot. Dick Santorum dropped out last month, and this past week he completed the failure-ritual by endorsing his former rival.
There was no awkward public handshake between Richard “Shoeless Dick” Santorum, erstwhile Pennsylvania senator and King of the Hoboes, and Wilfred Jackassticus Mittonium Lannister Romney IV, Lord of the Robo-men and presumptive Republican nominee. Santorum released his endorsement in a late-night drunken text message. “Shit, America,” he wrote,”I got seven goddamned kids. I got to provide for me and mine. So, I’m endorsing my dear acquaintance Wilburn Romney. He probably wouldn’t be America’s worst president, and at least he’s white as hell. You know what else I endorse? The Avengers. Goddamn, that was a good movie. I admit, I was kind of skeptical, but damn if Joss Whedon didn’t pull it off, that crazy son-of-a-bitch. If you see one movie this year, you should see the Avengers. If you vote for one president in the fall, I guess you should vote for Wilfred Rmoney. Peace out. Twenty Sixteen, bitches!”
The two one-time rivals had met privately in Castle Romney, the palatial House Romney stronghold hewn from the very living rock in the craggy heights of the Utah Alps. There, in the great Hall of Judgement where old Zebulon Romney had Chinese railroad workers and Irish union organizers flogged, the two men sat at an ornate table where the laughably incompetent Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI once signed the Treaty of Baden in 1814. In that treaty, of course, Charles agreed to stop calling himself King of Spain, and the monarchs of Great Britain, France, and Prussia agreed to stop laughing in his face. Shoeless Dick Santorum sat glumly at that table, sipping discreetly from a flask. He would be lucky to get as good a deal.
What was in the pact Santorum and Romney signed is a closely guarded secret, but sources say it likely included a promise by Santorum to campaign for Romney in certain hobo-rich districts. Santorum may also work to convince hobo-mages and gypsy witches to help thwart the eldritch dark magicks gathering around 3000-year-old Bronze Age shaman and forty-eight-term congressman Ron Paul, Romney’s last challenger. Romney senior staffers are concerned that the undead congressman may have enough delegate enchantments at the convention to open The Dark Portal of Undeath, which hasn’t happened since the 1964 convention, when the GOP nominated 9th-level fire-demon Barry Goldwater. It took four years for Nixon, the most powerful dark mage of his generation, to close the portal. Romney’s robotic enhancements are particularly ineffective against magic, and so his handlers are justifiably concerned.
The Washington Post reported that Santorum cut off his own pinky as a sign of fealty to Romney, but like most of what the Washington Post writes, this is a load of crap. Santorum lost the tip of his right pinky when a boxcar door slammed shut on him when he was at a hobo gathering in an Iowa rail-yard. (If you see Santorum, and he has all ten fingers, then what you are seeing is Evil Dick Santorum from the Nega-Zone. Sometimes he transposes with the Dick Santorum of our universe. Do not let him talk to you, and above all, DO NOT let him touch you).
After the endorsement deal was signed, Romney gave Santorum a pair of beautifully polished but poorly-fitting $1000 Italian loafers. Romney had a whole room full of them that he had acquired that time he made made all those shoe companies go bankrupt back in the 90s. Santorum smiled the kind of smile you smile at a tormentor you would like to kill, and slipped the shoes on his dirty calloused feet as best he could. He winced as he walked to the ski-lift that would take him down the mountain. “Twenty sixteen, bitches,” he muttered. As soon as the the shuttle dropped him at Zebulon Regional Airport, he tossed the shoes in a trash can. “Twenty sixteen, bitches,” he muttered again.
