The sun has set on wee Marco Rubio, part-time Florida senator. After a savage pummeling by cartoon-villain Donald Trump, wee Marco will not be president. With Rubio’s withdrawal, GOP hopes of nominating their own Obama-like good-looking ethnic-y young freshman senator have finally been dashed. The only freshman senator left in the race is transfigured snow-beast and Canadian hell-spawn Rafael “Ted” Cruz, whose visage is so hideous to look upon that he wears a grotesque wax mask fashioned into a horrific simulacrum of a human face. It is said that to look upon his actual face is to go mad. Whatever that hip, good looking Kennedy-esque vibe Obama has–Ted Cruz is the opposite. The choices now are a Canadian gorgon, or an old cartoon man. Two old men, if you include Kasich, which I do not. You lost 29 straight primaries, governor. Go home. It’s the gorgon or the angry old cartoon guy now.
Yet once–was it mere weeks ago?–the future seemed so bright for wee Marco. After the full-torso apparition once known as Jeb Bush began fading from sight, young Marco was the empty vessel into which the party establishment poured its increasingly desperate hopes. After a mildly surprising third place finish in Iowa–third is basically first if you round up!–the part-time junior varsity senator was off to New Hampshire and glory!
Alas.
Rubio suffered a complete system failure at a New Hampshire debate, Like a parrot full of cocaine, an increasingly flustered Rubio repeated the same 20-second speech four times while Christie savagely mocked him and more or less ruined the wee senator’s political future in a little over three minutes. After that terrifying exchange, something happened—no one is entirely sure what, perhaps it had something to do with the gravity waves emanating from Christie’s inhuman bulk, altering the senator’s molecular structure, perhaps the auditorium was briefly bathed in gamma rays. Who knows? But something happened. The senator, who was not very big to begin with, began to shrink.
Rubio campaign aides denied it, of course, because they were Republicans, and denying the patently obvious is just what they do. That worked, for a while, because Wolf Blitzer is a gullible old bastard. Eventually, though, it became increasingly difficult to hide. By the time he lost the South Carolina primary, no amount of clever camera angles or cunningly hidden boxes could disguise the fact that wee Rubio was the size of a six-year-old. On Super Tuesday Number One, he was so tiny he had difficulty holding his pile of “Participant” trophies. By the night of the Florida primary, aides had to carry him around in a box to keep him from being eaten by cats.*
Forty-five seconds after the polls closed, networks called Florida for Trump. Glum aides carried the box containing the miniature senator out into that atrium area where they serve the free breakfasts in the morning at the Comfort Inn next to the Cracker Barrel by the interstate north of Miami. They had originally planned something for the Sinatra Ballroom at the Miami Beach Hilton, but unfortunately the campaign finances had shrunk along with the senator. As his aides fired up their laptops and emailed resumes to Ted Cruz, the wee senator began to speak. His high piping voice emerging feebly from the box, the senator thanked the mostly non-existant supporters in the darkened, nearly empty breakfast space, and spoke brightly of a future that everyone in that Comfort Inn lobby knew would never happen.
The last of the campaign staff filed out, until all that remained was a box in the darkness of the breakfast nook. It squeaked for a time, then was silent.
It’s the gorgon or the angry old cartoon guy now.
*Texas senator Phil Gramm experienced a similar shrinking during 1996, and was in fact eaten by a cat or a ferret on the night of the 1996 New Hampshire primary.
